Gaming evolved

Whether you play games or not, the idea of fighting games is pretty simple.  You have a life bar, your enemy has a life bar, may the best gamer win.

The game I linked below is a team based game where 5 players join together to lead an army on three fronts into the enemy base.  I am linking it because for so long, gaming has been about the individual.  The times are changing and games like this give each character a part to play in a being greater than each of them individually.  Watch the bottom of the screen.  The red and the blue bars are the combined life total of the visible members of the respectively colored teams.  Full circle.  This is still a fighting game to test skill and train quick thinking, but the mechanics have evolved beyond the capacities of a single player.  Lucian, featured here, is but the arm of the team.  He rocks socks, but in truth is nothing without the other four.

I want to see games like Starcraft and Civilizations and Eve incorporate functionality with multiple players given control over one body.  It'd be like Pacific Rim, the pilots having to become one in order to move a body massive enough to take on the task at hand.  It is an exponentiation of battle for one, but it is also a new dimension of connection and synergy that reaches out beyond language.  When I played that game, I played with crazy people from Brazil, loud people from Korea, funny people from Spain, and quiet people from Canada.  No matter who or how they were, the goal was the same and achieving that goal meant cooperating.  It meant seeing things as bigger than yourself.  Sometimes it meant sacrificing your life to protect someone.  Sometimes it meant knowing that someone was sacrificing themselves for you.  Sometimes it meant taking a leap of faith into a fight you thought you will lose because your teammates believe it was possible.  There is a language of pings and body language that transcends country and helps five become one.  

Games can teach that.  Convention tells us otherwise because we cannot imagine anything greater for the medium.  If we can simply imagine something greater, we can create it.  If we can simply conceive a better world in our minds, we can transform our world to match it.  That is our power.  That is our responsibility.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5ME-TLmyQA

Here's another vid for the road.  More focused on the specifics behind team play.  I highly recommend it.

http://youtu.be/IdA_yq1i0S0