![]() But something's missing from this kind of geographically isolated online play. It helped catapult video game streaming site from relative obscurity to the brink of a billion-dollar acquisition by Google. League Of Legends has pushed online play further, becoming a vastly popular spectator sport with prize funds running into millions, making superstars of its most successful players and teams. People make close friends in World Of Warcraft – friends that in most cases they will never, ever meet. World Of Warcraft's highly addictive long-term grindathon does let you kill other players' characters, but is more conducive to teaming up to fight beasts that would be too dangerous to tackle alone or planning complex raids on other guilds. Of course, online multiplayer gaming isn't all about competition and petty one-upmanship. A round of Mario Kart offers a very practical demonstration of pride coming before a fall, a cocky race leader sure to receive swift karmic retribution at the hands of the game's reliable comedy weaponry. But the apex of same-room multiplayer remains Nintendo's Mario Kart series, in which races against your fellow animated go-karters are actually humbling, cheerful life lessons. Sony's SingStar was another multiplayer gaming success, bringing the magic and tragedy of karaoke home, allowing you to pound out ballads without psychologically injuring fellow drinkers. Saturn Bomberman (1996) let up to 10 cosily positioned players blow each other up in charming cartoon mazes, unleashing a frenzy of swearing and explosions few games have since managed to emulate. Early-90s consoles were advertised with pictures of perfectly manicured families smiling enthusiastically into their TVs, and came packaged with two controllers. Television games, the humble origin of the multi-billion-dollar games industry, were designed to be enjoyed with friends and relatives. Tennis For Two, arguably the first video game ever made, ran on lab equipment and was multiplayer-only. ![]() Video games were invented as a social medium. Ditto social gaming, which has morphed from rowdy groups of drunken idiots shooting their best mates in the face in GoldenEye or good-naturedly beating each other to death in Street Fighter II, to millions of people on their own in darkened rooms, silently killing avatars representing remote strangers on the internet. Instead of talking to friends, you hunch over your phone and tell internet acquaintances that you're talking to friends, attaching a photo that nobody will ever look at because they're too busy posting their own selfies to Instagram. ![]() T he irony of social media is that it makes you antisocial.
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