Identify a new genre is the task of a fool, but I have never been wise. Sometimes a genre is blooming clearly, because when a great success like Doom or Dark Souls appears and inspires games for decades to watch. But sometimes a new genre is quiet, low, hidden right below the surface of a chaotic industry. Sometimes you have to go fishing for it.
Get a slippery “hangout game”.
In webfishing last year, you get a fishing rod and some bait. You walk around on an island in the style of salmon and salmon animals like a music bell in the background. The important thing, you do this on a 12 -person server, with a periodic conversation window lighting up with idle conversations. It is the fishing minigame of any large MMO isolated into its own closed pond. There are larger fish to catch and stick to upgrade and money to earn. But most of your time is completely quiet, economical for clicking and keeping the mouse when you feel a sipping. You are not assigned tasks or work to complete. You just need fishing and hanging out.
“The core of an outing game is completely missing anything like a hurry,” Garrett Martin wrote in an article for Paste last year, in which he gave a broad definition of this type of game. “It is a term I use regularly to describe any interesting game when only exists, where you do not always feel the pressure to continue moving to the next target.”
Many readers will realize the idea – a game you play with friends to relax. Some people can consider Fortnite as a hangout game because they play with buds often and do not value it. Others can quote those who jokes every night to appear in Destiny 2, or a bold bank robbery in GTA Online. Martin himself even thinks that Elden Ring is a Hangout game, once you are hard enough to easily survive in a deadly environment.
But for me, a Hangout game is not as simple as any cooperative game you go out. It is specifically a type of game in which the goal is to do few Besides others, all the excitement of the adrenal glands are replaced by low -activated activities that are unable to increase your heart rate. In other words, Hangout games need to be excessive cold. How can you go to peace when there are too many explosions? How can you focus on the conversation when you have 10 more cabin heads to shoot, or one last emotion to defeat chicken dinner in an increasingly attractive arena? Real hangout game, as illustrated by Webfishing, is not satisfied with the direct service games that require attention, many of them are players with goals, currencies, actions and instructions. Those things, like, don’t relax at all.
“People like to have another game with the current ‘meta’ and AAA designs,” Max, the designer of the ski game recently announced. “They go through their gaming life and play all the fancy games about killing and winning and I think it is a fresh air to have a game that you can talk to a friend and don’t worry about many other things. Basically, it’s like a discord call.”
Ski game is in the first stage of development. You will be able to ride a sly down the slope to get points, buy new cosmetics with those points and shake in a cozy wooden house on the top of the hill with some hot shifts. There are several other features planned, but not much. It needs a lot of inspiration from the webfishing loo approach, and is sold on the market clearly on Steam as a “cozy game of cozy online players about skiing, relaxing and hanging out with friends”. So, the designer of a Hangout game needs to do to ensure that it feels cold enough?
“I think you need to focus on the ‘easy’ experience for people in the literal sense,” Max said. “If you can play this game without thinking and just chatting with some friends, it creates the best experience. Sprinkle some funny moments in it with a little progress and it makes things much better.”
ONE a little of progress, though. That is everything. A Hangout game is about less work, not more. When I joined a server in the webfishing to ask the players why they prefer to cool in this world, in contrast to playing a more busy shooter like Helldivers 2, they clarify the difference and even stand out with the idea of comparing this animated world with the management of Arrowhead.
“Going out in other games is different”, “Ianonator”, the people in the webfishing act as a tuxedo cat with a sardines that are permanently placed in the mouth. “This is more personal … In Helldivers, you will not talk about your day or anything similar.
“I just fishing, and I don’t care about what I can catch. I am just here to listen to music and talk to random people.”
There is nothing unique about “talking to random people” in terms of co-op many players. But these new ilk hangout games are placed in front and a chat center, calling it a main sales point. In some ways, games like webfishing and sleepding games can be called better than “chatroom games”. But when asking for that conversation, the game of Hangout Indie Fry has to solve problems similar to the larger online friend – MMORPG.
“[In] Any game you have in writing or voice chat, I think you also need some censorship forms, “Max belongs to the Spredding Group.
In web processing means filters and vulgar servers, you can be labeled as mature, not to mention the developer’s reality about the demolition even the moaning without tolerance. But perform a realistic approach and you can go in the opposite direction, ending with something like the comedy night, the disgusting chat room of the big heads and the “sharp” humor (racism). Because, despite its crude culture, night comedy is also a valid example of a Hangout game.
And there is more on the horizon (although I will be ragged if I say this genre is booming; it’s more sleepy than that). For example, the developers of the geese game have no titles working on a walk sim with many players with silly avatar and a similar simple name. It is called a big walk. “Going out and being lost with close friends in a vast world,” The Blurb on Steam, labeled for it as “the person who talks online cooperation”.
“This is definitely a growing trend,” Max said. “Everyone gave that [Sledding Game] Like the Penguin 2 club, and I think people are missing in their lives right now. “
It is easy to see these hangout games as a direct response to the endless needs of the direct service. But there is another possibility. Hangout game can simply be the natural extension of some collections of steam cards that have existed. No need to invent it. You can go out with friends with similar indifference in co-op agricultural sims like Stardew Valley. You can shoot shit in creative survival games like Minecraft. Do not give you a clear goal to pursue.
The trend of cheap and fun hangout games may also be nothing more than a temporary safe shelter for those who abandon Rolox’s ruined realms. Webfishing and skiing game as a landing area for a young player who will soon find their kicks in small, independent games instead of virtual sweating.
Finally, all the efforts for Corral games to be set to end in a authoritarian chaos of red chains and bulky vend diagrams. Is golf with your friends a hangout game, or is it too competitive? What about VR chat? Is the game many players like it has been too ripe and among us too stressed to count? Where is Thief Splashland’s sea in all this? All classifications are crazy. “Hangout game” as a limited nickname used. But it can be very happy, at least one of the industry followers, to identify the quiet trends exploding under the surface of the larger gaming culture, such as curious carp waiting to bite.
