As someone who grew up playing mostly single player games and having bonded with several close friends through shared experiences of single player games, I have had to adapt as my friends have spread out across the country. We can no longer get together often and play a Shared Playthrough or easily coach one another in a Guided Playthrough, so we have had to find new ways of gaming together. While this has in part meant that we have been playing more online multiplayer games, we have also found a new way of enjoying single-player games together: what I call playing Parallel Playthroughs. The basic idea is that two or more players all start a playthrough of the same single-player game on their own systems at roughly the same time, communicating and assisting one another throughout the process. The beauty of this type of group-experience of a single-player game is the flexibility it offers the players; players can engage in parallel playthroughs from the same room or from across the world, can play simultaneously while talking about their experiences in real time or asynchronously with intermittent discussions. The only real constraint is that two or more gamers decide to take on the same game over roughly the same period and share their experiences with one another, the specific form this takes will be determined by the game and, more importantly, the players themselves.
While there is a great a deal of flexibility that Parallel Playthroughs offer players, the type of game will influence the best ways of playing together. For instance, the more linear a game’s story and progression, the more players will benefit from staying closely in-sync in their playthroughs. For instance, if one player gets further ahead in the story, then it will be hard for them to have meaningful discussions about where they are in the game without spoiling the story for the other player who hasn’t gotten as far. Meanwhile, open-world games and games with less linear stories and progressions can often be easier, and perhaps more interesting, to talk about between parallel-players, as players can share bits of the story or game world that the other hasn’t discovered and may never encounter in their game, thus gaining a wider perspective together than either could have independently through a single playthrough. Similarly, strongly story- and dialogue- driven games are perhaps better experienced in isolation for each parallel-player and then discussed afterwards, as real-time discussion can cause players to miss bits of the story and dialogue, unless the players are synced up almost exactly; while games with less focus on dialogue and more on exploration or strategy can be played more effectively while talking in real-time with fellow parallel-players.
What makes Parallel Playthroughs meaningful are the discussions, advice, and stories parallel-players share with one another as they experience their separate but similar journeys through the game. Games are unique in that they can reliably offer players extremely similar, sometimes identical, experiences. When you and a friend decide to share a Parallel Playthrough, you are signing up to have a whole sequence of these similar experiences, and you can share your different perspectives and discuss the different decisions you made or strategies you adopted in response to these similar experiences you shared. These shared experiences allow parallel-players to relate to one another in a deep way, in a way that the real world doesn’t always let us; our day to day lives may not look anything alike, but a Parallel Playthrough can let us walk in the same shoes and go on parallel journeys, giving us whole adventures that we can discuss and connect over.
Alone Together 