Gaming on the Road with Dirty Heads’ Jared Watson

[This week, we have a very special guest editorial from Jared Watson, from the band Dirty Heads, discussing what it's like to game while touring the world. - Ed.]

Multiplayer has come along way. Back in the day multiplayer meant a group of kids all playing on one console, on one TV with two controllers and one screen. Those were the days of elbows in the ribs, smacking your friends' controllers out of their hands, or covering their eyes to get the jump on 'em. Then came split-screen, but not much changed among friends. It wasn't until online multiplayer arrived that things were different. Now when you think of multiplayer gaming, you automatically think about a bunch of people online in their own houses, donning headsets and wireless controllers, playing on their own consoles, with other people doing the same thing in a totally separate location. That's the majority of multiplayer gaming these days.

Well, I'm in a band, and when it comes to gaming on the road, sh---s way different. There's no solo gaming at all. You're not gonna play Elder Scrolls for eight hours; you have other people living with you that also want to game. On the road, multiplayer has come full circle, back to the good ol' days of elbows and trickery. Being a gamer who travels for work, there's a complete change in the dynamics of playing, and scratching that itch to get in a couple hours of gaming. This is especially true on a tour bus, so let me give you the low down on tour gaming, if I may.

On the road, getting a solid Internet connection isn't so easy. The venue may or may not have Internet, and even if it does, there's no guarantee it will work. When you're driving, it rarely works well enough for online gaming, so the rest of the band and I usually don't even bother. There are ways around it, though. Many of my fellow musician friends who game have built gaming road cases with everything you need built in. When the standard gear like instruments and speakers gets loaded in for the tour, you have your crew roll that bitch into your dressing room and boom, games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Titanfall all are ripping and ready to go.

However, those kinds of rigs aren't something everyone can access or get. When you have four people who wanna play and no wi-fi, the best choices are for sure sports games. The rest of the Dirty Heads and I regularly play FIFA, NHL, and Tiger Woods; all games with four-player options and no sh---y split-screen. I was surprised that I forgot how much fun it is to game with your friends actually in the same room. The sh---talking, the betting, the overall experience, it all adds up to something I had lost as a gamer.

And I'm very glad its back. not only does it let me game, it kills downtime and gives us something to talk about since rivalries can span a whole tour. Though those sports games can get heated, we also have a lot fun with Call of Duty's Zombies and Extinction modes. You can put a lot of hours into those modes, slowly figuring out ways to prolong yours and your friends' lives, seeing who can get further through waves and waves of increasingly difficult enemies. We tried to get into racing games but driving a car while in a car kinda fu---d with our heads. Maybe we were too stoned, or maybe its just something that isn't meant to be, but it didn't feel right.

Overall, gaming on the road is a different animal, but its still an animal I love… wait, that didn't sound right. You get what I'm saying, though. If you haven't gamed with your friends in the same room for a while, sharpen your tongue and your elbows, and go pick up a sports game and watch the madness ensue.

Jared Watson of international pop/dance/rap hitmakers - Dirty Heads – uses his rare bit of free time as he travels the world to connect with the band’s fans through playing and reviewing video games. Discussing gaming with fans and even helping them to the next level of play combined with his self-effacing Instagram hashtag on his posts, #worthlessgamereview, make Watson’s gaming like his music – all for the fans!