Reading Patrick's article on the diminishing single player experience, I have to agree that campaigns with social/connected multiplayer "hooks" is the direction of gaming's future. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, but as someone with an anemic friends list, it makes me wonder what I need to start doing to participate.

I'm 31, and right in that golden age where my "real-life" friends are married, overworked, or otherwise not interested in playing games regularly. I feel like Xbox Live and PSN are perfectly suited to something like a college environment, which I haven't been in for a decade. As an old(er) guy, there just aren't that many places in real life to meet people with a balanced interest in games. (As in not obsessive, personality-defining. There's probably Meetups for that.)

Making gaming friends online seems the most obvious step in the world, but I've been resistant to it for as long as it's been available. Recently, I had a miserable time trying to knock out missions in Borderlands 2, but the idea of opening my game to randoms never entered my mind. Allowing invasions in Watch Dogs or Dark Souls? To interrupt my single player time? Fuck that! I still see unexpected party invites as an unwanted intrusion, half expecting it to be... I dunno, a chat full of whiny 10 year olds? For whatever reason, I ignore them so hard it's like they were an invitation to a Klan rally.

If I had to pin it down, I guess my reasons for avoiding random co-op would break out as:

• I'm playing games to relax, and don't want to get yelled at because I'm not good enough, doing the content fast enough, or otherwise not being alpha competitive enough.
• I'd rather not schedule my time to make a co-op raid, a "play date," or whatever. I'm not ready to start marking that mess in my calendar.
• There really aren't any good ways (that I know of) to let me know if this person and I are going to get along, have some good conversations, and enjoy the time. I don't feel like switching randoms like socks until I find gold.

I'm wondering if this is a generational thing, that perhaps I'm Just Too Old™. Reading comments on the site, I know I'm not alone. I feel like I know how to handle people in competitive multiplayer, where there are no expectations, but finding co-op partners on a console (without the benefit of, say, an MMO's general chat) seems like a different beast.

Point is, I think I'm ready to embrace the all-social, all-connected single-ish player future. I'm ready to do those co-op missions I've ignored in Splinter Cell, or blast through Legendary again (but not alone!) in the Master Chief collection. But I have no idea how I'm going to make friends with internet strangers to do that.

Maybe we just need a website with a dating site style infrastructure to match up friends with similar co-op interests.