I don’t dislike multiplayer. To say such would be absurd, as I have good memories of playing games with my siblings and friends from childhood to College to adulthood. Yet I’ve never been able to get into the competitive spirit, the obsession with besting other people at an activity. Perhaps it is because I grew up never really winning anything. At the same time, how does that explain all the pre-pubescent children obsessed with Kill/Death ratios in Call of Duty?

At some point such introspection becomes pointless, but playing the Planetside 2 Beta recently made me realize something. I don’t like competition, but I do like objectives. Perhaps this is tied into my primary preference for single player games, or perhaps it is one of the reasons I’m drawn to games as a solo experience.

It certainly fits my pattern. My favorite competitive game mode of Unreal Tournament and UT2K4 was Assault, a series of objectives tied together to accomplish an overall goal. Aside from the thematic elements of each mission that made the experience more colorful than “kill lots o’ dudes”, it provided a variety of different ways to be useful. I was never as good at the game as a number of my friends, so when defending I typically became a form of cannon fodder. I’d leap near the spawn point and focus on doing as much damage as I could. It was never surprising to see foes that killed me five seconds ago get torn apart by my comrades. I’m not a good sniper or sharp shooter, and as such I used whatever tools I had.

My offensive skills were similar. I either attempted to sneak in where no one was paying attention or acted as a decoy, or simply focused on doing as much harm to the enemy as possible.

This has changed a bit on consoles. I’m much more comfortable with a controller and most of these games don’t rely so much on twitch gameplay. At least, depending on the game. Shadowrun, Dead Space 2 and Bioshock 2 each provided me with greater enjoyment than other games with competitive multiplayer.

In the end, I think the reason is because each game made it easy to focus on objectives rather than competing with other players. It is true that players are naturally going to compete, and the end result still determines a victor and a loser. But it is easy to get lost in the thought of holding onto a Little Sister as long as possible. You think differently. You set up hiding spots and traps, or perhaps find little areas that are rarely traveled while keeping on the move. It’s all about the objective, not the competition.

Similarly with Dead Space 2, which was organized more closely to the aforementioned Assault mode.

Yet what captures this mentality most, and perhaps part of why I love it so much, is Planetside and its sequel. There’s an overall focus on trying to take over the world, but it is such a massive goal (not to mention impossible, as each side’s base cannot be overtaken) that players never think of it. Instead is the greater focus on controlling individual points on the map.

Alright, now go capture that base.

What this amounts to is a series of King of the Hill style levels interconnected over a single expansive world, only one core difference. There really isn’t an emphasis on who killed who, how many kills you got, etc. Sure, this stuff exists within the game, and in Planetside 2 they even show you how much damage different foes had done to you total.

Yet it is hard to care when you’re one of hundreds of soldiers on the battlefield. It may help to shout “Hey, there’s a guy named LOLGrunt at the top of the northern hill sniping people as they come out of the base” to your squad, but most of the time it’ll be you and several other players you’ve never seen before going up against another horde of players in a chaotic mish-mash of weapons fire and vehicles.

Planetside manages to take away the competitive nature that I dislike about most multiplayer games and instead boils it down into a more interactive co-operative objective based title. This makes me wonder if there is more room to grow the multiplayer experience, focusing more on objective based play while still rewarding players with the sense of accomplishment. Turok (the recent one nobody liked) had a co-op mode completely disconnected from the campaign that pretty much focused on four players traversing increasingly difficult maps to complete objectives. Could there be more room for this sort of play?

It also makes me wonder if you might be able to grab a more casual audience with this mentality. A lot of times the default multiplayer option is either completing the campaign co-operatively or deathmatch, but perhaps creating unique experiences focusing on multiple players working to complete objectives, either separate yet inter-connected ones as a team or competitively, or even a massive game where players can simply fulfill more roles.

Planetside 2 easily allows a variety of players to find a niche to fill. You can play classes focused more on assistance or direct attack. It doesn’t really matter as each has its own purpose. If there were more multiplayer games that focused more on providing everyone a chance to get involved rather than catering to the digital athletes of the permanent-ass-groove-in-the-couch age, then maybe it would be easier to get people to jump in and have fun.