Gaar: The enduring charm of multiplayer gaming

Jan 06, 2013 (Austin American-Statesman - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- One of the highlights of my holidays is playing video games with my in-laws.

Every Christmas, we break out the Nintendo Wii classic "New Super Mario Bros." and crowd around a big-screen television. It's typically an exercise in frustration, but everyone's having so much fun we don't care about finishing the level.

Which got me thinking: Most of my favorite gaming memories are playing -- in person -- with other people. My friends and I spent hours battling each other in "Goldeneye 007" or during all-night "Duke Nukem" parties with our computers networked in a living room.

And it's not just me. Group gaming events (called "LAN parties") are big events, despite the prevalence of Internet gaming. The largest one, DreamHack in Sweden, regularly draws huge crowds.

At the DreamHack Winter 2011 event, "over 12,000 people turned up with PCs in tow, to not only play the LAN games of their choosing but also take part in e-sports competitions for titles like StarCraft II and Counter-Strike," according to the gaming site Kotaku.

"There was also live music, stores, parties, the works," according to the site.

David Kaelin, who owns the local retro gaming Game Over Videogames chain, agreed that playing live with other people is "a lot more fun." "That's the way it used to be," he said. "And we do events at each store now, every month." Each store does two to four events a month, he said, so between his six locations there's something happening practically every day.

"For us, it's always fun to play an old game anyway," he said. "But it's more fun to do anything when you're with a whole group of people.

"You can be a video game expert alone by yourself and there's nobody to really appreciate it," Kaelin said. "You make yourself happy, but if you're doing it in front of a bunch of people then ... they're going to groan when you kill them, or cheer when you win. The crowd atmosphere is really electric ... there's no substitute for being somewhere in person." And while online gaming attempts to duplicate that experience with microphones and headsets, it's not the same thing, Kaelin said.

I emailed Gary Gattis, CEO of Austin's Spacetime Studios, to get his thoughts. Turns out he was playing his own game, "Arcane Legends," with his kids in front of the fireplace.

"I think close-proximity multiplayer mobile gaming does hearken back to the old multiplayer console games," he said. "We've had countless tales of moms and kids and boyfriend/girlfriends enjoying the Legends games together. It is an order of magnitude more social because ... people can banter with each other while they both enjoy the same gaming experience." Kaelin said his store events, which include tournaments and movie nights, have been well-received. They're an attempt to get people together -- which can be a challenge, given that gaming is historically a solitary past time.

As popular as games are today "there's not a lot of community with it," Kaelin said.

"It's always more fun to have a group of 20 people together than a group of 20 people spread out all over the country, just talking on the phone or over the Internet," he said.

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