I used to find it a bit gauche to complain about the 100-friend limit on Xbox Live. It seems that video game industry professionals are the people who normally have this complaint, apparently unaware that for most of their audience 100 friends is more than enough. After all, not everyone works professionally as an avid gamer followed closely by an audience of people who would love to play online games with them.
Certainly, my initial experience with Xbox Live was much different. Without many friends in my daily life who were gamers, I had to resort to public games to try out the free 30-day gold account trial that came with the console. It didn’t take me long to decide that playing against the XBL community wasn’t something I wanted to pay for. After all, I can hear racial epithets and homophobic slurs for free in my (red) neck of the woods.
I felt a little alien, preferring the online on the PS3. After all, seemingly the entire game press was telling me that the online experience was much better on Xbox Live. Of course, they weren’t playing many public games. On the PS3, hardly anyone bothers to connect a headset to the machine, despite the fact that you can use almost any bluetooth or USB headset. Because of this quirk of the PS3 community, you can actually play hours of Call of Duty 4 without hearing a single preteen curse at you!
Two major trends have started to change my mind. The first is a personal one: I have somehow managed to make friends at various internet communities, despite my acerbic nature and inscrutable sense of humor. The forum connected to this very website is an excellent resource for someone who might want to get an online game going with people who aren’t examples of John Gabriel’s Internet Fuckwad Theory, and I’ve whiled away several nights chainsawing monsters alongside some of those fine folk. I’ve also been writing for this site for well over a year now, and I’ve consequently made friends with many readers.
Of course, not everyone writes for a niche gaming site or is comfortable on Internet forums. Still, even for those people I imagine that their friend lists are also growing, because the other trend is the evolution of Xbox Live into something of a social network. The first big feature Microsoft added was the “friends of friends” option. I added quite a few friends on XBL by going through the friend lists of people in my network. That was only a minor improvement compared to what came with the “New Xbox Experience” — the party system. An Xbox Live Party groups you with other users in a cross-game chat session. Parties can all go into and out of games together and maintain communication even if some players are in other games or if the group goes back into the Xbox “dashboard”, or main menu. Some of the people I play with most often I only met because they were in parties I was invited to. It’s not just me; Xbox Live’s Major Nelsonreports that friend lists increased in size by an average of 33% in the immediate aftermath of the NXE launch.
[[image:vs090110_tmf_014.jpg:An Xbox Live Party:center:0]]
So, now I find myself as one of those people. I’ve nearly hit the ceiling on my 360 friend list and I’m hoping that Microsoft will give us more slots soon. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, some of the people behind Xbox Live indicated that that was in their plans, which only makes sense because if Xbox Live is going to keep going in this social network direction than more and more people are going to be hitting this ceiling. Until then, I may end up having to make some hard choices.
I made a cameo! Yeah, I’m having to trim back my friends list to make room for people who actually play online. My favorite part of the party system is being able to chat with people who are playing something else because sometimes you need to log some DS time or spend some time finishing the single player of something.
I’m disappointed that I DIDN’T make a cameo in that picture. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one rockin’ that lame hat my guy wears.
…but yeah, most of my Friends List comes from Talking Time, and I’m grateful for it.
I think I had about 8 Live friends before I became an active member of Talking Time a few months ago. Now I have plenty! I love playing L4D with these guys.
I do still prefer playing CoD4 on PS3. Blissful silence.
I live in Canada, and I’ve had little to no negative experience with XBL, except while playing Halo 3, which is really a lost cause anyhow. Is this a geographic/cultural thing or just blind luck?
Can’t you just turn the chat down or off?
I was unpleasantly reminded of the joys of XBL just recently myself. I had let my subscription run out because of having a small friends list forced me to play public, and playing public just isn’t fun. Occasionally you will luck out, but you have to endure the other crap to get to it. The Bombcast mentioned that they had heard Microsoft may be removing the 100 friend cap, so maybe you wont have to make those hard choices.
No Mute Button? Why don’t you just not wear a headset? I only wear one in games like Left 4 Dead where talking is beneficial to surviving.
@mirc:
I live in Canada too and trust me, we do indeed get connected to random assholes on XBL. Try playing Call of Duty 4 some time!
Yeah, you can always turn voice off, or mute individual players, or set it to friends only or whatever.
Social networking’s right, though–I rarely actually play online, but I like having the friends list just to keep up on what everyone’s playing. It feels a little weird to play games now where my status doesn’t get broadcast out for all to see.
I’m over on the side of the picture standing all alone. lol
I not only made a cameo, but I apparently said something so filthy that it had to be obscured. :p Almost since the inception of XBL, I’ve run into problems with the 100 friends limit. I’m not in the industry at all, but I quickly got involved in various communities of folks that played together regularly. I haven’t been under 95 friends for any significant amount of time since the original Xbox launched. What I’d love to see besides an expansion of the friends list is a way to categorize and/or annotate friends.
@matchstick: The long-lusted after Clan functionality might do what you need. Make a “TT Clan”, a “Family Clan”, a “Gaf Clan”, etc., to categorize your friends.