How much has the loss of the family entertainment room caused a shift in game development?

I was just thinking back to how from the 80's all the way up to the early 2000's, gaming was primarily a living room centerpiece that brought friends and families together to have fun at smoking a game (or each other). Today, however, gaming is largely a solo affair with the family doing something entirely unrelated in the house and friends staying at their own homes because of how much easier it is just to pay for an online service than walk a block. How much has this loss in…community changed the way companies are approaching game development?

You answered your own question. Games are designed less around local multiplayer and more towards online features.

What said
Splitscreen is all but disappeared from vidya and its a goddamn shame. The only types of games where you can actually play with your friends in real life is fighting games which are almost always 1v1s (but at least its something)
Hell I remember even StarCraft 64 had splitscreen and I had a fuckload of fun both playing and watching it.

The "loss of the family entertainment room" is a consequence of consoles going online, not a cause. Also it survived longer than you realize since the wii was still primarily local multiplayer focused.

what a surprise

If a game has LAN capabilities, then just use that. Split screen isn't a necessity anymore, you're basically crying over the loss of morse code.
Yeah, it's expensive, but video games in general are expensive. How much did your PC cost? Anywhere between 400 dollars and 2500 dollars? Besides, you don't have to buy another console, you can just expect the people with whom you'd like to play to have their own setup. When LAN parties were a thing, did the organizers of the event expect you to bring your own shit or not? I also don't get why it's so important for you to have your opponent in the same exact room with you. Why can't you, say, go to your friend's house, play an online match with them while in the same room but on two different consoles or devices, and then sperg out about the outcome of the game as you would have if you were playing split screen? If that's not the point of split screen, then explain why you want it so badly.

I will admit, though, that most games don't come with LAN options these days, but the argument against those is the same as the argument against split screen: it's unnecessary when you can use your game console or PC to instantly communicate with anyone across the globe, including your friends and family.

Are you talking shit about morse code?

For normalfags and console shit kiddies, nobody cares.

nah morse code is bretty cool but nobody is using it to communicate what they had for breakfast on social media. not that you'd want it to be used for that purpose, but the point is that it's not as widely used and relevant a technology as it maybe once was tbh.

I'll be playing games with my kids in the living room until they stop wanting to play with me, I've probably got at least 10 years of family entertainment to look forward to.

Fuck modern gaming, we're playing generations 3-6.

I think you meant "my wifes kids"

The truth is gaming never really appealed to the whole family. They dropped the family as the target audience when they realised who was actually playing games. Otherwise things like splitscreen would have remained more prominent.

Only normalfags care about that

I grew up in the 80s and was working a real job in the 90s
I was playing my atari 800XL in my bedroom where it was set up with a shitty TV and an RF adapter because we couldn't afford an RGB monitor
when we got an NES, it went into my bedroom, nobody else wanted anything to do with it
there was no "family entertainment room" in any house of anyone I grew up with. maybe in rich people's fucking spotless leave it to beaver lifestyles but among regular people we had our game systems in our rooms and played them on 15" TVs that we hunched around because it was what we had.
everything you know is wrong etc.

PARENTS never joined their children when they played video games, only friends, siblings and relatives in roughly the same age group did that. So there was always an agreement on who got to use the TV and for how long OR they were rich enough to have a separate TV for their child's room

Try loss of the family.

Why does no-one in that photo have socks on?

do you wear socks in your house?

Waste of dubs promoting cuckoldry.

topwew

There is literally no upside to using morse code.

normalfags can't use it.

The depressing thing is more brodudes play online multiplayer than not.

More cannon fodder.

I think it's great because I have no friends and my family is awful.

so basically the normalfags, brodudes and weebs all play faceless online shit for entirely different reasons
in short splitscreen > all other forms of multiplayer (save maybe lan parties)
no-friend robots btfo

jesus fuck, how? If your family is shit and you have no friends I gotta wonder if its your fault since there's usually at least someone at your school when you were younger or a neighbor or someone who can empathize with you and who you can talk to
How the fuck do you have no friends, jesus christ

Split-screen was almost always bad, but shared-screen coop games are truly patrician. Playing Baldur's Gate, Champions of Norrath, Gauntlet and Contra with bros on the couch are among some of my best gaming memories.

Aye. Split screen is for fags. Metal Slug and Get Medieval were pretty awesome coop games. Hotseating Worms was pretty damn fun as well.

t. friendless cuck

...

Video game development has always been shit and totally cucked tbqthawwu fam.

Honestly just sounds like the cuckold user screaming cuck is jealous that someone elses dad actually stayed and cared about their kids when his fucked off after seeing how useless he'd be.

Loss has affected me greatly.

...

A good father wouldn't let their kids touch the electronic jew and would instead teach their kids tangible skills that would help them as adults and to procreate.

wait no

Is this how memes are born?

Shitty ones

LAN parties are were a thing, you know

t. anti-consumerist
You don't belong here. Get the fuck out.

meanwhile, in another thread on Holla Forums

It's not just splitscreen. A similar thing has happened with public servers.


People need to call the industry out on this shit more actually.