Today I found myself thinking: “Man, where are those games that made me think about them all the time? That made me want to be inside the game after playing?”
It is something that crosses my mind from time to time when I play on my PS3 or PC (which is not that regular as I would like it to be lately) because I don’t get that feel of wanting to get inside the game, be the character, live the game, that you get on a really immersive title anymore. So I ask myself, where did that feeling go?
The first two things that come to my mind are: age and the state of the industry.
Lets start with the first one. I played my first Final Fantasy game when I was 11 or 12 years old, it was Final Fantasy VIII. I had never played an RPG before, and the first thing that popped interest in me was the battle system and the character evolution. It was awesome to me back then, it really caught my attention and I wanted to keep playing and evolving the characters. Then the story itself was doing the rest (though I didn’t fully understand some details back then) it made me feel I was in it, and when I wasn’t playing I wanted to be one of the heroes (Squall and Zell were my favorites) and I imagined how that would be in my head. Then what does age have to do with it, can’t I just want to be Zell and kick ass right now? From my experience, when the years were passing I felt less and less apt to just imagine things and be creative just like that out of the box (I found myself daydreaming a lot, and now not so much). I started to worry about more things than just having to go to school and play games: “I have to find a job”, “I need to help my parents with the bills”, “What will I do with my life in the future”, well that kind of stuff, leaving the creative part of my mind with little room and time to “come out and play”. It’s more complex than this but I guess you can get the point now.
I didn’t stop playing games, I just played less and the titles that made me want to finish the story just weren’t making me jump of joy and emotion.This aging point gets me to another one that is not age specific per se, it is related to the “aging of times”, or in other words, younger generations. And this leads in the end to the state of the industry point I mentioned before. I’ll try to get to these two points at the same time since they are connected.
My neighbor (a 16yr old kid) was asking me for advice the other day, on what game to buy for the PS3 since he had nothing new to play (I lendt him Deux EX Human Revolution, and he hated the game, too many things to do on a “shooter”) and then I searched for some good and cheap games, and I came to a troubling truth: I couldn’t find an awesome, immersive, complete game for him, not because there weren’t any, but because he didn’t like them! You never asked yourselves why games such as Call of Duty and FIFA or PES are games that seem to not evolve much but sell freakishly well, especially within the younger generations? Because they are fun, encourage competitiveness, and lack a deep complex story-line with intricate characters and twists that blow your mind! Of course not every kid just wants to shoot, score goals or race in their games, but the majority does. Metal Gear Solid was one of the best games I played of all time, I remember playing the demo over and over until I got the full game. It was a game that had so many things to get you attached to it that I can’t even start counting. I have it stored in my PS3 to play again some day, but when I said this to my neighbor he laughed: “Why do you want to play a game that is so old, and that you have already played?” I couldn’t come with a logic explanation for two reasons, because there are so many reasons to relive the game and because he wouldn’t understand if I tried to explain. He never played MGS4 because “it’s too boring, I just want to shoot people!”. Now you can be already thinking, “hey but not every kid is like that” or “maybe he just doesn’t like stealth games and you are generalizing it too much”. Maybe, maybe not. It’s just that it feels, most of the gamers I know don’t just prefer to play a game that goes straight to the action, but they discard any other options immediately. And I notice this on the younger ones, and on those that hadn’t played any games until they were 15 or 16 years old. Though the ones that played from younger ages not only have a list of great favorite games (appellative, complex, immersive) but also “specialized” in a specific genre and they ended up being really good at those types of games. But that is for another time.
Now, what does this generation thing have to do with the industry?
Although there are way more reasons to justify the quality, or lack of it, of games today, one of them is definitely the target audience. The games I mentioned before, like Modern Warfare and the likes, sell so good because they managed to hit a target audience that prefers instant action and gratification (although sometimes playing these games online can be frustrating) and because they are simple. Think about it, playing FIFA, Modern Warfare or Need for Speed is easy. Mastering them on the other hand is not. And that is the part of the competitiveness that makes people go for these kinds of games rather than one that makes you think more for no immediate rewards, even worse when there is no one on the other side to brag when you win. The kind of reward that a game with a complex set of characters and story-line gives you is totally different from the kind given to you by an “instant action” game. I believe the audience that prefers instant gratification is much bigger than the rest.
All of this makes the industry produce more for that target audience, and if it sells, why the hell wouldn’t they produce even more? Sometimes I feel that no more really story driven immersive games will be made again, but that is just my stupid subconscious speaking when I am sleepy.
Lets get back to me one more time before I’ll let you go to bed or play a little bit more.
One example of a game that could have a good story but that the game-play ends up ruining it, is inFamous. I got so bored of playing it that I didn’t have the will to go through the same process again and again, to know what would happen to the characters, to the city itself, to that world. I sacrificed a probably good story because I felt I was wasting time by doing the same things over and over.
Now, for instance, Darksiders looks like a game that you end up doing the same thing over and over again, but… why does it stick in my memory all the places I’ve been through in the game? Why do I remember the lines of the characters? Why, being a hack n’ slash type of game, I feel I did more than just that? Why do I feel compassion with War from the beginning as he is being accused of something he didn’t do? That is what I miss the most, a game that is so immersive that I don’t feel like I am playing it, I feel that I am the game. The game-play feels so natural that sometimes I don’t even remember I am playing it, it feels I am living the story itself, that I’m not just controlling the character, that I feel like him, her or them.
Maybe I just need to look better, and get myself some extra hours to find and play these games, because I’m sure there are some hiding from me under some rock in a dark corner of the video-game world.
Blurred Journal 