Who else hates this forced social networking in gaming and never adds friends to Steam/PSN/XBLA

There's nothing I love more than video games and strangely enough while not prone to social anxieties outside of dealing with my face blindness which sometimes does give me mild social anxiety when meeting people for the second or thrid time, it's really no big deal, having people on friends list on gaming platforms and such causes severe anxiety for me.

For some reason this forced social networking with gaming not only causes anxiety for me but it also frustrates and angers me to unspeakable levels. Basically I hate and do not add friends to Steam, XBL, PSN or any other such service, when playing online I only like playing with random people and there's NOTHING I hate more than people being able to keep tabs on what I play, when I play it and how long I play. It's not like I'm ashamed of my choice of games as I proudly talk about the games I play. It's just the notion that somebody is able to keep tabs on what I do with my spare time is infuriating to me even though I know people generally don't care.

I always keep my Steam profile private and the 6 or so friends I added out of sheer politeness I recently removed, I'd show myself as offline anyways. There's nothing I hate more than someone messaging me the moment I start playing a game and comment on the game I play or ask me about it, dude, it's my own, private life, none of your god dang business what I play and when I play it least of all how long I play.

This forced social networking also causes severe anxiety for me, enough to make me NOT want to play the games I have for some reason. But ever since I completely got rid of the few people on my Steam friend's list I've felt so relieved, like such a burden was lifted from me, I can play whenever I want without somebody potentially keeping tabs on me. I'm a huge huge MMORPG fan, probably my favorite genre of games but even in those I prefer teaming up with random players and stay away from guilds.

You see, when I turn my SNES on, I don't see a friends list popping up, it's just me, my game and my imagination or the people in the room with me and god knows I HATE being alone, so no I'm not a loner type or the type who doesn't like talking to people, I love talking as you can well see from this long post, but I hate the forced social netwroking modern consoles and gaming platforms do.

Anyone else feels this way or am I just too weird for this modern Twitterbook world? :)

I disagree, having strangers to play against or with was done way before Online gaming. It was called The Arcades.

However I will agree that I don't like the vocal side of many. They're either Salty babies, or needy kids wanting a friend. I don't like either crowd, I'm more about those that are about the game they found me on, it makes PvP or Coop more constructive. Once I move onto another game? They're removed.

Only community I made friends on is Little Big Panet through blogs (more of a creative hub anyway), and Tekken which because of local versus not through the Internet.

Never tried liking anyone in games such-as Dark Souls, D00M, or Monster Hunter. I tag-in for the game, not the people in it.

I grew up in the arcades of the 80's and early 90's but somehow that was different for me, and even then I preferred playing on my own tho I didn't mind others watching since I was generally good at the games I played :) But that was a public place, I'd go there knowing there were people and I don't want the privacy of my own home, my own time intruded upon by forced social networking and people being able to keep tabs on what I play, when I play it and for how long.

Simple, I don't play online.

@Coco_pierrot: This isn't about online play though, the problem with modern consoles and gaming platforms in general is that they force the user to be a part of this social network whether they like it or not, hence why we don't see devices like the gameshark and action replay nowadays either.

You don't need to play online to add friends to your friends list on today's gaming platforms.

@White_Wolf_Kiba: You seem like a private person, which is fine. However I grew up with Arcades over home systems, and Arcades was/ still are focused on crowd gathering. Some like it, others don't.

I don't know if that was the same in the 80's but late 90's it was about the crowds_

@White_Wolf_Kiba:

At least now parents can't tell their kids that they need to stop playing videogames and make some friends.

@White_Wolf_Kiba: But by not playing online, no one will look at your profile or try to friend you.

I understand that even if you aren't online you can still add friend and chat with them but I don't do that either so no one is looking for me or would think of searching my profile.

I hate how some companies lik EA and Ubisoft have that crap, and for consoles! It's not necessary to use but if you want the full package, even more single player, you need an account with them. It's obnoxious.

They don't force you to be a part of anything. Don't want to add people? Fine. Don't do it. It's that simple. I really don't get what your problem is. Not adding people won't keep you from playing games. It's not rocket science. I have zero friends on XBL because I actually don't know anybody else with an XBox. And guess what? It didn't explode! Do people whine about everything nowadays?

I don't mind the friends list on Steam, but the showcases, achievements, badges and similar stuff can be shelved and I would not miss it. All the other ways we had to find games or play with people known to us such as GameSpy Arcade, MPlayer, MSGaming Zone (which became The Zone) all had friends lists so we could play the games we all had in common. Since they all went by the wayside, and Steam is an all-in-one app where I can buy a game as well as play the game with people on my friends list if they have it or new people that could and can become friends.

Most annoying to me is how games are trying to connect to PSN every time I start playing them.

And when they cannot connect, they complain.

It is very tedious. I have PS4 in offline mode for a reason. Not every gamer wants to be online all the time.

@nethernova: and I said I don't add people.

My problem is that we ARE forced to be a part of this online community, but that's a different topic. If we weren't devices like action replay, gameshark and game genie would've still been sold and popular, but they're not in fact you could consider them illegal now thanks to all the achivement bullshit.

@henrythefifth: I don't have that problem and I also play on PS4

@White_Wolf_Kiba: They put the fonction there but you don't need to use or it isn't forced to use it at all.

I see the friend list and Community thingy on my PS4 but never used it, never felt I had to use it because it is there.

@Coco_pierrot: I didn't say you have to use it, I clearly explained in the OP I do not.

I'm now talking about a different issue as a whole, that we are all whether we like it or not, whether we use these features or not a part of this social networking, otherwise we'd have cheating devices such as action replay and the like still

@White_Wolf_Kiba: But back in the day when those cheating devise existed ... programmer put some cheat in the game to test things out.

We stopped seeing those during the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube days anyway it kinda put the consol at risk.

Last thing we used to be able to unlock stuff and cheat a little bit but now they sell us those unlockable and those cheat ...

How do they force you to do that? I have only a handful of friends across PSN and Steam and XBL, and I know them personally and chose to friend them - many in just the past few months. I game for myself on my own time and don't have any feeling of a social network being shoved down my throat... it's nice that it's there as an option for those who want it, but I don't and nobody is making me

I agree that it's annoying, especially Steam keeping track of play time and making it publicly available. It should be optional, and it's not. As for friends, something i never understood is why people add hundreds of people to their friends list, so that all they see is a constant popping of messages announcing when someone is online or has started playing a game.

''YES" they are pushing social network gaming but you are not forced to participate. The whole social networking phenomena in general is more about consumer marketing, not the individual. It's not all about you Bra.

I have no problem with services like steam having such functions. Its when you build whole games around the concept that pisses me off(EA is especially guilty with this).

@Coco_pierrot: The cheats programmers put into the game could be accessed through in-game commands and such most of the time, devices like the game genie, gameshark and action replay didn't do pre-coded cheats, what they did was alter the code of a game in order for it to do things it wasn't really programmed to do.

Xfire tracked the number of hours one played a game as well and was doing it before Steam did. People didn't complain then.

Why should they complain? It's something *I* find annoying on a purely subjective level.

@White_Wolf_Kiba: So we are talking about games for SNES and before because that stopped during the Playstation days.

I remember the first version of the Playstation had an expension bay and there was a version of the game genie or something like that that could be plugged there. But at the first revision of the system they removed that expension bay and it never came back went they made the PSone slim version.

Steam works well. I have a few real-life friends that I chat and play games with. That's about the full extent of it though.

I don't use those features on consoles and I don't use UPlay or Origin outside of a few single-player games, so those aren't even installed.

I wouldn't call it forced. That's a bit excessive. They're not forcing you to actually talk to anyone.