Video games are meant to be a fun break after a long day, not another source of stress and anger. I’m no stranger to competitive games, but even I have a limit.
Video games such as “Counter-Strike 2,” “Overwatch” and “League of Legends” are optimized specifically for the highest performing players, extracting the charm, jank and fun from casual play.
This sort of trend with multiplayer games is frustrating, and has pushed me away from multiplayers games and into single player experiences.
Most guys I knew growing up would brag about their Elo rating, a numeric system that determines someone’s skill, in “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” or their “Overwatch” rank.
It is true that without some sort of competition or feeling of disappointment at failure, multiplayer games would be uninteresting, but the way games focus only on competitive aspects even in casual modes is frustrating.
I can’t say I was among them because I was hard stuck in silver in Counter-Strike and unranked in “Overwatch” after Roadhog lost the ability to hook people around corners.
But I was always aware of their skill, and their passion for being great at games.
Around 2019, I got competitive in games when my friend purchased “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege” for me.
Rainbow Six Siege is a first-person tactical shooter that puts a defensive and offensive team of military or police operators against each other.
I would obsessively play it everyday after school and on weekends, but I cannot say it ever made me happy to play it.
It is an unwelcoming way to design a game, and makes no sense for players who aren’t playing for awards or money.
I quit playing Siege after high school for the most part. But during the COVID-19 shutdown, I started playing other tactical shooters, such as “Escape from Tarkov.”
“Escape from Tarkov” is a “hardcore,” role-playing, first-person tactical extraction shooter.
Extraction shooters are games where you are loaded into a public raid, and you loot the area and either extract with all of your items, or die and lose everything, including the gear you entered the raid with.
This was one of the most punishing games I ever tried that I finally gave up after realizing I’m not willing to waste my life learning how to play a game where it is common to die to someone who has spent entire years in the game.
The same can be said about most multiplayer shooters or player versus player games now.
Almost every player versus player game I’ve played has completely broken metas and players that prioritize winning over having any semblance of fun.
The issue isn’t always the developers themselves however.
With games such as “Dead by Daylight,” the developers have explicitly stated their want for the game to be balanced around their casual playerbase, according to a recent developer stream on YouTube.
“Dead by Daylight” is an asymmetrical horror game that puts one killer against four survivors.
As a horror fan, being able to play as Leatherface from “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” sold me immediately, and learning how to chase survivors, predict players movements and manage generators has captured my attention intensely.
Although fun, the game is infamous for its toxic community, with insults, bullying and in some extreme cases, stalking.
The game also suffers from the same sweatiness of other PvP games.
In some games, I am on the edge of my seat the entire time, getting outplayed at every corner while generators pop left and right.
Behaviour Interactive, the studio behind “Dead by Daylight,” has been trying to counteract these highly competitive and broken strategies.
In the next planned update for the game, it is changing buffs stack and generator repair speeds.
Other studios should learn from how Behaviour dealt with game-breaking metas and overly competitive players.
