Our cultural Zeitgeist is festooned with many solitary games that are now social games. At first glance, it appears that only solitaire became a social game in the broadband Internet age. Indeed, this age-old game, a traditional staple of individual players, has blossomed into a thrilling social game that millions of players worldwide enjoy. The unprecedented popularity of solitaire is on full display – it is now one of the ranking social games. To think that it was the express domain of individual players looking to collect their thoughts and strategize – it’s quite unbelievable.
It’s fascinating how solitaire and its extraordinary variants, like papaya solitaire, have gone mainstream. The advent of high-powered gaming platforms, cloud-based servers, and high-speed Internet has facilitated a paradigm shift in how solitary games are played. Nowadays, individual players can enjoy solitaire games online while competing against others in leaderboard tournaments, challenges, and exciting contests. Solitaire is the first game to come to mind; it is by no means the only solitary game that has become a global social phenomenon.
Chess and Checkers
Chess and Checkers are universally popular games enjoyed by scores of players around the world. It is astounding that these games were largely considered isolated board games. Granted, you play against an opponent, but it’s only one opponent at a time. It’s like that in Chess, and it’s like that in Checkers. That all changed dramatically with the advent of the Internet and popular online gaming platforms, dedicated to playing Chess and checkers online.
Suddenly, games that were restricted to physical board games and stashed away in cupboards are now readily available online, with millions of registered players waiting to compete against one another in real-time. Chess.com is the top-ranked online gaming platform for Chess enthusiasts. Fans of checkers can go to Online-Checkers.com to get their kicks. So many exciting ways exist to take these solitary games to the next level. Player versus computer games are hugely popular, as are player versus player attractions online.
Crossword Puzzles and Sudoku Games
Back then, many folks would unfold their newspaper and go to the entertainment section to find the weekly crossword puzzle. It was, and still is there for many players. It’s the perfect solitary brain game. Crossword puzzles are regarded among the best single-player mental stimulation games. They test our knowledge of medical science, history, literature, geography, and other disciplines with successful completion, yielding a thoroughly satisfying result. Truthfully, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of completing a crossword puzzle and basking in the glory.
Sudoku games are equally enticing, only from a mathematical point of view. To complete these puzzles, players must enter numbers into spaces so that each of the rows, columns, and 3X3 boxes includes the following digits: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9. No repeats are allowed. Sudoku is readily available to players in easy, medium, and hard levels. The complexity of each game is a product of how many numbers are available in each block on the grid. The more complex the puzzle, the more rewarding the victory.
Video Games Explode onto the Social Gaming Scene
Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is the video gaming realm. In the good old days, players would break out their consoles – Atari, Nintendo, Sega, PlayStation, etc. – plug a game into the box and play on the TV. Granted, they were cutting-edge innovations then, but they were essentially solitary games. Some players had two controllers so that player versus player action was possible, but most of the time, it was player vs machine in a solitary pursuit. The Internet has changed everything. MMORPGs and RPGs are suddenly connected to the cloud in massive, shared worlds.
Games like the Elder Scrolls Online, Final Fantasy XIV, and World of Warcraft dominated the social gaming arena. But it’s not only RPGs and MMORPGs; it’s also simulation and strategy games. Titles like Civilization and The Sims instantly powered proceedings by driving the needle from solitary to social. Many of us understand how this all happened; it was a tectonic shift, with technology and online connectivity going mainstream. It’s also thanks to social media and streaming capabilities. Players are more connected now than ever before. Unprecedented levels of social rewards, ranking systems, and leaderboard challenges have cemented the impact of gamification and competition among players.
Where it goes from here is anyone’s guess – to infinity and beyond?
