8 Games That Are Perfect for Social Butterflies

Making friends in an online world can be tough. But thankfully, there are some video games that are perfect for making friends and having a blast. If you love hanging out and using your voice when gaming, these eight titles are perfect for you.

8

Helldivers 2

Helldivers 2 took the world by storm and for good reason. It’s an excellent team horde shooter with a ton of chaotic energy. It might be one of the only multiplayer games where, 90% of the time, friendly fire incidents are hilarious instead of maddening.

It’s a game that rewards teamwork, even when that teamwork causes some painful shenanigans between the team. Better yet, the community is full of welcoming individuals who love to train new players and let them try all the new toys.

Roleplaying is strong in this game, too. I swear, some of the best voice actors I’ve ever heard were random people I met while playing Helldivers 2. Some of those guys truly sound like they are at war… or at least, in a really hammy B-lister action movie war. The sheer number of Starship Troopers references is through the roof.

At any rate, Helldivers 2 is a great game with a ton of variety. Dozens of enemies, weapons, environments, and mission types will keep you entertained for hundreds of hours, and there are new content drops all the time. The community is mostly very friendly and vocal, the game is casual enough that anyone can join and have fun, and it was recently released on Xbox so now is a good time to join a fresh wave of recruits.

7

Minecraft

I’m sure Minecraft needs no introduction. This phenomenal sandbox game thrives on both social interaction and boundless creativity. Whether it’s struggling to survive in an unforgiving world or building an exact replica of Gondor from Lord of the Rings, Minecraft gives you the freedom to do pretty much anything with your friends. There are lots of servers you can join, groups looking for new members, and people who are just dying to introduce someone new to their favorite game of all time.

Now, admittedly, you’re not guaranteed to run into friendly people all the time, but there are servers designed for friendly, cooperative gameplay. And hey, there’s no other game where you can visit a digital library full of real-life banned books designed to circumvent unfair censorship around the world. There is a good reason that Minecraft is one of the biggest and best-selling games of all time, and it mostly has to do with how much freedom of creativity you have, and how much fun it is to share that creativity to everyone else.

6

REPO

Being scared alone sucks. Being scared with your friends is fun. REPO encapsulates this perfectly. It is, admittedly, a lot like Lethal Company. In fact, it’s pretty much the exact same setup: you and five of your friends explore gloomy environments in search of valuable items while contending with both scary monsters and the incompetence of said friends in the face of certain doom. Combined with proximity voice chat and plenty of scares, it’s an excellent way to generate memorable and hilarious moments with other people.

Granted, you also have to be into horror to enjoy this type of game, but horror is always easier to face with friends… especially if you get to laugh at their screams and panicked reactions to monstrosities. But you’ll be the one getting jump scared sometimes, so you have to be willing to face that in good humor. Don’t worry, everyone screams at least once while playing this game, so you’ll have plenty of ammo to defend yourself if any of your friends try to call you out.

5

VR Chat

VR Chat is really one of those games where the point is making your own fun. It’s kind of like those old Garry’s Mod games or even Roblox in the sense that players can make up almost anything they want within the game. Flying fighter jets, running a coffee shop, hiking through fantasy mountains, exploring the bottom of the ocean, you name it: the limit in this social game is really the imagination of the players and what they create.

Players can create all sorts of avatars to represent them. Cheeky robots, bipedal animals, dashing anime characters, sentient furniture, and a whole lot more. This is a game built around being whatever you want, doing whatever you want, and meeting tons of new people across hundreds of thousands of worlds. It’s honestly the perfect game for social butterflies who want to hang out in person and in the virtual world. And don’t worry—despite the name, you can still play VR Chat without a VR headset.

If you’ve always been the type of person to love games that fully embrace the concept of player freedom and the ability to do almost anything, VR Chat has what you need. It just happens to bring us one step closer to The Matrix along the way. But hey, who’s complaining?

4

Lockdown Protocol

Among Us may have breathed new life into the social collaboration and mystery genre in the modern era, but there are plenty of newer titles that do the same thing but better, like Lockdown Protocol. Yes, this is a game where you and a bunch of other players are trying to complete various objectives, while a small handful of players are secretly trying to obstruct your progress without getting caught. So if you know anything at all about Among Us, this is very similar, but in 3D.

Well, it’s got a more unique flavor to set it apart. Players are on record saying Lockdown Protocol has a much wider and more interesting set of objectives, and there is a lot more freedom in how players go about their tasks. Furthermore, players are still allowed to kill each other even if that isn’t their mission, so there is room for a lot of social shenanigans in this game that Among Us just doesn’t allow.

Still, maybe they should have picked a theme different than “bunch of astronaut-looking dudes in various bold colors running around a spaceship.” It’s a wonder that things can be so similar without legal issue, while Nintendo tries to patent the very concept of summoning creatures to fight things. What a world.

3

Lethal Company

Lethal Company is very similar to REPO, probably because REPO almost definitely took heavy inspiration from this game. After all, the premise is almost identical: you and some friends run around in abandoned places full of scary monsters trying to secure and extract salvage so you can pay off debt and buy snazzy upgrades. They’re practically the same game, mechanically. What might tilt you one direction or the other is the artistic direction of the games.

They are both co-op horror games, but Lethal Company is generally considered to be scarier, thanks to the grim, darker atmosphere (you need flashlights way more often in this game), the less lighthearted character designs, and monsters with some more troubling aesthetics to them. If you’re really chicken, you can be the player who stays inside the ship and watches as everyone else gets eaten. Bonus.

Ultimately, the social fun here is the same, though: facing horror with friends leads to a ton of hilarious moments you’ll never let them live down. You might leap out of your skin on occasion too, but it’ll be easy to laugh it off when everyone else is laughing at you, right?

2

Deep Rock Galactic

There is an uncanny crossover between players who enjoy Helldivers 2 and players who enjoy Deep Rock Galactic. They are both 1-4 player co-op shooters where roleplaying the characters and fierce but hilarious battles are the norm, but Deep Rock Galactic has a different skin and different mechanics. In this first-person shooter, you and your pals play as dwarves in space, delving too greedily and too deep into procedurally-generated caves.

The differences don’t stop there. Deep Rock Galactic has a class system, so every player gets to contribute in their own unique way, and this game gives you an absurd amount of freedom through the caves you’re exploring. Almost everything in the environment is destructible, meaning you can tunnel almost anywhere, make your own paths, dig your own holes, and otherwise manipulate the environment to your liking with drills and explosions.

Make no mistake, this game will have you and your friends singing Diggy Diggy Hole in no time. Or quoting Gimli from Lord of the Rings at every opportunity.

1

Runescape

Runescape holds a special place in my heart for being the first MMO I played as a kid back in the day. I fondly remember my friends and I spending our school lunchtimes planning our classes and adventures in the virtual world. The OST for that game still lives rent-free in my head. Now, you may be thinking that Runescape is an ancient MMO, but hey, so is World of Warcraft. Runescape is still going strong, in both its classic form and the newer version with more modern graphics and mechanics.

It’s a great game to get into if you’re into MMOs, because it has a unique sense oof flair with its skill system. Sure, chopping down eighty trees and making a million campfires to level up sounds tedious, but I swear it has its own charm. At any rate, the beauty of Runescape is that you can play the old-school version from 2007 for the nostalgia, or enjoy the modern iteration of the classic. There are still hundreds of thousands of players, and a wonderful community of people who are always ready to welcome someone new into their fold.

Ultimately, this is but a small sample of the many great games to play if you love socialization. There are always more MMOs and co-op games, and if you’re looking for something to play with your best friend or partner, we have some other great recommendations as well. There’s something out there for everyone: just look for something you love, and there’s bound to be a community eager to accept a new member somewhere.