InsaneJournal

Gamers endure a salvo of unfair stereotypes.

We can’t talk to members of the opposite sex without our voices cracking or our pungent body odor sucker punching our would-be significant others right in the nostrils.

We can’t talk to anyone — ever — because our truncated vocabulary has been stripped of everything that isn’t level strategies or release dates.

But the most inaccurate of these stereotypes is that gamers prefer the sort of solitude best obtained by ignoring the greater portion of the human race.

Anyone who follows the games industry in any capacity knows this simply isn’t true. World of WarCraft wouldn’t pack its servers with 11 million players if gamers wanted to eschew socializing. (There may be some argument as to whether most WoW players are classified as casual or hardcore gamers, but as far as I’m concerned, folks who play games is folks who play games.)

Obviously, games that champion the competitive spirit require multiple players, such as Call of Duty 4 and 5, but there is an itch next-gen consoles sorely need to scratch: Rather than pick each other a part, a lot of us want a common goal to strive toward.

I’m not pretending there aren’t decent co-op titles on the market. Left 4 Dead and Resistance 2 provided some of last year’s most intense, team-oriented firefights. Of course, wanting to play together is by no means a new trend.

In the past, there was no gaming infrastructure. No Xbox LIVE, no PlayStation Network to connect us to one another. And yet, people still gamed socially.

One of the high points of my week as a kid was heading to the mall to play some Battletoads or the six-person, superpowered extravaganza that was the X-Men arcade game.

Granted, the co-op modes of the past seldom focused on story. But given the technology we have available today, that can easily change.

Titles like Resident Evil 5 are proving that a compelling narrative needn’t restrict itself to a single-player format. The more gamers who can share in a well developed plot, the better.

Game developers, give us a chance to play together. I promise we’ll play nice.