Dear Future Gamer,

On the subject raised by Elhana (FG24) about teamplay games, I would have to wholeheartedly agree. While I do enjoy blasting the crap out of my opponent in Unreal or Forsaken, I get more enjoyment from working with a buddy against the enemy.

Take Civ: CTP for example. I can easily spend hours and hours with a friend evolving the best strategy to defeat the other civilisations. While we're doing this, we're chatting away and being generally more sociable and it's a lot less stressful as well! I also remember way back when you could partner up with a buddy in Doom and teamwork your way through levels. Where's that feature nowadays? Nowhere to be seen right? The only network option you have is to kill your opponent in a special Deathmatch level.

The only drawback though is that because we work together on games like Civ: CTP, SimCity 3000 etc... we tend to be able to kill a game in a weekend or two. With two brains on the case, the games aren't hard enough. I wonder if anything can be done there?

Onto the subject of plots. As a bloke who's seen most shoot 'em ups come and go, all the way back to Wolfenstein 3D, I have to say that nowadays, for me the plot is everything, (well almost, I mean being a bloke naturally means that fast graphics and flashy special effects will always jangle my bell a little!). I want real plot action, real interaction with characters, and of course real co-operation with buddies against the dark evil forces that exist in my PC's memory.

Olly

FG: Everyone wants their disbelief suspended when playing a game and that does, indeed, come through good plot development and character interaction. I believe games are heading this way Olly and they're only going to get better. As to whether it's more fun to co-operate or compete in a game, surely the best solution is to provide for both modes of play? I also believe we'll be seeing more of this in our multiplayer games.