The oddest day in any gamer’s life, is when you find out your mother plays more games than you do.
Not in volume mind, but rather in the amount of time actually spent playing games, my own Mum has surpassed me. She made the casual observation over the Saturday breakfast table, much to the delight of my brother and Dad, that she spent more time playing Super Mario on my DS than I have on any of my shiny new purchases (sitting on a pile next to my couch, slowly gathering dust) and that perhaps she’s the hardcore gamer and I’m the casual one in the house. We laughed and moved on, but something about the statement stuck in my mind, I thought about the amount of time I actually spend playing games as opposed to a couple of years ago, the more I thought about it the more I realised I’m not alone.
If we think about the people who played games in the past, the young teens of Generation X and the early starts of Generation Y (such as myself) have grown up, finished school and moved on to other responsibilities, we suddenly don’t have 10+ hours a day to dedicate to the pursuits of a virtual nature. This isn’t just an issue for us time poor gamers, developers now have to contend with players who purchase titles based on how much they can finish in a sitting, an entire demographic has shifted the way it plays and the way it looks for value.
Disagree?
Consider the consoles, ten years ago Sony’s Playstation was considered odd for it’s CD player function. After all who buys a gaming console to play music? And yet the current crop of games consoles are lauded as much for their multimedia functions as they are for their ability to play the bleeding edge in gaming. People are seemingly less likely to put up with a large box under their TV that only plays games, especially in multi-user households where gaming isn’t the primary use of their time. A consideration evident in the marketing of today’s gaming consoles which come with more features than the proverbial Swiss Army knife and promise ever so sweetly to fit in with your home’s decor, the ability to play music is a given, DVDs (and now Blu-Ray) are a must and they even have PVR add-ons and video on demand. Forget about delivering DVDs to your door, now it’s about downloading films to your console while your corn pops!
Games too aren’t immune to this new brand of consumer, where once it was more common for a title to be released without multiplayer, and a small list of extra features and modes, now it seems if your new title doesn’t deliver on multiple fronts then it will be skipped over for one that can. A game that offers only a single player experience is limited in how much replay a player will get out of it, especially if that game is a linear one, this is a major reason you see many single player titles hype up “moral choices” or “dynamic” story lines in an attempt to show potential players that they can get more out of their single player game than they can from most others. Online multiplayer is another much valued selling point for time poor gamers who can get online and have the same core gaming experience without having to decide whether to socialise with their friends or worry about how much time they have to play. It’s much easier to play three or four games of capture the flag at five minutes a piece than move through a single player game rushing to get to the next checkpoint. Add into that the promise of DLC and developers have a raft of options to try and show that yes, we too are worthy of your money, more-so than that movie ticket or new album because we can deliver more content, and in a way that will fit to your schedule.
There is a cost to all of this of course, let’s not forget that while us old school gamers are doddering off to Sun City with our 8-bit ringtones and Pixel Ties there’s a brand new breed of hardcore gamers who are powered exclusively by guarana, are water cooled, over-clocked and don’t care about value or finding time for gaming. Long school holidays and part-time jobs with no rent or bills means they are bored and loaded to the gills with cash, they go for games that are guaranteed to hold their attention for the same amount of time it takes to get into a multiplayer game and scream threats and insults to people from every corner of the world, level up before all their mates an “pwn noobs”. Which of course means that by the time your brand new AAA title hits the shelves you’d better already have a sequel in the works and it has to be shinier and louder than the first, (with the ability to simultaneously offend as many people as possible in real time via online multiplayer.)
This demand for new titles of course means that there is a much shorter development schedule than in years past, a shorter amount of time to update all the previous game’s systems and mechanics, fix all the perceived flaws and make new content. In this high turn-around of new titles, and pressure to innovate something has to give way, unfortunately it seems that the loser in all this focus on short pick up and playable games, with expansive features and large online components is the single player experience. Case in point is Infinity Ward’s holy-crap-it’s-explosions-and-guns-wow the single player campaign can be knocked over on the hardest difficulty, Veteran, in less than three and a half hours, contrast that to the first game which took me the better part of a week to finish on Veteran and you can see my issue. The game ends with a “to be continued” and a friendly pop up telling me to go play their new online modes, something that made me quit in rage and not go back to it for two weeks. In fact it seems that many of the new blockbuster titles coming out can be completed in less than a few hours, and if you want a long game with an engrossing and detailed story then you have to either deal with pointy eared elves or androgynous males that come standard with current RPGs. Really, is it any wonder that with the way people buy games we are treated to rushed yearly sequels, entire series driven into the ground under the weight of expectation and cookie cutter gameplay? Even the ones that shine amongst the average, like Bioshock or Okami are now either being treated to the clone and port or bolted on multiplayer that is expected, nay demanded of current titles.
And here I sit, next to yet more titles I end up buying as I try to keep ahead of the curve, wondering why I get so disappointed by short games, with too many features and the depth of a teaspoon. Surely it’s what I want, I can finish them faster and make that pile smaller, I can go back later and try a new feature and I don’t have to worry about being so involved with a story I look up and it’s 3am. But I think that’s the problem,
It’s not what I want
I think if we honestly thought about why we started gaming to begin with it wasn’t because we wanted to play as many as possible or finish them quickly or even have more features than that Swiss Army knife. It’s because we wanted to have incredible experiences and a shed load of fun, to get that rush that came with destroying an alien invasion or scoring a winning goal. I want to get so involved in a story that I look out the window to see the sun coming up, I want to spend as much time as possible exploring the game’s world and I am willing to have less features if it means more fun. And hopefully you are too, because until we start rewarding developers who deliver that content and invest our time in these titles, we’ll be playing the same sequels every year until we all rage quit and sadly, don’t come back.
’till next time
