One of the reasons I feel that Halo and Halo 2 have been so successful and have sold so many copies is what I like to think of as Friendly Advertising.  What is this term you might ask?  In my mind Friendly Advertising is where you go over to a friend’s place and play the game that you do not own, then end up buying the game based on the experience you had there.  Halo is one of the few games that really allowed lots of people who do not own consoles currently or who own consoles but do not have the game itself to try playing either flavor of Halo.  The result is people get to try this great game out before the lay down the cash for it.  And then when they realize what an incredible game it is they go out and buy it for themselves, and knowing that you already have a friend that you can share this game with does not hurt either.  The Halo series has lots of different types of multi player options so that as many people can get hands on controller time with the game as possible and not just sit on the side lines of the couch watching other people play and have fun.  You have the option to play dual player coop.  Which I really wish they would have made this four player coop but who knows maybe for Halo 3 you will be able too.  You also have a bunch of four player options to do different flavors of multiplayer.  You also have system link, in which you can link two separate Xboxes together and then do split screen off of that.  In fact it is not very difficult to get twelve or sixteen people playing in a game.  And then there are all the LIVE options with Halo 2 besides all the previously mentioned multiplayer options.

Sadly I do not see this in many other games.  Some games will let you do two player split screen, or they will let you play one player per console on system link, while others will allow four player split screen but will not let you do this over system link to get more then four players at a time.  I really hope that developers do not just look at these different split screen options as if I give them this option I will not sell as many copies of the game, because the potential customer can simply go over to a friend’s house and play with them instead of buying it for themselves. 

I will say this, a strong multiplayer game will keep me from selling this game at GameStop or EBay more then anything else.  I have a bunch of games that I keep not because they are really great single player story games (like Oblivion), but because me and my buddies will sometimes just throw in an old game because we like playing through it together another time.  And if my used game is not being sold, then there is a chance that another new copy of your game may just get bought instead!

So to paint a picture for you all I am a 35 year old gamer.  My father lectured me for hours on end about wasting all my allowance in a Donkey Kong, PACMAN, Paperboy and Punch Out.  I have some real fond memories of playing video games in an arcade.  Later in life I remember playing Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter in the arcade and then going over to a friend’s house and playing it on his SEGA.  But the graphics were not quite as good on the home console as in the arcade.  Soon after that the events in my life forced me to adopt what I was told was a more grown up life.  Career, family, and so called grown up activities pulled me away from going to the arcade and basically gaming in general.  I still remember sneaking away and plugging a quarter into a Lethal Enforcer game at a bowling alley between frames and having my wife at the time come storming over and basically nagging me away from the games.  Fast forward to a month ago and the bachelor party of my best friend who by chance is also a big gamer.  He was really excited to go to a place called GameWorks, which is a giant multi floor arcade with what I would guess is over one hundred different games.  For those of you who do know what this business is, you buy credits and then just slip what looks like a debit card into the machine and it pulls a certain amount of credits from your account for each game.  Most of the circles of friends that we hang out with are also gamers, so we were all really excited to relive our childhood and get to hang out in an arcade and play games. The experience of playing with friends in a co-op arcade environment was just as fun as I remember as a child, but I could not believe the quality of the game play and graphics had not hardly changed at all in more then five years.  I quickly learned that the quality of games in the arcade was so far behind the XBox and PS2, and they do not even compare to XBox 360 and PS3.  Most of them seemed to still focus on the 2D side scroller, or simple running forward shooters.  It did not seem like in the time I had been away there was much innovation, or new ideas.  Since Konami and SEGA were the two main manufactures of the games that were there I am really surprised that there were not Mega Man, CastleVania, and other console franchises.  I figured that these could at least be really good marketing tools to drive consumers to buy these games on consoles.

I was really sad to see that a part of my youth was gone and that future generations may not get to experience the mixture of sounds from different arcade machine playing at the same time, and the bright lights and wild array of colors painted on strangers faces that I experienced.  But then again my dad use to describe drive in movie theaters and tell me how I was really missing out by just sitting in a theater.

One game that seems to have blown everyone away is Gears of War, I know what you are thinking, and you’re saying WOW that is a brilliant news flash.  But one thing that is a little bit different about Gears of War is that the Story mode of the game is actually very short.  There are posting on the Internet and Podcasters who have said that they have actually beaten the game in as little as six hours.  It took me a little longer to beat the game, I had to play in shorter segments and never really got to sit down for an afternoon and bang out a long six hour session.  But one thing remains the actual story of the game is quite short.  But the multi player aspects of the game are outstanding and offer replay value that can have players playing this game for months probably even years.  The online experience in Gears is a really strong, and the fact that you can have a friend jump in and play the story mode of the game with you side by side almost seamlessly is such a great feature of the game.  The single player story mode to Rainbow Six Vegas is fairly short also, but Rainbow Six has built its success on the fact that the multi player is nothing short of incredible, and keeps players coming back again and again for months.  In fact I would go so far as to say that just a while back Multiplayer was simply an add on feature to the single player story mode. 
Now I feel that the Multiplayer mode is the most important feature of the game and Single player is just something to get comfortable with the control scheme and kill some time when your friends are not online.  This brings me to the main point of this article, and that is should developers who want to create successful games concentrate more of their efforts on the multiplayer aspects of the game.  Most games follow an established sequence of events, you go through some sort of training, or maybe the first level is kind of a training mission to get you use to the control scheme.  Then you begin playing missions that progressively get harder and harder until you finish the game.  What if developers approached game design from a different angle?  What if the whole story mode was based around the idea that it prepared you for multiplayer?  In a sense the whole story mode was a training session to develop the skills you will need to be successful at multi player.  The idea that you could play through the story mode with another player was more along the lines of two people trying to learn the game, or one more experienced player is helping along a newer player?  Do not get me wrong I think that developers should still create a strong story mode that is an involving story.  But aspects of the story mode would show you where on the map the good sniper spots are, help build some strategy, learn how to play as a team.  I think right now story modes help you become comfortable with the control scheme, and some have multi player maps based on the story mode.  But they do not train you to play multi player, which is fast becoming the main part of the game that most gamers play.

I am 35 and I feel like it is my age group is the first generation that has grown up with gaming. I think my generation got started on gaming at a very young age and many of us never let go of it, or at least did not want to let go of it. It is not that uncommon on Xbox LIVE to find people in their thirties and forties, and I have come across a few guys in their fifties.

A simple principle in life is gamers want to play video games. But what happens when gamers start getting to much responsibility in their lives? A career, spouse, children, owning a home, all of these things slowly chip away at the endless hours that use to be enjoyed playing video games that we love so much. The answer is portable gaming. No longer are portable games the tool of parents to keep their children pacified for long car rides. This is the new means of older gamers to stay with their true passion in life. When gamers no longer have time to sit down and play video games for three to four hours, portable gaming allows the gamer to pick up a game play for fifteen to twenty minutes and then set it back down. The great feature about handheld gaming consoles is obvious fact that they are portable. Both the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS Lite can help pass time while riding public transportation to work. The Nintendo DS Lite fits into a shirt pocket quite well, it can be pulled out for the morning fifteen minute break, and put away quickly before the boss sees that WENUS report numbers are not the all important factor in your life.

The other key feature in hand held consoles is the fact they can be put down as quick as they are picked up. Portable gaming can also be enjoyed while you are at home besides when you are on the go. When your significant other hollers out, “Honey, come quick!” the portable game can usually be very quickly put to sleep until this earth shattering emergency has been dealt with. If your spouse absolutely has to watch Grey’s Anatomy, and then catch up on the TIVO recorded episodes of Desperate Housewives, the gamer’s access to the family TV can be quite limited. Having a hand held console and a quite corner of the house can save the sanity of even the most patient gamer.

The Nintendo DS Lite is experiencing enormous success. It is even out selling every other console on the market right now. I think there are several reasons for this:

1. The main reason thing is selling so fast is it has fun games!
2. The control scheme is pretty easy to pick up, using the touch pad for most games seems very natural.
3. It fits into the lives of busy older gamers that may only have fifteen to twenty minutes to play.
4. The controls are almost identical to the controls older gamers remember from the Nintendo NES.

So to all the young gamers out there I say to you savor these years of guilt free enjoyment. Enjoy the time you have, the playing your favorite RPG or FPS from the time you wake up at noon until dawn the next day. Soon you will be like me and a career, a wife, two children, and what seems like a never ending “Honey Do List” will cut the all day marathon console gaming sessions down to a meager hour or two every other day. Then you too will have to find ways to sneak in small indulgences of your pixilated guilty pleasure!

This is the first post to the new blog Around the Controller. This is also the first blog in the Around the Controller Network. We are excited to start a new set of blogs all centered on the video game industry, and issues of interest to gamers.

AroundTheController.com takes from the old idea of friends and co-workers standing around the water cooler talking. Here we are all going to be around the video game controller, talking about issues or experiences related to video games. We hope to have content come from the readers of the site, and will encourage anyone who wants to submit experiences, reviews, or thoughts to us. I can not guarantee they will get published, but I will try to get as many up as I can as long as I feel they are appropriate. I will post a list of criteria later about what content is acceptable, and what is not. Within a couple of weeks we will also be doing a regular Podcast relating to content on the site and some unique content that is exclusive to the Podcast itself.

As I mentioned before AroundTheController.com, is going to be part of the Around the Controller Network. In the coming days we will have the following sites up and running in our little online family:

www.LiveForXBox.com

www.LiveForPlayStation.com

www.LiveForNintendo.com

www.LiveForPCGaming.com

These sites will be where fans of those specific consoles can go to get all the latest news, and our personal reviews of consoles, accessories, and of course games. We will also be producing a Podcast specifically for each site. While AroundtheContoller.com content itself will be dedicated to general gaming news and editorials.

And finally the newest member of the Around the Controller Network is:

www.tiredthumbs.com

This site will be a daily blog of the video game experiences of the writers for the Around the Controller Network. This is kind of a day by day diary of what we are playing and some of the stories of our gaming lives online and offline. We are really excited to have Charlie George and Tired Thumbs join our family.