I have been semi-homeless since June 3rd. Since then, when I sold my house, I have been living out of an RV and begging parking spaces, showers, and the occasional meal from friends and family. Thoreau was full of shit; being without technology sucks.
Ok, not really. It’s been 85% fun and 15% annoying. However, my transience has made me think about my relationship with gaming in a totally new way. I have never been bothered by gaming’s continued reliance on an Internet connection. Even when the newest Sim City was released as online only or when Xbox saves went primarily to the cloud, I wasn’t worried. Why would I be? For the past 5 years, I have had a nearly 100% stable Internet connection. And worst-case scenario, I was mobile enough to head to a coffee shop or campus if my Internet failed.
For the majority of the time I’ve been living in the RV, I’ve been parked in a place without cell service and without wifi. It has led me to question whether my relationship with gaming is really about gaming or about connectivity. I would have previously assumed that the two are separable. After all, I was a gamer in the early 90s before connectivity was assumed or common. I played handheld, console, and computer games obsessively with no Internet connection growing up. The first games I played to fruition were all offline games. The only time I really needed the Internet was if I had to look up a bug or find out how to beat a boss or participate in some sort of community thing. But now so many games need to be online even though they have no interaction with others anyway. I couldn’t even watch movies on my Xbone without being connected to the Internet (movies play through the Blueray player, which notoriously stops working shortly after being disconnected).
At this time I also broke my ankle. So I was alone, living in the RV with no connectivity, and desperately in need of some gaming to pass the time. Right now my Xbone is essentially a giant paperweight. I can’t get my saved games, I can’t play many of the games I own for it, and I can’t even play a fucking movie (yeah yeah, first world problems). What did I have to do? I had to go more low-tech. I watched DVDs on my laptop and borrowed a friend’s Xbox 360 in order to play games—though any newer game was fruitless because saves were connected to my account and online. Even if that weren’t the case, most of the good features in a new game were predicated on having the game connected to the Internet.
As gamers, do we want this to continue happening? Sure, it’s convenient when I sign on to Sam’s Xbone to play Zoo Tycoon that I can access my saved games. But also, let’s not forget what happened to Tacious who lost his saved game on Dungeon Defenders (long live Rathard). But for just how long will this cloud be convenient if it becomes necessary to be connected to play? Will we see a backlash of more low-fi technology being used to play? Will we see social gaming start to devolve into the bygone eras of message board and clubs as the only social interaction rather than in-game interaction? If I lived in a rural area or couldn’t afford the Internet, I would find it extremely difficult to get excited about this nextgen of consoles and new evolutions in gaming. But then again, what is more limiting: needing an Internet connection to play or needing your own machine to play?
This whole thing reminds me of Ready Player One, a book that is set in a dystopic (utopic?) future society where the entire world exists online in a game. Humans exist stacked in trailers or crammed into apartments, uncaring, because the real world is online and endless. Maybe it’s materialist of me to question this progression. Have I become a better person because I’ve restricted my technology usage in recent weeks and been forced to appreciate meat space? I don’t know about that. I rather liked the balance I struck between outdoor activities and gaming.
Or perhaps this is all a moot point. Perhaps what is holding us back is the technology, which theoretically is rapidly approaching things like universal wifi. Once everyone has an Internet connection available, then perhaps there will be no times when a cloud save or an email is out of reach.
All I know is that right now, I really want to play some of those $60 games on that $500 paperweight. Stupid nature. Stupid Microsoft?
