God, nothing brings more joy and more hatred than the multiplayer experience, and nothing other than the multiplayer experience makes me wish game developers would put more effort into making massively replayable single player experiences.

Cases in point: Team Fortress 2 and World in Conflict.

Let's start with TF2. This game is all multiplayer, and it's fun. God only knows I love it. The thrill of stabbing someone in the back with my spy's butterfly knife. The satisfaction of scoring a headshot with the sniper rifle that's also a critical hit. Mowing people down with 'Sasha', immolating people with the flame thrower, gunning people down with my sentry gun or even just running at the breakneck pace of the scout... even the medic manages to be enjoyable with the thrill of the Uber charge. Goddamn it's fun.

But it also causes me no short amount of anger. The countless times I attempted to hold a control point only to watch it get wrested from my grasp, losing the game and being forced to endure the humiliation of the loss as my helpless character is hunted down by the victors. Accruing one, two, even three Nemeses and finding it near to impossible to exact revenge. Dying 20 times in a row is nothing short of infuriating, and even worse, losing when it feels like we could be winning. The thing I hate the most about multiplayer is losing a team game and not knowing why we're losing. I mean, in HL2 Deathmatch at least I know it's because of my own personal failures, being too slow to avoid a grenade or accidently stepping off a high ledge. But in team games, it always ends up being more than that; it's the failure of every single one of us. Getting killed just near a point and watching someone overrun it, powerless to do anything but watch- it's maddening.

The same goes for World in Conflict. I simply cannot enjoy multiplayer, at least not very much. Why do I always end up on the losing team, I ask myself? I love playing when I win, but I just left a game where playing as an armor specific unit got me nowhere. Every time I tried to advance up a hill one of my enemies' choppers would crest the hill and annihilate my tank platoon, and I would be powerless to stop it because I can't use anti-airt units- and so I'm dependent on my allies for protection versus helicopters. But he's not helping. He gets a couple anti-air units but seldom moves them from his artillery, which is understandable- but goddammit, if we're going to take the hill, I NEED air cover.

So I watch helplessly as my tanks are obliterated by enemies I can't touch, lacking any way to communicate except to drop markers on the ground as a way of pointing and screaming to anyone who cares to pay attention, "I NEED HELP!"

Then I said, "f*** this" and logged out, too angry to care anymore.

I think that's the worst thing, is losing and not knowing why you're losing. What does the enemy do better? I see the markers pushing the enemy's progress bar further and further to victory, but why? What's everyone else suck at? Watching an entire armored group disappear in an artillery barrage is just as infuriating. No wonder Valve got rid of grenades in TF2- it's like watching someone call in a support power on your guys while yours miss every time.

Dammit. Dammit all. This is why developers have to make better single-player experiences, ones you can play over and over and get a different experience each time. Some people just don't want to put up with multiplayer. "Stop whining", you say. "F*** yourself", I say.