My relationship with video games has changed drastically since childhood. I used to be constantly excited and looking forward to multiple upcoming releases, and could be mesmerized for hours preoccupying myself with extremely slow, exploratory gameplay that was often unfruitful in the context of actually completing the game. Now I find myself trying to fit gaming into the nooks and crannies of my schedule, intensely weighing the worth of doing so against getting ahead in my responsibilities, and often finding the new games I do play just don’t send my brain enough dopamine dings to feel worth finishing.
Part of this is obviously due to maturation, updating of perspectives and priorities, and to my realizing that bragging about Platinum trophies doesn’t offer the same social currency it did back on the playground. Those of us now in our 30’s and 40’s should fully expect an evolved point of view, but is part of this change in experience due to the games themselves? Is there at least a little validity in that dreadful inner voice that ushers us ever closer to actually uttering that age-revealing phrase, “Back in my day, games were better!”? This is the question a new video from I’m Not Playing That looks to answer.
The video discusses the antiquated venture of going to a video rental store like Blockbuster, (if that concept is foreign to you because you’re not old enough, you’re probably not the target audience for this conversation). Those of us familiar may recall the sense of nearly overwhelming possibility as we looked at walls filled with potential bangers.
Was each and every title on the shelves an actual banger? Surely not, but when paired with senses of excitement and novelty that the late 90’s game renting experience brought with it, even the Superman 64 box glowed with the aura of a long lost treasure.
Perusing the Xbox Games Pass or Steam Store should, in theory, produce a similar sense of wonder and excitement, but this seems not to be the case as we so often hear about peoples’ backlogs of purchased but unplayed titles they may or may not eventually get around to.
One spirit screams, “We have to play this all weekend with minimal and strategic bathroom and food breaks!” while the other murmurs, “This might be fun to get around to at some point, maybe.”
The relationship between gamer and game was perhaps more simple, more committed, and more open to wonder in the earlier era. The modern atmosphere is one of total exploration as players and reviewers rapidly examine every game from every angle and instantly share their findings with the world via the internet.
There are obvious advantages to this approach, but it also creates somewhat sterilizing standards that tell us, in an increasingly precise manner, what’s enjoyable and what isn’t.
Everything is fed through a processor that gives it some kind of score that may or may not be arbitrary to us, and when a particular game does well it’s instantly honed in on and re-created en masse, often to disappointingly diminishing results.
Where exactly did the magic seep out? Did we become less easy to please as our understanding of the world grew? Did games grow in quantity but become watered down and/or see their inspiration replaced with algorithmic data findings?
The answer is likely “yes” to both, but go with I’m Not Playing That as he takes us through a more detailed examination of the phenomenon that is the evolving relationship between gamers and the games they play.