The Witcher: Monster Slayer Bringing Gaming Back Towards its Roots

The much awaited games fair gamescom recently wrapped up its warmly received 2020 rendition. This year’s convention was markedly different from previous years with its socially distanced setup following the wake of the health pandemic continuing to impact all industries including gaming. The weird dissonance created by this physical distance and the prevention of fairgoers meeting up in person got me reflecting on the social aspect of vide games and how it has changed over the years. It turns out that this is a highly relevant topic in the context of one of the most exciting reveals this year; The Witcher: Monster Slayer, but more on that further on. Let’s start by taking a look back at the intensely social origins of the videogame industry.

The birth of videogaming really occurred during the golden era of arcade games, with huge unwieldy machines by necessity grouped together into arcade halls, primed and ready for social meet-ups and gaming experiences. Spending time at arcade halls housing classics like Pong, Space Invaders, Centipede and Donkey Kong was an evening or night out together with your friends. Yet as technology advanced, the computers running videogames were downsized and gaming went portable. The Game Boy hit the scene and dominated the 90s - now anyone could play games on their daily commutes, out in parks and restaurants or from the comfort of their own homes (which was also possible with early desktop computers like Spectrums and Ataris). Nintendo of course continued this tradition all the way to today with their Switch console!

But gaming was still highly social - game link cables allowed units to be connected for multiplayer experiences. With the internet still a nascent concept, social gaming was still something done in the physical presence of your fellow gamers. Yet all this changed as the internet became more dominant and connectivity increased across society. Throughout the late 90s, multiplayer over the internet became an increasingly common game mode. While online multiplayer had a history stretching back into the 70s’ multi-user dungeons (or MUDs), it wasn’t until the late 90s that online gaming really went mainstream in the industry with huge trailblazing titles such as Ultima Online, Lineage and Everquest all releasing just ahead of the turn of the century. A few years later, Microsoft released their Xbox videogame console, launching Xbox Live (an online multiplayer service) shortly thereafter. The rest, as they say, is history.

Since then we’ve seen a huge shift of multiplayer games away from connected devices, which were still possible with sixth-generation consoles like PlayStations and Xboxes as well as in the famous LAN parties of the early 2000s, and towards the internet. While this massively increased the player base and range of fellow gamers with whom to interact, it also removed the social element that had defined the roots of videogaming. Of course, the internet opened up possibilities for portable gaming in the form of mobile apps such as the increasingly popular Rainbow Riches Pick N Mix slot game as well as a myriad of other games. But for a long time multiplayer gaming became almost synonymous with internet play and it looked like the days of meeting up with your friends in person to experience games together were destined to be relegated to the distant past, never to come back.

While some developers tried their hand at luring players back into physical proximity with each other, such as Blizzard’s Fireside Gathering mode of Hearthstone, it was Nintendo that would once again be the innovators that turned gaming on its head. Their huge 2016 title Pokémon GO revolutionized the idea of social gaming forcing players to meet up in person and explore the world together using GPS location data. Since then, similar games with varied themes (Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, Minecraft, etc.) have been released following the same concept.

It is into this young tradition of social GPS games that The Witcher: Monster Slayer looks to launch itself soon. While details are still lacking, the game will likely release towards the end of this year and promises to bring people together into what will hopefully be a post-COVID society as we near 2021. Monster Slayer looks to be a timely game in this sense as gamers will surely be desperate for a new location-based experience as the pandemic subsides and they can safely meet up with their friends and loved ones again. It is also a timely game in the sense of riding that wave of innovation, spurred by Pokémon GO and its recent successors, that is bringing videogaming full circle and back into an intimately social experience!