People who think "loneliness in games" is a bad thing don't get that games are a retreat, an area to relax.
For them, there needs to be constant action, games are entertainment-dynomite, exploding in your face every minute that you play.
Adrenalin-fueled FPS sessions and tense MMORPG raids are a valid way to experience a game.
I guess, after such events, the "everything needs a co-op mode"-people just leave their computer to be alone and relax in the real world while reading a book.
Well, sorry that my lifestyle is not the exact same as theirs.
I like the loneliness in games. It gives me time to immerse myself into a well-constructed virtual environment, enjoying it in ways that I couldn't if I had the constant worry that some Steam-pal simply joined my quiet world.
I want to be alone sometimes in games! The sensory-deprevation tank was an apt analogy for something that I have found: Loneliness is stress-free and safe. You can't fuck up with no-one around, or at least it doesn't matter that much.
Certain parts of your brain can shut off and relax when you're alone, giving you the capacity to deal with your gaming experience more deeply.
I can handle it when someone tells me to stop talking to the NPCs and to stop gawking at the nice environment in an MMORPG because that is not the main point of an MMORPG. However, games like Skyrim have environment, NPCs, basically their atmosphere as the main attraction. The immersion is the entire point!
That just doesn't happen when you're dragged around by one of your friends, who wants to speedrun every quest and who gets annoyed when you stop to smell the roses.

As a solitary gamer, I agree. A lot of my games are geared to single-player enjoyment... Things like the Assassin's Creed and Devil May Cry series', God of War, Pokemon, Prototype, etc. Yes, Assassin's Creed has multiplayer, but I scarcely play it and when I do I don't ever interact with anyone on it.

Except maybe to hum the jaws theme as I stalk someone.

I'm just an introvert.

I hate being around people all the time, I get enough of that out at work or going out with friends, when I'm home playing games, I'm more than happy to do it alone. I have multiplayer games... when I want multiplayer I play THOSE, like TF2, or league of legends. Not Dead Space or whatever.

this reminds me of that old dicovery shannel comercial where the guy talks about game development and how the future is playing always with other due to the AI never being as good as a real person. what he missed was that AI also isnt likely to wander by with blue hair, jumping off the roof of buildings, screaming that im a fag and generally bing a complete pain in the ass to others just for shits and giggles.

i like single player games and i like some multiplayer ones but for different reasons

I would love to have Dragon Age 3 and Mass Effect 4 to have a co-op mode to play it together with a friend. Especially after I played The old Republic with a buddy.

That experience was awesome but hindered by the game design of a MMORPG. The scenes were not nearly as epic as in a single player games. You can defeat the best of the best only so many times before it gets dull and you realize that you play a grindfest and not an immersive experience.

But the mechanics for group play in a traditionally single player game worked really well. That shows that you can do it.

Regarding Sim City. Jim you have to understand the inclusion of social networking is the last resort for EA do inject relevance into Sim City before that brand goes down the drain. Please don't destroy their illusion that what they do is still relevant and useful :P .

Jim, if you are reading this. I don't care if you don't believe in God. But do you people have to insult everyone who does?
You are being the exact same kind of people that you hate. I know the reasons why you have certain kind of religious people, I live in Pakistan I see some of these people often, my email is on Yahoo and every-time I sign out and am taken to the front page of Yahoo UK (there is no Yahoo Pakistan, and i don't want an account on Yahoo India) and almost every news story there has commentators bordering on the KKK. They use nationalism and sometimes religion to insult people who are different. You insult the UK there you get hundreds of dislikes, insult Muslims or Jews you get hundreds of likes. And I know you actually have to deal with these kinds of people every day in real life.
These are terrible people but their religion has nothing to do with it. Insult them however much you like, insult Muslims or Christians or any other religious group however much you like but please refrain from insulting Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism or any other religion.
AlQuaida or the Taliban know nothing about Islam, the Westbro Baptists know nothing about Christianity and I am sure Israel frequently disobeys Judaism.
And if the point isn't clear enough, one of the fiercest famous critics of terrorism, sectarianism and extremism in Pakistan is a bearded religious scholar and lawyer Dr. Tahirul Qadri(he might have been in BBC News recently due to his Tahrir Square style rally outside the parliament house in Islamabad).
Also see your fake nerd girls video again. You mention that you think that evangelical Christians think that Atheists and Muslims spend every minute of every day think of ways to ruin their lives. What does that make you? You think religious people spend every minute of every day thinking of ways to ruin your life?
Previously you were disrespected for being atheists now you are member of some elite club that we don't want to be part of. Is it too much to ask to not have my religion insulted while I watch your insightful opinions(almost all of which I agree with) on video games and all related things? You rue that girls are belittled at conventions due to booth babes but insulting religious people watching a video on something not related to religion is completely fine?

Well shit, Jim pretty much got in my head and said exactly how i feel about gaming. Fuck multiplayer, i like to play a game by myself and be absorbed by it, not have other people to contend with when i want to chill down.

You know Jimmy..... When you starded here I was disapointed in your shows in you to say the least.
However, over the time you concered my hart and I learned to truely apreaciate your insight. Im not shure if you became more enjoable or if I lowered my expectations towards you....
Nevertheless, keep it up, you seem to getting the hang of it;)

I find my friends don't usually like the same kinda games that I do.

Therefore, most of the games I play multiplayer requires me to play with "randoms". Randoms ruin multiplayer.

Therefore I find I prefer single player games, because then I don't have to deal with online randoms. The new SimCity is completely ruined by this forced online-multiplayer, which is sad.

The only kind of game I can STAND to play multiplayer are MMOs, and I usually solo in those as well

Oh Jim, you magnificent blasphemer!

Your lecture today reminded me of a book I picked up at my library today, "Quiet: The Secret Power of Introverts." It's basically the first book that tells the Extrovert-loving-earth to fuck off! I -being and introvert- appreciate as much time as I can get in solitude, because it is where I engage myself with distractions, entertainment, enrichment, or recharge for when I am ready to make human contact again. Humans may be social animals, and need some amount of social contact, but like you I really don't appreciate this attitude the mega-developers/publishers are conceiving that everyone wants multiplayer and to not be alone.

Let me share a tiny little secret with everyone: You can only feel lonely around other people most of the time. Gasp! Shocking right?! Being as we are social animals if there is no one around to worry about, our minds don't engage in feeling lonely. More often they work out how to find something (I'm going to say it again, patterns anyone) engaging! I think this evolution of thinking is merely a mutation of the extrovert sneaking his slimy greasy unwanted fingers into parts of life that the introvert wishes be kept alone.

Thanks again for reinforcing what I appreciate in single player, Jim.

A Curious Fellow:

ex275w:

A Curious Fellow:
There is absolutely no problem with having more options in a game. I've enjoyed, greatly, playing multiplayer in Minecraft and Mass Effect 3, for example. I wouldn't play Minecraft if I was FORCED to be alone, and the multiplayer in Mass Effect is incredibly deep and rewarding, nevermind wildly well-supported by the Bioware and EA.

I don't understand why you would talk down at a game developer for wanting to make a more rounded experience for the player.

The problem is that most of the time these extra options take extra resources. Mass Effect 3, while it has a good multiplayer (from what I've heard), is still played for the most part for the single player. Maybe the campaign wouldn't have been so bad, maybe the ending wouldn't have been horrible, maybe they could've put more Role playing elements.
Sure it's nice to have options, but those options shouldn't take away from the core experience, in fact having more options may limit the depth (and thus more options) of the game. In an opposite example, I think CoD should be online only and shouldn't have single-player.

The best games are those that offer a great single player that can be adapted easily into an online mode, like Tetris.

This argument is exhausted and ought to be retired. You can outspend the gdp of a small island nation with the average AAA game development budget. I'd rather have an alternate avenue of enjoyment in a game I just bought for sixty dollars than have only one playtype with one extra coat of polish. And shame on you for calling Mass Effect 3's campaign "bad". It was fifty hours of tightly composed and emotionally investing excellence, and they fixed the ending.

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/we-play-alone-together-why-conventional-wisdom-about-single-player-games-is

Well I really don't mind one playtype I love modes like the Devil May Cry Bloody Palace, or playing as other characters like the Kratos dressed as a fish. Games should've incentives for being replayed, other than being really good. These options are fun and don't require a lot of the programming work.

The problem is that online multiplayer is the most common and expensive option that is used for games, and it's not really used by as many people as it should be, especially considering how expensive it is compared to other options.

As for Mass Effect 3, I thought everything was rushed and should've happened in Mass Effect 2, so sue me :P.

Welp, Jim's digging. That intro was absolutely fantastic, but I feel like there's a fallacy or two involved in the argument itself. I'm not the only one to consider "loneliness" and "being alone" different things; the quote that set Jim off could've been based on an understanding of the word "loneliness" similar to my own. As I (and possibly Ocean Quigley) would define it, loneliness is by definition a bad thing and something one would only want from particular sorts of games, games designed to exploit players' lonely, discontented feelings. Feeling lonely (again, by my understanding of the term) occurs specifically because a person is unhappy about being alone or not being with trusted/familiar people and would not happen (barring disorders such as depression) to one who is completely fine with his or her aloneness, separation, etc. Maybe Jim had no idea that there was another definition floating around, but then again maybe he just intentionally ignored the point to have something to argue with.

As for singleplayer vs. multiplayer, I'd like to see more multiplayer and especially co-op, but only where it belongs. Fthreear's co-op pretty blatantly wrecked the atmosphere of the game, but in Magicka it's hilarious and useful. I'd love to be able to play Skyrim with a friend (if I had friends, at least) and don't see why that should be completely out of the question for such games. In that particular case there is a bit of loneliness which, though maybe intentional, limits it for me. I can have followers, but they're really not that interesting and definitely nothing like as interesting as having a friend along. I also don't see nearly as much of the co-op being crammed into everything as people like to complain about. Maybe I just don't play the right games, but I've got few that are capable of any sort of co-op and even fewer that have what I'd call "co-op" as opposed to something more like "playing on the same team."

GunsmithKitten:

Hey, if it's okay for Jim Sterling to mass insult several million religious people and proclaim himself to be greater than their deity, why can't the other side do the same?

PS: I'm non-Christian.

You do realize Jim is only making a joke right? There's a pretty big line between insulting someone an meaning it and insulting them because it's you're show persona.

I thought it was pretty widely accepted that Jim's Ego on the Jimquisition is just done for a larf.

sometimes you watch movies alone, for the movies sake, sometimes you watch them with company, ome are good alone, some are better with others, some are good just with a certain person (horror => BF). books are mostly enjoyed alone, but they can be great entertainment when reading them to someone else...
games are good at both. just comparing bioshock singleplayer to its multiplayer makes it obvious what singleplayer has to offer...
Other games are more fun with friends, like left4dead. playing alone or with others is quite a different experiance while using the same medium, just shows what potential games have.
Being alone shouldnt have such a stigma. while being alone a lot in my past I had moments of the most growth as a person. meditation requires to be alone and works for everyone different. I think a person who constantly needs the presence of others might be afraid to be alone with themselves, case there is nothing than ones own thoughts...

being lonely and being alone is not the same.

I always thank Jesos for Jim. I can see now that Jesos is the wrong entity to thank for Jim.
Thank you, Jim, for showing me the way once again.

OT: That's...pretty much what I tell my friends every time they complain about me buying a game that lacks multiplayer. I love playing with my friends. But sometimes you just gotta play on your own. and I'm blaming kids nowadays that feel the need to be connected to the internet 24/7. Yeah, I said kids.

On a related topic, I was playing Portal 2 today and I noticed that I was missing a bunch of trophies, all of them obtained via multiplayer. Now, I'm not a perfectionist so its not like I was shooting to have all the trophies in the game. But it does bother me that I can't get the trophies not because I don't want to but because I MUST play with others. I mus change the way I play, and the way I've played the game so far, just to get those achievements. Whether the multiplayer is fun or not is irrelevant right now. I just don't like being forced to interact with others if I don't feel like doing so.

I do prefer to play on my own, most of the time, mostly because my friends only like FPS and I don't like people breaking my immersion in the game by yelling "OMG U N00B WTFBBQ!11!!1!" and then watching 'DatA$$86' proceed to face-crouch me.

As it is, Left 4 Dead, a game I love and play almost religiously every night, a game that is, for the most part, meant to be played online, is hard to take seriously or even enjoy when people start being dicks and kick you out or start cussing for no apparent reason at all or ditch you or they left their 5 year olds grab a hold of the headset (Something that happens very often, apparently).

It's okay to play by yourself. It doesn't make me forever alone. And it certainly doesn't mean all games should have multiplayer just cause its cool (Right, AC?). That's why I respect Bioshock Infinite for it.

What Jim said about playing games 'to *be* lonely' is spot on, though as others have said, 'solitude' would have been a better word. (No offense, Jim. ^_^ )

But as others have also pointed out, this isn't really the issue. It's a front. The vast majority of AAA game companies out there have been trying like the dickens to change their games from a Product to a *Service*. From something that you can buy, own & play at your discretion even 20 years after you bought it, to something you must pay a monthly fee for, forever. Or at least until they shut the servers down. (R.I.P. City of Heroes...) Keep that in mind as well. People invest years of their lives in some of these games, and all that can be lost permanently at the flick of a switch...

Personally I've never played an MMO & won't for that reason. I can pick up my 15 year old copy of Fallout 1 & play it without an internet connection & without paying anyone any more money. This is something game companies want to stop. It's 'lost revenue' from their perspective. And they're not the only ones, most software companies out there want to take us back to the 1970's where you logged onto a server, paid a fee & used an app on the server. That's The Cloud and it's a very, very bad idea.

In any event, what's ironic about much of this conversation is that for many games, particularly RPG's, it doesn't have to be an either/or situation in regards to multiplayer. Baldur's Gate is a perfect example. You can play it single player or co-op with no loss to the single player experience. There is no reason that a more modern game like Mass Effect could not have used that exact same model. But I should stress that that play over a LAN/WAN peer-to-peer does NOT generate revenue for the companies, which is why they don't want to revist that road either.

Welcome back to the church of Jimqisition!
Our collective prayer today shall be:
Thou shalt not question nor doubt our saviors preachings and shalt not accuse him for blasphemy when he shows generous gratitude towards god for creating him tho it makes you the blasphemer.
Amen.

On topic:
I haven't thought that would be an issue. I mean, while i enjoy time around others and are good with people in general, i really need my "alone time", even more than some others, as you said, to get away from all those stupid buggers and recharge to deal with them again ;)
But i have no problem finding the singleplayer games i enjoy, if anyone would ever try to make a Zelda multiplayer i would personally fly to japan and shit on that developers desk... wait, what you say? "Four Swords"?... ehm, yeah, maybe i'll fly over another time.
But seriously, i think i get what you want to say but on the other hand, multiplayer has always been there, Arcades were stuffed with both single- but often even more multiplayer games, consoles had more single- (i think), but also good multiplayers. Focus on multiplayer might seem increased (or even have increased statistically, but not that much i guess) considering the higher connectivity, but none the less we're provided with awesome singleplayer games as well and i can't imagine that will change soon... or ever, even if multiplayer will continue to grow there will always be demand and therefore supply of good singleplayer games. While the industry might support multiplayer more - because of money obviously - developers will always want to make good singleplayer games as well, because it is like "high art" to many of them.

But then again
I remember the prayer and restrain myself from neither questioning nor doubting our savior because his are the words of truth and he is the one to tell what was, is and will be.

Thank god for you Jim :)

I'm a rpg gamer so my alone time is some of my favourite time ive only found one person i can play with co-op style without getting pissed off cuz theyd do something stupid honestly people piss me off I deal with them enough at work when i get home the last thing i want is to join a random game on umm CoD and have a 11 year old call me a faggot for winning or losing generally doesnt matter.

I for one love offline games. Fallout 3 , Super Mario Bros. , God Of War 1 - 3 my point is I use games as a form of escapism. I know that this only one way of using entertainment I also know that entertainment can also be used as a format of self-expresion. I respect that and use it for that reason as well. However when I want to escape sometimes that does mean from other people. I don't mean any disrespect to the people I do know but it's sometimes healthy to put up some distance and escape from the familiar. So in that respect I agree completely with this video.

Besides I'd like to know whats so " fun " with children yelling screaming and cursing on online video game services. Really that is the point I have the biggest issue. That is a big deterrent with me playing online video games. I'm not saying they don't have the right to do it but it does make the whole experience LESS enjoyable for me. So in order to get away from that I PREFER to play offline games.

Arif_Sohaib:
Jim, if you are reading this. I don't care if you don't believe in God. But do you people have to insult everyone who does?

Stopped reading right there.

a) Jim is obviously joking.
b) He's responding to the people who constantly complain about him saying "Thank God for me".
c) If you are one of the people mentioned in part b, I'm pretty sure you're only proving Jim's point in the video you just named.

What you should be asking is "wait, if Jim is God as he claims in one of his videos, then how can Jim be afraid of himself?"

for me its not that i'm socially deprived(at least i dont think i am) its that people are mostly douches and assholes in multiplayer. or spent the last 4 years training in it. most MMOs fall in the first category. people there were stupid and jerks so i just stopped playing.(they not giving a shit about me did really help)and games like CS fall in the first category. its not really fun if people kill you in the first 5 seconds. so for me its those two problems. outher than that i enjoy a multiplayer once in a while. but nothing can beat single player. never ever.

The biggest reason why I like some games to be single player is because I want to be immersed in the game, and other people tend to ruin immersion for me. For example, I got to playing Borderlands 2 and for a while tried to play through it in co-op. I didn't find it enjoyable at all. It's not that I didn't enjoy the frantic shooting and working with people, I just got tired of dealing with a bunch of people rushing through the level who didn't care to play at my pace. I enjoy looking at the levels and seeing all the little stories the designers have told with the item placement. There is narrative in the world that you don't even see if you just rush through it.
Even in games like WoW where you're supposed to play with others I often find myself wishing I could just do the first time through a dungeon by myself, and actually enjoy the environments and story behind it. Every time you get a new dungeon in an MMO these days you'll most likely be grouped with people who have been through it a dozen times over already and will make sure that your first time through will feel just as routine and devoid of wonder as their thirtieth.

To be a little more fair to the game companies that think "single player games are lonely", I believe there IS something to be said for an enhancement of what Valve called the Single Player Plus experience. It's the "idea" that rarely do you truly play a game alone, even those of us who prefer single player games talk to our friends about said games, interact with an online community discussing said games, watch reviews and videos about said games etc. and there really is a LOT that could be done with this kind of experience.

Take Skyrim as an example, I don't want Skyrim to be a required multiplayer experience, I LOVE wandering the world on my own, discovering secrets, having huge freedom to effect the world the way I want and not have to deal with some random tool ruining my experience but at the same time it'd be awesome to say... be able to mark cool locations in the world and send them to my friends, or even have a "social area" where we can show off our characters to eachother in real time. Or even something like Dragon Quest 9's "Inn" where you could have your friends characters hang out.

At the same time this kind of thing is frequently used for "forced co-op" and can hamper the Single Player Experience. Case and point also being Dragon Quest 9, a game that squandered a legacy of fantastic characters and great storytelling for a Co-op Experience that was ultimately pretty damn lame. I mean I don't MIND being able to co-op the game with my friends, but if I had to choose between Co-op and a well written story with good characters I would take the well written story in a heartbeat. I guess most game devs are still too damn cheap to make games where you can have both co-op and a good singleplayer.

I know that your point was multiplayer doesn't need to be in games, and not that it's a bad thing, but personally, RE5's co-op is the only reason I would play it. I love playing co-op games with certain people, and I have no interest in it otherwise.

When Jim was going on about wanting to be alone, I was expecting him to also include "sometimes we need to be alone".

Oh, and Jim, you should change your sign-off to "Than me for God!", because at least we can prove you exist. :)

An entertaining barb at the vapid, socially-obsessed hyper-extroverts. Now, I was going to say that people saying Jim's blasphemous for saying "thank God for me" is stupid, because it's not; he's -thanking God- for himself, which honestly is somewhat refreshing. Sure it's a bit self-centered, but it's also being appreciative to God for making him the way he is and giving him the life he has. There's lots of people who only bitch about what's wrong in their lives or what's wrong with themselves, so actually valuing what God's given you isn't insulting to God at all.

Aaaaaaaand then Jim starts playing the part of the shock jock and openly belittling God. Yeah...he really didn't need to do that. Maybe he was doing it just to push the buttons of the religiously hyper-sensitive, maybe he was being serious and actually wanted to sneer at God (though I think the former's more likely). Either way, it didn't come across as that funny to me, and even if it did to some, frankly I think it was a pretty mean-spirited laugh to have.