Saying goodbye to the pause button

I'm in the middle of a race in the new Need For Speed: Rivals. My car is speeding by slow moving vehicles, whipping around corners and hitting the occasional jump. Behind me, cops. Sirens blasting as they chase me and my fellow racers. In-front of me one lone racer. If I can pass him soon, the finish line is coming up, I'll win this race and make some needed speed points. I'm gaining on him, drifting around like a mad man. I'm so close I can read his license plate.

Then suddenly the door bell rang. I was expecting a friend, and as where I live is currently VERY cold, I didn't want to keep him waiting outside. So I hit the options button on my PS4 controller and quickly dashed out of the room. After talking to him for a bit, we made our way to my room where he was interested in seeing the PS4.

On the screen was my car in the garage. I had lost the race. But was also busted by the police, meaning I lost all the current Speed Points I had currently on me. It was a terrible feeling. My friend asked if I paused. I was sure I did, then I remembered something. A terrible word I first heard on twitter from some game journalists.

Mingleplayer.

A hideous, disgusting word that refers to a neat idea. For so long games have been single-player, with multiplayer separate. But with the arrival of next gen consoles comes "mingleplayer" . Games like Watch_Dogs, The Crew, The Division, and recently released Need for Speed Rivals will mix single-player and multiplayer together. Which is cool, but my NFS Rivals incident revealed an ugly bit I completely overlooked: losing the ability to pause your game. Now that your online, you can't just pause the game.

I was nearly 2 hours into NFS Rivals when I tried to pause the game. I had totally forgot about the All Drive system. Mainly due to the fact that in those two hours I had not run into a another racer. I checked the map, they were in the game. I just never had come across any. I don't know what that says about the game or my style of play, but it made the whole thing feel worse. In this instance of "Mingleplayer" nothing was added to my experience, yet I lost a very crucial part of my gaming experience.

The amount of times I've left a game paused and gone to do something else is huge. I do it a lot. Sometimes to get the door, sometimes to answer the phone. Even sometimes just to get up and take a break, stretch a bit. Do a little reading or watch a video. Its just how I play games. But now, as we move towards the future, I might loose this ability. Which really sucks.

I'll get used to it, sure. And in Need For Speed's defense its not too hard to turn the "mingleplayer" options off. Still, I could easily see a future where this is not the case for every game. As more and more games add these features, it makes me worried that games will keep us from just taking breaks when ever we please. None of this makes me "hate" a game by any means, but it makes me wonder if losing the pause button will bring us anything worthwhile.