The times of heading over to your friends place to play some games such as Mario Party, Wii Sports, or NBA Jam are over. Online gaming is the new standard, and it’s all that’s accessible while we need to socially distance from each other. I’m the kind of person that loves hanging out while gaming, but how has that changed for all of us who are similar when we can no longer meet in person? Thanks to advancements in gaming over the years, online play is standard, and is supported in most games. However, that is only most games. In a time where everyone has to come together online instead of meet up in-person, games have been stepping up to meet with the need for proper online support. And that is our focus for today; recent games that have made changes or focused on designing their game for online play during these times.

To start with, one of the biggest games on the Gamecube, with a gigantic community and fans across the globe, Super Smash Bros Melee is a game that is played to this day competitively, but with no local meetups for a game that is nearing to be 20 years old, how are players supposed to keep up with each other? Project Slippi, created by Jas aka “Fizzi”, has an answer. Originally starting out at a replay software for players to review their games, on June 22nd 2020, they added online matchmaking with the best online programming or “netcode” for short, available. They added rollback style netcode, and to keep it short, rollback is a type of online programming that allows for immediate inputs, and smooth connections between players. Sometimes, with delay-based netcode, the delay can get to a point where the game freezes, slows down, or the time it takes for your button to be registered on the server takes over a full second, due to the online programming being based on the delay between players. This can be extremely unpleasant for players, so rollback netcode is becoming a demanded standard among online gamers. Rollback isn’t compatible with all games, but when a game is designed for it to be implemented, it is the best online experience possible. A handful of people may not notice delay-based problems too often, but rollback makes a large difference in the overall playerbase to allow players from around the world to play together smoothly, especially when it’s all we have. Project Slippi has allowed the hundreds of thousands of melee players to enjoy online for a game that never even had it to begin with. And that is an incredible feat.

Another couple games that have stepped up to the plate, in terms of upgrading their online experience, are Tekken 7 and Super Mario Party on the Nintendo Switch. Starting with Tekken, after complaints about their current netcode, Katsuhiro Harada, the game director, decided to make some tweaks to their current design for Tekken’s online. By adding in a custom-built version of rollback, they put in the effort to smooth out connections, and ensure players weren’t forced to play in unsatisfactory conditions. People within the same province would have trouble connecting smoothly to each other before, but there have been reports of players playing together from distances such as Stockholm, Sweden, to Iowa. That’s over 7000 kilometers of distance, playing smooth as butter. Players were incredibly delighted to be playing online comfortably, and I feel Harada himself is just as happy with the result. On the flip side, Nintendo’s Super Mario Party just added online modes to their game yesterday. With the game being released in 2018, it’s surprising that they did not have online by default. But with the obvious demand to play with your friends online instead of on your couch, Nintendo made sure to support the needs of it’s players. From fighting games to party games, online is important for the experience of each player, and it’s great to see that game companies are realizing the need for it.

Moving onto games that have been designed for a strong online experience from the get-go, here are a couple that have been fantastic at doing so. To start with, Spelunky 2 has recently come out in September last year. While many fans were excited to get their hands back into the intense underground-exploring adventure, developers introduced a new multiplayer format that is supported by rollback netcode, perfect for playing with friends around the world cooperatively, or competitively. With a release time that dropped during the pandemic, this was an incredible feature that not many other games were able to compete with. With extremely quick load times, restart functionality that made you question just how long you’ve been playing with friends, and fun design throughout the game, Spelunky 2 is a frontrunner for supporting online gaming with friends during these times of online-only interaction.

And finally, a giant shoutout to one of my favorite games that I have discovered during these last couple years, Them’s Fightin’ Herds. A fighting game starring unicorns, dragons, cows, sheep and goats, with fast action and some of the best online support I have ever seen in a game. The lobbies are open and free to roam around in to meet people, or you can make your own private lobbies to keep it to just your friends. There is in-game voice and text chat, easy interaction menus with players, and a highly educational tutorial, story mode, and fun multiplayer salt-mines mode that provides players in-game currency to purchase cosmetics. Above all else however, the rollback netcode and smooth design of the online environment for players is far and above the triple-A industry standard. I’ve met friends, rivals, and had laugh-out-loud times while playing matches in this game that I wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else. The closest one would get would be playing online shooters with voice chat, but those environments don’t normally provide the most kind interactions while you stomp or get stomped by the enemy team. Them’s Fightin’ Herds produced by the Mane6 dev team is a role-model for how online games can be designed for player enjoyment, and I can’t wait to see more games over time learn to be able to support and encourage fun online play. So until we are all able to hang out in-person once again, and enjoy a drink while somebody tosses their controller over a hard loss in a game, I’m glad to be able to enjoy online games such as these, and hey, maybe you’ll get into one of these too! Have fun, and enjoy some online gaming if you’re into it, or got some time to kill. We all need to keep busy somehow while we’re at home!