Why are empty Multiplayer Maps so goddamned scary?!

[Saulkar]

You! Yes you! Wipe that stone hard look off your face, I know you may not have any fears in life but none the less there is still something you fear. Something outside the realms of reality! That... thing, is an empty multiplayer map!

To put it bluntly they scare the living hell out of me. I do not know why they do, they just do. It starts out with a feeling of paranoia followed closely by the mental dissonance that while there is nothing there I am not alone, I am in danger. My imagination fuels my fear and my fear fuels my imagination in a never ending loop that leaves me haggard and ultimately defeated by nothing.

Why this spiraling downfall of my mental constitution even begins eludes me but if I was to hazard a guess it would be either the expectation that other players should be here as well and their absence is a result of something more insidious than just not being there or the uncanny feeling that the environment should not be this static or silent.

I am one of those who can walk through a graveyard at night and genuinely enjoy myself (best during a mild, fluffy snow fall on a January night around 11:30PM) but an empty multiplayer map is something completely else to behold.

CAPTCHA: once upon a time - You know, I could have opened with this.

P.S. I know there has already been an article on this but I do not think that anyone has ever put any thought as to why they as an individual fear empty multiplayer maps.

EDIT: I use fear as a hyperbole to emphasise just how disturbed I tend to feel in empty multiplayer maps. I guess I have to work on the supporting text.

 

[Kopikatsu]

I...can't say that I feel that way. Rather than scared, I just feel kind of depressed. Especially in reference to mutliplayer games that have since died.

Would you give an example of a map that you'd consider scary?

 

[felbot]

i just feel angry when i go into a empty game, theres nothing to do there, no enemies to slaughter, no opponents to kill, no antagonists to overthrow, hell i dont even get to cleave peoples heads off.

 

[Saulkar]

I...can't say that I feel that way. Rather than scared, I just feel kind of depressed. Especially in reference to mutliplayer games that have since died.

Would you give an example of a map that you'd consider scary?

Well, it tends to be two encompassing factors rather than specific maps. Firstly it generally has to be, like you mentioned, a (long) dead multiplayer game (worse if it was a forgotten multiplayer only game). Secondly it has to be nearly static with little or no ambient action such as NPCs, animated billboards or terminals, moving environmental objects (trains, escalators, flowing water, trees), and an almost complete absence of of ambient noise.

This fits many late 90s multiplayer maps.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well because it then takes on the properties of a horror game, you expect the life threatening monster to prowl around each corner but you can't find it, and the unknown is 1000x scarier then anything you can fight, it also gives you imaginative space to keep making up shit that scares you further...

Just don't check the player list to find out noone is there

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Fear is rarely my reaction to things. There are things that I fear but at this point in my life those things I fear are notably vague and certain to occur infrequently (death of a loved one, getting dumped by my fiance, that sort of thing). Most things, even things that would make me uncomfortable, allow me a measure of control and thus keep the fear at bay.

Empty multiplayer maps don't elicit fear, at least none that I've wandered through. The closest approximation is nostalgia. A few years ago I created a server to run Mega TF and loaded what is perhaps my favorite multiplayer map of all time: Frontlin (sic). Walking through that map first pains you because you want there to be people there like there used to. You want to run amuck as a spy and gas people to sew confusion to rush an objective. You want to grenade jump up to a sniper perch to surprise him with an incendiary rocket. You want to carefully time a pipebomb jump as a demoman in a setting where the delay between pressing a button and something happening was measured in notable fractions of a second. But quickly passes because you know that even if you advertised your server it would take weeks to attract the small fraction of the old crowd necessary for a good game.

Eventually you settle on fond memories. All those time King Jackal shot me in the leg when I played a Pyro and then cruelly ran off leaving me at the mercy of some soldier of HW guy. Or those times when I'd tear through a base pitching incendiary grenades and torching everything that moved. Or that time I attached my grappling hook to the dog and had it drag me around while I feigned my death, a sight so ridiculous that the opposing team was ill prepared to stop a half-hearted attack. Memories so dense and rich they can make you smile a decade after the last server to host the map went offline.

And then you realize that you never will play that old map again. And even if you do, it won't be the same without the people. Without that cold room attached to a garage where I sat perched atop a wooden chair under a mound of blankets, without the half second lag, without that brand of banter long dead in the era of foul mouthed trolls on headsets, without the people, without the time, without life unburdened as only a child's, that game wouldn't be the same. And any attempt to do exactly that will be met with a disappointment so profound that the idea that I'll never play that map again is a measure of comfort.

That finds a ***** in my emotional armor so narrow that fear can only rarely find purchase. Fear? No. Love of a dead thing that died, like most things, before its time perhaps but never fear.

 

[feeback06]

I think it's the same reason why "Ghost Towns" are considered scary. Your in a location that is intended to be filled with life, and yet it is empty.

 

[Zhukov]

Y'know, I actually know the feeling you are referring to. Although I'd describe it as "disquiet" rather than fear.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I find it discomforting at times, but there is always another way of looking at it. Like this video for example

tell me you've never had an experience like that on an empty server at least once.

 

[Joccaren]

I don't fear empty maps. If its empty, I'll run riot around it in a Jeep or tank and try all sorts of crazy shit, like using C4 to make the jeep survive a 500m fall off a cliff.

When its me and one other person, I'm not scared so much as I am tense. I love maps with lots of cover, and maybe 4-5 players max. Its a hunt. Especially if its FFA. You never have any idea where anyone is, and you've got to be on the lookout and find them before they find you. Most atmospheric and fun.

 

[CalUKGR]

I like to wander through empty MP maps. Some of them a very interesting, when you actually get a chance to take a good, unhurried look at them. I'd recommend the MPs from Far Cry 3 - well worth just starting them up in a private match for 1 just so you can examine them in a bit of peace and quiet.

I also agree with others that say they feel a bit sad when visiting empty MP maps - especially for games that may now be quite old, almost forgotten entirely. I've never been a huge MP player (don't enjoy it), but even I can feel the sadness of a collection of maps that just never found their audience or simply couldn't keep them.

Many games are saddled with quite redundant MP portions - for instance, nothing sadder that wandering through Inversion's great-looking MPs maps knowing they've hardly ever been played by anyone, ever. All that work making them...for nothing. The same goes for Doom3's paltry MP collection - in fact, there are many games which never really had any business having a set of MP maps (and if you're reading this you could probably name quite a few). Those maps (and all that work, time and expense in creating them) now remain as little more than interesting, slightly melancholic museum pieces.

 

[repeating integers]

Empty multiplayer maps in Halo are absolutely beautiful.

Those things do passive storytelling better than Half-Life 2.

 

[General Twinkletoes]

Empty maps in TF2 are very eerie for such a cartooney game... I wouldn't call it fear, but it's uncanny. Although if the game is completely dead I just get a bit sad. Running across dead sites or games (especially if they used to be very active) is always a little depressing.

 

[Aeshi]

It's even creepier for MMOs (say because you're joining just after server maintenance has ended) and the whole city/zone seems abandoned.

Auction Houses in particular look kinda sad/forlorn without their usual swarm of players around them.

 

[silver wolf009]

They're not scary, I find them thought provoking.

I mean, having taken time to look around a map for awhile, you'll find things you'd otherwise have never noticed. If any of you guys get to play an empty Bioshock 2 map, do it. When it's empty and quiet, and there's nothing but debris and hidden crawlspaces left behind by the cities inhabitants, you feel like someone who's found a real, dead city. Ties in very well with the theme of Bioshock as a whole.

 

[krazykidd]

Is this a new phobia brought about from gaming ? Monstrosesmultiplayermapisisphobia? Sounds legit.

OT: It has never happend to me man , i'm too cool for that shit , i follow the multiplayer gaming trends!

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I think it's the same reason why "Ghost Towns" are considered scary. Your in a location that is intended to be filled with life, and yet it is empty.

Having hopped on to a few completely empty servers on games with dead (but once bustling) multiplayer communities, this. It's especially sad if you remember a time when those servers would have been packed, and you spent years playing on them. "Here I had an epic fight with a worthy opponent, here I held off my opponents long enough to score a victory, here I got my ass kicked. But now it's all gone, they're all dead, nothing but me, this empty level, and the ghosts of a long dead past."

Edit: By the way, this site posted an article on this back when they were doing the weekly issues: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/9041-Gaming-Ghost-Towns

Man do I miss those thoughtful, introspective articles. They were my favorite part of the site when I first joined.