Xbox Live is all fine and good, but there is no substitute for a couple of friends sacked out on the couch together, playing a video game together in person. The industry shift towards social gaming isn’t something new – it’s the return of something old – that feeling that older gamers like me used to get when standing around an arcade machine back in the day. Wired’s Clive Thompson explores the trend in his latest column, which looks at how much a guy sitting next to you can change the gaming experience, using Army of Two as his example. I hang out with other gamers all the time, but it’s mostly in multiplayer online play, using headsets. It’s social, sure. But as any psychologist will tell you, hanging out in real life allows for even richer styles of communication to emerge. In face-to-face mode, we’re better at picking up the little nuances — frustration, glee, sarcasm, subvocalised ranting, body language — that build team cohesion, and allow us to game with a positively Vulcan level of mind meld.
