What would happen to gaming if someone switched off the internet?

Connection lost...

Youre reading this on the internet right now. You probably play games on the internet, too, or at least download games, demos or additional content from the three dubyahs. Well, imagine theyre gone. No more web. Disconnected. Session expired. L'internet ne fonctionne pas.

Scary thought, isnt it? Not least for me because it would mean Id instantly be out of a job. Hmmmmm. But never mind me and my need for food and rent payment--imagine what effect no internet would have on gaming. The repercussions are massive. Heres how it would play out for the hours, days and months after 'The Day The World Was Unplugged', or Day U as its survivors call it. So hug your router, tell it how much you care and then proceed through to the terrible event

Day U + 0.1 seconds

Opponent avatars stutter, glitch and freeze. CoD soldiers stand motionless, staring at the floor, shot to pieces by gamers who, for a brief second, think theyve bagged an easy kill.

They haven't. There are no internet hands pulling the virtual strings so all the puppets have stopped dancing. It doesn't matter who you are, whether you're playing Call of Duty, Battlefield or Hello Kitty Island Adventure Online (ver 2.01), everyone is disconnected from their games and booted back to the lobby. Some later claim they can still see that message when they close their eyes. Forget the day the music died. This is the freakin' internet. And it's gone. Not that anyone would realise that straight away...

Day U + 15 seconds

Several million people select www.twitter.com from their address bars and app lists, ready to complain to the world that the internet isnt working. Trouble is, the internet isnt working. So that means no Twitter either. Theres simply no telecommunication available anywhere.

Day U + 1 minute

Everyone assumes its just their equipment thats gone wrong, prompting an amazing variety of home-made solutions. Cables are unplugged and re-plugged in. Consoles are turned off and on again. Wifi networks are abandoned in favour of Ethernet ports and vice versa. The machines can see the routers, but the internet isnt there. Not even Blu-Tak can fix this one.

Day U + 1 hour

With no change in the situation, many lone CoD fans take to the single-player campaign for their fix, some for the first time ever. Many exit in a huff because theres too much talking and they're not getting any reaction from Captain Price when they insult his moustache.

Day U + 5 hours

Asses are peeled from seats and bed sores examined. Withdrawal symptoms are kicking in. Shakes. Cold sweats. Some resort to clicking their left mouse buttons anyway, selecting things on the menu screens and back again. Its relaxing. Like a comfort blanket. The more advanced users with fancy gaming keyboards set up macros that enable them to switch from the options screen to the credits screen with the press of a single button, which makes them feel better. For a few seconds.

Day U + 1 day

The internet has not come back up. Nobody can communicate between towns unless they drive there, or take a train. Worse still, Achievements and Trophies cant be synced with the servers. This is serious. Some concerned residents report seeing a man wearing a 'Mr Trophy' hat running screaming down the street. They are advised to stay indoors.

Day U + 5 days

The more hardcore online gamers are forced from their homes, blinking into the light as the sun rises on a real world of biblical proportions. And by that, I mean the real world is as big as its been for countless millennia, but theyre taking in its enormity for the first time.

Painfully, everything reminds them of their loss. The trees look like trees in games. The sky is a really convincing sky box. Some gamers are spotted crawling along the floor. They're not dying. They're studying the resolution of the ground. It doesnt matter how close up you get to it, theres always more detail. Amazing. Some local friends meet up and connect to home routers for LAN sessions, which still work.

Day U + 10 days

Consoles cant display any online content nor download new content, leaving gamers with whatever is on their hard drives or stored to backup discs. In one positive consequence of the internet going down, video game retailers see a huge surge in purchases of physical media, as single-player adventures and split-screen games are snapped up.

Day U + 15 days

People are lending each other games (and DVDs and CDs), or offering to come round to each others houses after school/work to play and watch things together. There's banter, laughter and cheering. Even some back-slapping. Friendships are formed and alliances made. It's beautiful.

Day U + 28 days

The police have arrested almost all of the game pirates, who are unable to peddle their wares through shady torrent sites and instead resort to local markets, where theyre sitting ducks for undercover cops.

Day U + 3 months

The first marriage directly resulting from the internets absence is widely reported in newspapers. Some people tut at the partnership, saying it isn't natural to bond over offline gaming, muttering something about how people met in a chat-room in their day and it isn't right to do it 'out in the open where everyone can see'.

Day U + 6 months

With the internet obviously never coming back (something to do with the field generated by a living being... I don't know tech stuff), publishers recognise the need to release their old digital catalogues on disc.

Day U + 10 months

Activision and EA start making special cabinet versions of their games using top-spec PC components and renting them to organisers of LAN events. Most other publishers soon follow and gaming halls or 'arcades' start sprouting up around the world. Such is their popularity, there's a national shortage of 100 yen coins reported across Japan, although people later claim the shortage was just a myth.

Home gaming has changed a lot, with split-screen play and even family gaming now very much the norm, while the more hardcore gamers invest heavily in single-player games and retro classics. Nintendo starts selling Wii U consoles in vast numbers due to its canny use of social, asymmetrical gaming. Iwata is quoted by a source as saying 'I told you this would happen'. Some people suspect it was he that switched off the internet. It's never proven.

Day U + 1 year

A year after the death of the internet, the world has turned into a gaming utopia. People are meeting up to discuss classic games, much like book clubs do. Game arcades are now seeing dedicated releases again, some of which later receive ports to home consoles. Everyone complains about how Call of Duty Arcade isn't arcade-perfect on Xbox One.

What do you think it would be like?

These musings are pure speculation, of course. Speculation fuelled by educated guesses, but speculation nonetheless. So how do you think the gaming world and community would adapt to a world where there's no internet? Let us know in the comments.