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Writer's pictureMichelle McMillan

One Hour, One Life Perfectly Sums Up My Problem with Network Games

I'll start off by admitting that I rarely play online multiplayers. I think the only time that I extensively played a game online was MarioKart. I will always choose a single player game over a multiplayer one. The reason for this is quite simply that I'm not exactly a team player; I don't like relying on others to complete a goal. That being said, I wasn't a fan of One Hour, One Life specifically because you must rely on others to survive.


Part of my experience with this game was frustrating because of the places I was born into. I was consistently born to a person that would pick me up, drop me into the middle of nowhere, and then never come back. So many times, in fact, that I got annoyed and had to quit for a while. By starting you off with almost no agency, the game forces you to rely on others even if that means the others aren't able to help you because they don't know what they're doing yet or they don't want to help you. This made it feel like I was consistently set up to fail and had no way of preventing it which frustrated me greatly.


However, that is not to say that I do not understand the affordances of this game and other online multiplayers. For one, they display the value of patience and communication, and I'm sure if had more of the either of those, I'd enjoy these kinds of games more. They also teach trust, especially this game. For the first few minutes of this game you have to trust that the other player is able to help you survive until you have more agency. Even though online multiplayer games can be a hub for toxic language, conversations, and personalities, I think it is important to remember that they can enforce the flipside as well even if we don't hear about it as often.

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