It's the social interaction, not the game (Destiny)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Monday, November 09, 2015, 22:46 (3397 days ago) @ Kahzgul

I will occasionally hop into chat with my Destiny playing friends while I do something else and I instantly stop missing Destiny. The game's focus on fireteams and raid activities has created social peer pressure to continually log on in order to keep from letting your friends down, paired with the fun of playing with your friends.

I remember when I quit WoW, it was like I lost 50 friends all at once. It was really rough.

This is why I think that current online game design paradigm around the social focusing on the internet is ultimately wrong. The correct way is to focus on local multiplayer, or online worlds that aren't "persistent".

When so much of the social interaction is dependent on other players online, this creates pressure to keep people playing, which in turn leads to grindy and manipulative designs, which in turn leads to having to play all the time which leads to the problem you describe.

I think a true social co-operative game would be a game that's set up like a single player RPG, but would require multiple players. It's not really that far fetched is it? Board games require multiple people. So does Dungeons and Dragons. Or poker.

Raids are the closest thing to this. You have to pre-arrange them. You can't just jump in. So what if you made your whole game that way? What if you tried to make that campaign / story experience, but have it be co-op only? Nobody has tried this, and I think it would preserve the aspect of playing with friends, while completely eliminating the need to gut your game design to manipulate people into spending way more time online than they need to.