Abstract
Problem: Why did a veteran game developer who spent decades enjoying multiplayer games — from Atari couch co-op to MUDs to EverQuest — eventually abandon online gaming entirely?
Approach: Tim Cain reflects on his personal history with multiplayer games spanning the late 1970s through the mid-2010s, identifying the three major pain points that drove him away.
Findings: Three compounding issues killed his enjoyment: the logistical nightmare of organizing groups, the relentless creativity of griefers, and the broader toxicity of both players and companies in the online space.
Key insight: The anonymous nature of online play transforms a subset of players into inventive antagonists whose fun comes at others' expense — and no amount of developer countermeasures has solved this, because players are endlessly clever at circumventing them.
Tim's Multiplayer History
Tim's multiplayer experience stretches back decades. He played two- and four-player games on the Atari VCS in the late 1970s, got deeply into LP MUDs in the late 1980s (playing text-based games with dozens of people worldwide), and organized weekly "Thursday Night" five-person Super Nintendo sessions at Interplay in the mid-1990s using multi-taps and Atari Lynxes (which supported up to eight players in some titles).
The arrival of Ultima Online and EverQuest in the late 1990s was "mind-blowing" — thousands of players on graphical servers. EverQuest is in Tim's top five games of all time.
Problem 1: The Grouping Nightmare
Most MMOs are designed so you can't solo past a certain point. Some classes like the Druid and Necromancer in EverQuest could solo further than others thanks to pets, kiting, and DoTs, but the game's content — dungeons, planes, raids — required groups.
The practical problems with grouping were brutal:
- Finding a guild was poorly supported. Guild tools were clearly an afterthought — no good ways to find, contact, or organize guilds.
- Scheduling was a nightmare. Getting five or six people to agree on a night, then actually log in at the same time, rarely worked smoothly. You'd agree on 9:00 PM, and by 9:30 people were still shopping, running across the world, or just not online.
- Wasted time was constant. Sometimes 45 minutes of a 2-hour play window evaporated just getting the group assembled.
- Key dependencies made it worse. If the tank or healer couldn't make it, nobody could play.
- It felt like a second job. Tim admits he'd come home on MMO night after a rough day and not want to play — but felt obligated because the group couldn't function without him.
Content Sync Issues
Dungeons like Befallen in EverQuest required keys to progress. If you didn't get the key in one session, you had to replay the entire dungeon. Some keys didn't even persist through a logout, forcing marathon single-session runs. If one group member fell behind by even a couple of levels, EverQuest's tight level restrictions (with major power jumps every five levels) could lock them out of the group's content — potentially permanently.
Problem 2: Griefing
Griefing existed before MMOs — people threw mega bombs at teammates in Slime World on the Lynx — but playing in the same room kept it in check. Online anonymity removed that social brake entirely.
Tim argues developers weren't surprised that griefing happened; they were surprised by the cleverness and volume of it. Even with PvP protections, players found creative workarounds:
- Guard training: Higher-level players would aggro guards or monsters and drag them onto lower-level players. The guard couldn't hurt the griefer but would destroy the victim.
- Trade scams: Players would set up a trade, wait for you to put up money, pull their items out, and hit trade — stealing your gold.
- Corpse exploitation: Offering to drag your corpse back required granting permission, which also enabled looting. Even if restricted to dragging only, they'd drag corpses into lava pools so you'd lose everything.
The Spicy Girls Experiment
Tim's EverQuest group included women who reported constant harassment of their female characters. To experience this firsthand, the group created a themed party called "The Spicy Girls" (a Spice Girls reference). Tim played a female character and was immediately hit on with constant private messages. One player followed them relentlessly; when Tim used his Bard speed song to escape, the stalker got a Druid to cast Spirit of the Wolf to keep pace. Tim eventually resorted to maneuvering the auto-following stalker into rivers and pillars to shake him.
The Ripple Effect
When any group member got griefed — losing gear, getting scammed — it affected the entire group. A planned dungeon night could be derailed into side quests to re-equip someone. It left "a bad taste in your mouth."
Problem 3: Toxicity Beyond Griefing
Online games attract — or at least surface — the most toxic player bases. Community boards and forums amplified the hostility. But Tim extends the criticism to companies as well:
- Buy the game, then pay a monthly subscription
- Buy mandatory DLC that the whole group needs
- Microtransactions on top of everything for cosmetics, mounts, and appearances
- Constant upselling — "What's next, patches you have to pay for?"
The online gaming ecosystem attracted the worst of both players and companies.
The Exit
By the mid-2010s, Tim tapped out entirely. His departure from Carbine Studios in 2011 roughly coincided with this shift — without the professional justification of "research," he realized he didn't have to endure it anymore.
Since then, he plays almost exclusively offline single-player games, with rare exceptions for limited multiplayer like Minecraft, Terraria, and couch co-op (which he wishes there were more of — playing with someone next to you eliminates the griefing problem).
Tim acknowledges he's not alone in this migration and doesn't know what the fix is. No matter what companies implement, clever players circumvent it — and the companies themselves are part of the problem.
References
- Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGkb-nzTgC4