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Dust To Dust - The Plight Of The Unplayed Game
Thanks to Eurogamer for its editorial discussing the phenomenon of having too many videogames and too little time. The author starts by suggesting: "Take a look at your own shelves. Look closely. Spot any shrink-wrapped games you definitely will get around to playing some day?" He continues: "Let's have a look at this writer's personal 'to play' pile: MGS: The Twin Snakes, Super Mario Sunshine, Knights of the Old Republic, Full Spectrum Warrior, True Crime, Deus Ex 2", before concluding: "Games. We love them. We could fill about 47 lifetimes playing them. But we hate them too. Most are overblown, bloated, and chaotic in their design. If they were movies, most of the footage would be on the cutting room floor. Few games designers seem to know how to edit, and weigh down the production process in the belief that we need bigger games."
"The Plight Of The Unplayed Game"? Hell, this article should be retitled "The Plight of the Guy With More Money Than He Knows What to Do With". He goes on and on about the games he's bought and never played, and I'm sitting here thinking of how I'm going to make this month's rent.
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I also have some unplayed games on the shelf, but it would be an injustice if Star Wars:Knights of the Old Republic was one of those games. Seriously, try it out!
Every now and then a game comes along that miles above the rest (especially for RPGs), like Fallout, the original Deus Ex or KOTOR. If you don't have much time, it's a good idea to not buy many games, and just the quality games when they come out. As the article says - be more discerning.
The big problem with games these days, is they take far too much time to really get into the *good* parts of a game. Much like a book that starts off slow and doesn't get exciting until halfway through. Games however, cost a lot more, and frankly are much more repetitive and leave much less to the imagination than a book.
Your average, casual gamer, does not have a whole crapload of time in one sitting to spend getting into a game. In my opinion if a game cannot draw a person in within the first hour, that person probably will not be anywhere near as motivated to play it again.
My solution to this, keep games short, sweet, unique, and appropriately priced. Development times would probably be shorter, development *costs* would probably be shorter, and hell, people might actually get a decent variety of games that they can actually finish in one hour spurts throughout their hectic lives.
I have to wonder how age correlates with the people who can't afford many games, vs. those of us who collect more games than we can play.
I find that as I age, I have less and less time for game playing, more and more disposable income, and as much of a desire as ever to play the great games that come out every year.
The people who are, say, under 30 and are saying "you have too much money" are missing the point: this is the plight of the aging gamer. I'm 34, and it's only the last few years that I've found myself to have more games than time.
How many companies that cater exclusively to hardcore gamers have done themselves in financially in recent times? Quite a few as far as I can remember. SSI, which made quite a few war games as well as some others. (OK SSI isn't that recent) Looking Glass studios made some pretty hardcore and long games, but frankly was set to be one of the more promising game developer studios around. And I'm sure there are others I'm failing to mention here.
The proof, unfortunately for hardcore gamers, is in the numbers. Where games like The Sims, Grand Theft Auto (Which was a long game, but it was a game that had action right from the get go and could be played in short spurts) and games that cater to broader crowds such as sports games, are king. And unfortunately, developers and publishers need money to keep going.
This is not to say that games intended for the hardcore crowds cannot survive at all, epic games like Baldur's Gate and Final Fantasy series games sell like hotcakes, but when every game tries to be a huge epic like the aforementioned RPG's, people run out of time, and start to lose interest because an epic game is no longer a special thing.
So essentially developers and publishers need to focus mainly on games that can be enjoyed in short action packed or intriguing spurts (The actual length of the game may not matter now that I think of it, but the minimum length of time needed to fully enjoy a playing session.) but occasionally develop a huge epic wonderful game that the hardcore gamers and the occasional casual gamer will eat up, because frankly, not every game can be an epic sort of game.
I won't buy a game until I've finished one of the games that I already own. Somewhere along the line I ended up with a few games that I still haven't played yet. So, I won't let myself buy a new game until I finish an older one.
Sure, I don't play newer games right away, but that allows for the price to drop down about $10-20, and I'm still enjoying the games that I already have.
Will money get you through times of no games better than games will get you through times of no money?
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny