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The Division dev feels sense of community in online games is dead

The Division developer Ubisoft Massive hopes to re-establish a sense of community among online gamers, something studio member Ryan Barnard feels is dead.

Speaking with OXM, Barnard said, "A personal goal for me with The Division is to create community again. Games have lost that. People are afraid to talk in games because they're going to get yelled at by some 12-year-old kid who's talking about your mum or whatever. I want us to help create that again.

"[Community is] gone in online games, it's dead. And a lot of that is because all I have to do is use Google or Youtube, or the game shows me exactly how to do something. There's no interaction between players. I personally will want to say as little as possible before the game comes out so people will just play, and have a good time, and discover it for themselves."

The Division is indeed an online experience, one that will see players collaborating in a ravaged America, both in the game-proper and from a distance using the companion app. You can see the app in action here.

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Dave Cook

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Dave worked on VG247 for an extended period manging much of the site's news output. As well as his experience in games media, he writes for comics, and now specializes in books about gaming history.

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