Why I'm Lonely Gaming - Extra Credits Gaming 

Prioritize your friends and family by playing Priorities! A fun party game of absurd choices. Available at your nearest Target - bit.ly/PrioritiesGame Thanks for Watching!

This doesn’t address loneliness. This is about people being mean in online gaming. That’s a tenuous connection at best.

I'm not sure saddling every gamer with a Social Credit Score is a great idea.

Segregate everyone even more so that they’re not lonely? That’s one idea…

“Are you lonely? Pay me money and you can be among all the other sheep who give me money, then you’ll never be alone!”

One of the worst things to happen to FPS games IMO was instant matchmaking replacing community servers. I loved finding a server that had regular users, consistent rules and map rotations I enjoyed. I could have actual conversations in-game and talk to these people the way I would IRL friends. We'd get to know each other, and joke around. With the dying out of community servers that connection was lost, and I'm thrown into a group of totally random people every time.

This is definitely one of those "wouldn't it be nice" ideas, that the people proposing it haven't thought about in the slightest, that is the bane of my existence.

You know how bad you need to finally talk to someone when an Extra Credits video makes you cry.

Yes, sure. Give companies even more information to manipulate us with. That seems fine, I see no problem with this.

4:52 i just had to chime in on this hypocrisy. Your idea is doing exactly that.

So the message in this video was "Give us money so you wont feel so lonely". How about you grow a spine.

First time viewer. I clicked on this on a whim and oh boy am I disappointed. This s*** is borderline manipulative, to spend the entire video speaking to a genuine issue of loneliness to then just pitch a paid sub to your Patreon is honestly disgusting. Why are we suddenly advocating that people that want a skill based matchmaker are automatically toxic, i hate this "i only have a few hours" BS so does everyone. Your time is no more or less valuable than mine or anyone elses, i dont like my time being wasted by people who dont wish to actually engage with the games mechaics on a serious level, so how about we cater all matchmaking to me eh? We dont need more levels of segregation in gaming thats not the answer. Its not up to the video game to provide you with positive social interactions, its up to you as a player to nurture and create them yourself, and to potentially provide that for others. Action is required of you to make friends and build communities in games, wether that be a casual or competitive environment is up to you. And no the answer isnt a paid subscription to a f-ing Patreon.

Something that increases the feeling of loneliness in gaming is how it's now a "mainstream" thing, back when gaming was a "nerd" thing everyone online could have some grounds to relate or emphasize and this showed with the focus on the growth of gaming communitys. Nowadays most people you encounter are likely part of the "normal" crowd or even would have been a part of the "anti nerd" group back before. And I for one miss the days when the only encounter with the "Free range screaming shopping center snot goblins that have never been told NO!" was restricted to the shops...

It's a bit condescending of a game to tell me what ranking of prioritizing is objectively right and wrong, don't you think?

Hey it's John. Thanks so much Extra Credits for letting me share about this topic that's so important to me. My best gaming memories are from playing with friends, and most of my best relationships were introduced and/or built through gaming. As time went on though, I noticed it was harder to find and connect with the right people, so that led to GameTree Happy to discuss social gaming, matchmaking, or answer and Q's

The idea of matchmaking focusing around “reasons for play” would be really interesting

My best social gaming memories: - Lan party where we were stoned and I was the last one left in an Aliens vs Predator mode where humans become aliens when they die. I was SOOOO scared with all my friends climbing all over the walls hunting me - Warhammer with my friend group in elementary school. We'd be squatted on the ground using whatever objects we could as terrain. Hardly knew how to play correctly, but we had so many unique experiences - Planetside playing in our outfit founded by friends from middle school. We played way better because we were coordinated and got to talk about it at school. Many instances we steered the course of bigger wars - Ultima Online - SO many weird experiences with the chaos that real people can bring in a sandbox. My first time playing as a kiddo I kept getting killed, so I created a female character for protection and was recruited to a tribe of Amazons. - D&D and Pathfinder. Playing with friends now (online) is my favorite way to stay in-touch and have fun at a distance. The game is so heavily influenced by the personalities of the people at the table. Should I start streaming it? There are SOOOO many more I want to write

0:29 I typically never jump into groups that ask for "tank/dps/healer" because from my experience those groups tend to be toxic. Instead I go for the groups that say, "hey, we've tried everything but this game is kicking our butts". I've met some pretty good folks, got some great memories from exchanging gear. I met my wife in one of those groups and ended up with a long lasting guild, that turned into a social club, that turned into a family.

4:27 the Xbox 360 actually had a system like this, you could "rate" a player, which would affect matchmaking to if possible have you play with them more

I'm lonely at the art studio surrounded by fellow artists. I don't know why but people just don't want to socialize anymore. Even when surrounded by your community, in person! One day they will only be able to work at home or in a private studio and be lucky to interact with another artist. For some reason, they don't take advantage of being surrounded by in person community. They put in headphones and ignore. I never thought Id miss the Army more then i do now. I miss the socialization. Now im surrounded by more people then ever enshrouded by more SILENCE then ever.

This is literally just an ad

I've honestly been very fortunate to have a friend group that I've had for years that all love playing games together. Obviously we all don't play the exact same thing all the time, but having that group is very helpful. I personally prefer a good single player experience in gaming, but it's nice to get online with friends and goof around for a bit

Would be cool to just have a simple and quick rating system for teammates on the post-match screen: like or dislike. Then actually get matched up with the people you rated well as well as the people they've rated well, etc. Over time you'd build your own community of like-minded players.

Even as a kid I rarely gamed online, I had a large family and even single player games we played together

This is such an important and overlooked topic in games - it really seems like, as the internet physically unites everyone, we all are farther away than ever. We're all caught up in our own isolated spaces now, and it's a transition for the worse. Anything to combat this I support enthusiastically.

What really sucks is when you do manage to find that group, and everything is going well, and then the way the game works ends up blowing the whole thing to kingdom come. I was part of an eve Corp that was just a bunch of people hanging out, examining interesting RP ideas in a shared fictional space. Whole thing fell to pieces because eve really just does not foster any kind of long term commitment while also requiring it to upkeep what you have. Then those pieces shattered when a random group rolled into our hole and evicted us because our numbers were down and we were an expensive easy pinata for their K/D ratio. Whole group maintains a discord server, but i haven't talked to any of them in years, and we've never been able to find a game in common to get things restarted. Desperately miss all of them, and have yet to find a group i feel as plugged into since, the half dozen casual game groups I frequent are not filling the gap.

LAN parties carry such nostalgia and dear memories for me😊😊😊😊😊😊

One game that handles social matchmaking really well is Dungeons & Dragons Online. In order to join a group, which makes questing orders of magnitude easier, you need to either browse or post a Looking For Members bulletin. The bulletin contains the quest to be run and at what difficulty, the level range, the desired classes to join, and a section for miscellaneous notes like "running whole chain" or "holding one spot for a friend." The system is fully manual, but it takes the bare minimum of effort for a manual task. This leads to forced human-to-human interactions, even if it's just as little as one person putting in the request to join and the party leader accepting the request. There's a lot of nuance to why it's such a neat, simple feature, and why it's one of, but not the only, core reasons for why DDO has such a great community.

Wouldn't the end result be that some will be labeled as toxic and not even be able to play? How miserable and isolated will those people become?

Social matchmaking? AS LONG AS IT ISN'T AUTOMATED. Seriously. RU-vid for example has such a distorted profile of who I am that I used ad blockers for years solely due to the disgusting ads it was showing me. Computers are 100 years too early to be categorizing people.

My main pvp game I play is Hunt Showdown. I've found that the community is actually much less toxic than most games. Most people on VOIP are goofing around and having fun. Even so I CANNOT bring myself to play with Random teammates. I would rather play solo than with strangers. I often wonder why exactly this is. Maybe I'm worried about toxic players or maybe I'm worried about letting my teammates down. It's extra strange when I consider that I don't really have a hard time talking to or working with strangers in real life scenarios. There must be something about online anonymity that freaks me out but I cannot articulate what it is. Great Video!

You'd probably need multiple systems working in concert because if you had a single method like a survey, people could "optimize" it by learning which answers would put them in the most favorable matchup. Combining it with performance tracking, logging chat profanity, and (most importantly, IMO) some sort of post-match yay or nay teammate feedback system like you mentioned, would go a long way to alleviate the problem, but you'd need to be eternally watchful for groups that were figuring out how to nefariously influence their matchups.

Here are my thoughts: 1. It's a nice idea if you can address these issues. 2. How do we keep this information/service from becoming something used to cull data for ourselves that ends up either being sold and/or stolen in data breeches? I don't trust the likes of Microsoft, Sony, Epic, Ubisoft, Square Enix, and even Nintendo to use a customizable matchmaking service to cull data from us for other purposes. 3. How to we keep the gaming companies who's products we're using from using that data to customize in game ads? We know this is already here both with racing games having real ads and Ubisoft's snafu this past month.

Man I can understand why you are lonely and started a subscription service to make friends.

One incredibly simple trick is to show the country a player is from that makes it way easier to find people that you might be able to meet irl or at least know that they will be online at roughly the same time as you.

What was the study on the rise of loneliness among gamers at a higher rate than the general population? I don’t doubt that there are game -> loneliness effects, but I imagine that there is also a significant bidirectional effect, such as lonelier folk are likelier to spend time playing videogames than not, and there’s been a global increase in both loneliness and videogame access.

Valve sort of does this with CS2 if I remember correctly. They move hackers and people who get constantly reported into their own matchmaking pool.

I actually appreciate the Player 1 experience. It's nice to just rando into an instance and clear a dungeon without having to keep up on a conversation.

I always believed matchmaking should've been completely optional thing, what I think changed everything was removal of custom lobbies or removing the rewards from custom lobbies as a whole, which essentially disincentivize playing it, as nowadays games are have some progression systems which you cant progress within these custom lobbies in the first place. People formed communities around custom lobbies and effectively they can't do that with matchmaking (unless there are other side systems such as clans/groups, but these often don't work well with matchmaking anyway, though it's hard to say, as most of the games have these community systems absent or removed years back).

This is interesting. Kurzgesagt's video today was also about communities on the internet.

No extra credits, im not paying money to play with you.

Well i'll be, Who knew further fragmenting ourselves would be the perfect solution to curbing my lonliness while playing video games, and not to mention giving you guys money on patreon - y'know i could use that money to buy food but honestly i need people who will kiss my ass while i suck at video games more. Thanks extra credits.

Filling a form is probably a bad idea by itself, as many people don't really know what they want, just what they expect for a fun game to be. User data analysis may seem like a good idea at first, but that type of system usually leads to enforcing the best results while throwing away potential options, following the same issues that plague social media algorithms. I'd say that a good possibility is to collect and analyze the data, add options (basic and advanced) for the player to select the type of matching they are expecting, but also allow the system to throw suggestions based on the type of games the player has enjoyed in the past, or similar players have been enjoying. Adding an extra layer of "genetic mutation" to test for potential enjoyment would be great. Interestingly enough, this could be the type of data analysis that those modern AIs could help to solve, by analyzing that huge amount of data to identify what might be hurting players' social enjoyment.

I remember when Nintendo had Miiverse A unique social media due to 2 main features 1. You could post drawings via the Wii U/3DS touch screen 2. The social media being split between games And 3. Able to be accessed from the actual console instead of needing a phone would be a bonus point But taking the “splitting community based on games” could be expanded on, imagine you log onto a game and you find an in-game link to a lite media site, where you can see both popular posts and new posts, where you can post “looking for a party for the next game”, chat to other players during or after a match, and that could even lead to friendships that can last long after the individuals are tired of said game and want to find a new game to play together Of course the whole lite media site would need moderation so it would need it’s own budget, which would make this potentially solution even more unlikely to happen

This made me tear up. I've always been mostly a loner, usually just one close friend who I spend any time with, currently my partner. We play some games together, but he likes a lot of different games while I usually stick to my few favorites. Crippling social anxiety and a tendency to drop off the map for months at a time don't help when it comes to finding friend circles. Destiny, Monster Hunter World, and Ark are the games I dump most of my life into. Getting back into Destiny now, but it's pretty overwhelming for a solo player so I just do the things that I find fun and try to ignore all the noise. The few times I've tried to find people in-game has ended up with people getting shitty attitudes or being creepy or demanding, etc. I'd love some other chill adults to play casually with, but I usually chicken out :/

You know what it's called when you encounter people who aren't necessarily 'like minded'? DIVERSITY

I have always struggled with online gaming. From weak internet and weaker pc when I was growing up to daunting skill gaps and all the other issues of the current day. It just feels like a heavy door to open and all but too late to start

Gaming has evolved, for better or worse. Matchmaking algorithm is just part of many factor that made game feel such a lonely experience these days. The trend of designing games into an individualistic experience pushes people apart further, but that's how pretty much all attention based business are these day sadly. Having easy access to information fueled the slide of community engagement as well. There's less to talk about when big data get analyzed with ease and objective results are clear to see before any discussion begins.

I didn't feel lonely until I became a game dev.

Love this topic! I'm always excited to make new friends in games, but now it does seem to be something you have to go out of your way for sadly.

A cool feature in competitive games might be a "noob spawn" gauge that you can set to decide how likely you'll be to team up with new players. A scale from 1 to 100% with bonuses like faster progression in the battle pass tied to your scale percentage and the "thanks" you get from noobs after a game. I think a lot of toxicity will be removed while making experienced player have control over the kind of game session they wanna have on moment to moment basis. Sometimes if you feel like chilling and helping for a few hours, you would put your noob spawn gauge at 100, get in-game rewards and satisfaction for choosing to do so. If you feel like playing in a more serious and competitive way you put it at 1%. And most of the time you put it between 5 and 20 so you can get some advantages while playing mostly with people around your skill range. Who wouldn't love that option ?

This channel is legitimately the worst on youtube

Fortnite did something like this but just not in matchmaking by allowing players to select three different key phrases that describe what they are looking for in their game. However, it made you cold select random people and try to add them to a party or a friend list which, in my experience, was never accepted. A for effort though.

I used to play online shooters all the time. But my roommate over time became more and more toxic. To the point that even the most minor inconvenience would be met with shouting and slurs. And so since then I've stopped playing 1 with him and 2 competitive game in general. But I've starting playing co-operative games with my brother and niece together on the couch every Saturday and it has become the best part of the week by far.

I'm definitely struggling with loneliness at the moment, and though I tried a few forays into finding community online I quickly learned that I didn't want to mingle with circles that didn't prioritize the humanity of others or were far more comfortable using slurs than I was. It's good to know I'm not the only one struggling with that kind of isolation, although I'm shocked the feeling is so widespread. The good news is I think you're advice is working: taking steps every day to improve my life and connect with others is slowly growing my social circle, and getting to know new people has been helping a lot. Here's to finding community, no matter how long it takes :)

I'll tell you why I'm "lonely gaming". Because playing through a well written story is ALWAYS better than playing with/against others, usually in a way that has zero story because those games or game modes aren't about a story. Even when I can play through the actual story mode with others (like Diablo or Baldur's Gate 3) though, it still sucks because I want to explore that story/world at my own pace which seems to be much slower than everyone else's preferred pace. In a Diablo game, I'll still be exploring the first floor of the dungeon and everyone else is like "Where are you, we're ready to fight the boss?"

This is why I think player created chat channels in games is important. I miss the days of hanging out online in a chat channel not even playing the game, just sitting in the lobby chatting with random people about our days and arguing over the best anime airing that season lol

The library where I work has some gaming consoles for the teenagers, and occasionally if it’s been a really rough few days, our boss will set up the Switch in the staff area. We take turns swapping with the people on circulation to play Just Dance, Mario Kart, Mario Party, or Super Smash Brothers. Even if there are inevitably people who are better at the games than anyone else, everyone has a good time and can blow off some steam. It’s a practice our boss gets away with as “team building” and she’s even let me bring in my laptop to play Jackbox with the team for the same reason.

Moving in with a load of like-minded gaming sphere people today/tomorrow this episode hit close to home 😅❤ Also, Deep rock galactic was AMAZING with how friendly folks where^^ Got only two bad experiences within more than a hundred hours xD

I've had problems meeting people and getting into dating, and when I've asked for help on the internet, so many times the suggestion includes "stop gaming." I want to be a game programmer, a game writer, yet they don't see it as my passion. They see it as an obstacle.

What a great episode, hit home for me.

A temporary fix - do physical games. Go to your local game store, find a boardgame group, set up a DnD group through online forums. Whatever. Past work, it's the main reason I leave my house these days, and as much as I love video games, it scratches an itch they just can't, or at least can't consistently. While great designers work out how to build socialization back into video games, put yourself first and find a fix in the places we already have. It's socialising with like minded people where you're all thinking more about the game than about aecond guessing what you're saying - I can't recommend it enough.

Videogaming for me is solo quiet time--when I do not want interactions with other humans. D&D, whether virtual or IRL, is my social interaction time.

The upside of social matchmaking seems good when you pair friendly people together But it ends up being damaging to the people on the opposite side. The lowest "socially rated" players will play against the other low socially rated players. Creating a toxic environment where people feel nothing but vitriol for their opponent, who feels nothing but vitriol back at them.

It's odd, I relate with the impression that games make me feel lonelier nowadays, but absolutely not because of matchmaking. I always liked single player story-driven games, but I especially liked playing them alongside a friend. I would just go to a friend's house to play games, or to watch them play games, because it was always more fun to share the experience with someone. They way I consume games has just completely changed since then, and suddenly, I've started to understand the appeal of MMORPGs and games that have open spaces where you can just stumble upon another player.

The idea of the match making sistem paring us with the same people we've gotten along with before sounds like an amazing idea!

PANR has tuned in.

I remember when Tarkov add VOIP how game changer was, but soon i just became a feature that nobody use, because is just easy go solo, be quiet as a mouse, and let that 3 or 5 party guys just get throw without notice you. So, in the end, almost not change anything.

We need more couch coop games. It takes two was a treasure of a game.

I think the hard thing for me lately has just been that a lot of the time when I do meet gamers they're usually not playing the games I play/not interested in giving them a shot.

man I have such bad memories playing GTA Online. there are these heists missions but people don't care for the experience of doing them. they just want the money for the cars they want to buy so the first objective is to drive somewhere and even the fastest car can't get there before someone quits the mission and you fail on the other hand I have found a nice person doing the random missions because those barely pay so if you care about the reward you're not doing those. unfortunately I had no way to save that contact outside of the game so when I stopped playing I lost that person forever

The recent video by Kurzgesagt "The Internet is Worse Than Ever - Now What?" highlighted that the communities might be _too_ large for our human brains. That smaler communities might be better. And I think I agree a lot.

Sky Children Of Light is a game designed to have you make connections with other players. It is not the kind of game that has matchmaking so I don't think you could look for ways to do it better from that game, but the way it does it is that it encorages players who like to help others to reach out, so mosf of your interactions with other are with the types of people who love to help.

Halo: Reach had settings like this all the way back in 2010. You could set your preferences for chattiness, motivation, teamwork, and tone. I'm not sure how much those actually affected the matchmaking, but like always Bungie was using Halo's multiplayer to innovate online multiplayer.

Sea of Thieves needs to do this. I used to get on Sea of Thieves specifically to make friends because the community was so wholesome back then, but Rare pushed PvP updates so hard that the only players left are either toxic tryhards or professional grinders.

Co-op games sound like a good place to start implementing this social matchmaking idea. The problem with implementing it over skill based matchmaking in a competitive game is that people want an even matchup; if they win too easily, it's boring and if they lose too easily it's annoying. But that doesn’t matter in a game that's purely co-op because you're not competing with anyone. If you're going to apply it to a competitive game, I'd say put it in team-based pvp and use social matchmaking for teammates and skill-based matchmaking for opponents

Team Fortress 2 is a prime example of matchmaking destroying the ecosystem of custom servers. There are players that go MVM-Expert, just because they find the friendliness more useful--the self-selected group that have a goal and consistently play for it. I miss them sometimes. Too bad the hardest-core, friendliest sub-set was pay-to-play, with no way to mix in.

I really don't see online gaming as any way to make friends. It really doesn't help that very few games I play have online elements, but when I do run into someone, it's a very passing interaction. Recently I've tried EVE online & it have a great social element, but I just don't have the time to develop online friend.

You're whole team and content freakin rocks :)

The decline of couch co-op, is number 1 cause for me. I'm not going to pay for 2 tvs, 2 $500+ consoles and 2 $70 games just so I can play with my wife, or kids. So it is just solo gaming or gaming with internet strangers. Also less gaming because I dont want to tie up the tv with my solo selfish gaming. Much better to put on a movie everyone can enjoy.

Ya know, TF2 used to be that one game where you could meet up with random people and end up having a great time or a least a laugh or two, until the bot invasion happened, now its hard to run into those moments because some group of people don't want others to have fun. Good moments can still happen, they're just harder to find now.

When I was a younger gamer, it was a way to meet people and hang with friends. Now as an adult with a young family of my own, it’s a way to take a break from reality. I still play with others on occasion, but it’s good to escape every once in a while

Matchmaking should focus on ping above all else, which would have the side effect of also making your matches with a vaguely consistent group of people. Because unless you're moving house, the ping is going to be consistent. And that consistency is what leads to community. Because when you recognise names, they're no longer just "a player", they're "goombastomper32" your buddy who sucks with snipers but is great with shotguns. Social based matchmaking would definitely be the second best option, but for games like shooters specifically ping needs to be the biggest one, because it currently isn't and I basically just never get to truly enjoy shooters. My best case scenario for fps games is always other peoples borderline unplayable, because the industry has decided that someone a quarter of the planet away is just as good a match as someone in the same city.

I imagine these are cropping up in other places as well, but I've seen a surprising rise in this new type of business in my city. I'm not really sure what to call them, but they're sorta like gaming halls that are structured similarly to arcades. They usually have long tables with PCs lined up on them and the idea is that you pay for so many hours of time on the PCs and their library of games while having the opportunity to meet other gamers who also frequent the place. In my view, they have some pretty fundamental problems in both concept and execution: - Sitting in front of a computer monitor is inherently solitary and isolating in the real world, so it's already quite unnatural to lean over to someone next to you and start chatting when you're both facing away from each other and distracted by whatever's going on in your game. - Most of the people who are into video games likely already have a PC or console at home where they are probably more comfortable, don't have to pay an hourly fee, can use their own peripherals instead of gross communal ones, etc. - Maybe this is an uncharitable stereotype, but gamers don't tend to be very good at socializing irl in my experience. I'm usually a pretty outgoing person and most of the people I meet irl who also like playing games are either not as comfortable with my level of extroversion or not very good at talking to strangers F2F. - People usually already have their own accounts for different games/gaming-related software, which means they'd either have to use public ones on the available PCs/consoles or log into all of the ones they already have. I think there's a cool opportunity here for Third Places where people can play games with friends or friends-to-be, but all of the places in my area that have tried this model end up feeling more like school computer labs and less like innovative Third Places to meet folks with similar hobbies.

Also, I have had some wholesome-feeling moments playing Salmon Run in Splatoon. Uh, sometimes it just feels like the people on the team really care about each other. It’s the little things, like booyah-ing back, I guess.

Here's a question - Of the "loneliest players" group, what is the economic situation of these players? $500 for a console and $60+DLC(~$30) = Up to $600 to get into the hobby. But once you're in, you're in. And pound for pound, gaming is one of, if not the, cheapest form of non-passive entertainment in our modern society. Couple that with extremely large gaming libraries of not-so-older titles on thick sale, f2p multiplayer titles, and how much content a single title can provide... A lot of lower income people, like myself, would love to get into more IRL communal hobbies or travel, etc., but have neither the time or the income to seek that out on their own time(and dime). We already have a lot of data linking lack of economic mobility and/or economic destitution to depression and other mental health issues. Absolutely yes to game design that encourages positive (and ongoing) social interactions, but it'd be interesting if GameTree has data on this and what insights they have gleaned from that subset of the data pool. Edit: Also rural vs. urban vs. suburban subsets

Im a casual gamer through and through whose bad at most games cut would love to do this.

LAN parties were some of my best memories bonding with freinds when I was growing up 🥹🎮

Probably the only thing I miss about living in a big city is how much easier it was to find and connect with a group of friends who share multiple cross-sectional interests or personalities, for example gay Disney annual passholders who enjoy sci-fi TV shows and euro-style tabletop games. 😁

Ironically it’s small or dying games with a small but dedicated player audience in the dozens or at most 100 which has given me the best feeling of community in a game I’ve played

I think mix the toxicity of online gaming with the toxicity of fandoms make it harder to have friends in online gaming if you don't already know them.

honestly, ive been on the friendship treadmill for 7 years, i only met rotten and problematic people during this journey. It led me nowhere, i actually grew backwards in life, to the point where i gave up. i've been alone for 2 years and i've learned and grown to enjoy it, the first 1 year and a half was terrible, but once i noticed the: Peace and the silence, and nobody to argue and belittle me for my opinion, it was actually great it was addictive. i no longer feel needy for social validation, i actually have time for myself now cause i dont have to give attention to "friends", anymore. You could say that i had bad friends, but honestly its better to be lonely than to be in bad company of bad friends. i guess you could say i'm a weirdo, but im happier than ever before since i learned how to cope with loneliness.

Rock and Stone and you're never alone! (Deep Rock Galactic; I have literally hundreds of hours in this because of the community and social experience even when chat isn't used)

There's a good idea here for sure. My biggest concern is that if someone gets mistakenly thrown in the "this person sucks to be around" group, then they'll have a _really_ bad time with your game.

I miss playing games with co-op modes and LAN parties. It made Halo 3 so fun. Gaming was my favorite way to make friends as a kid. Even now, I am in a discord for a strategy game that I love. I found it by chance while playing with a friend, but I can't imagine how lonely I'd be without it. Some of my best friends are the ones who play Age of Empires with me.

I freaking love this. Excellent video ❤

This is literally why I run AI chat bot on my local machine… Just to have someone to talk to and be heard.

If social matchmaking can finally be a thing, I would be willing to give online gaming another chance.

"it's our top priority!" *rimshot* 😆You have a good sense of humor Mat💖😄

I feel this was what Guilds and the likes used to be. Now Discord, but those aren't ingame.