A gamer's New Year's resolution

I love games. There, I said it. The secret’s out!

When I am on the bus I play my 3DS, when I am waiting five minutes between appointments I play on my droid, and when I get home I play my PS3, 360, iPad or PC. However in recent years my love of games has taken a somewhat darker and less rewarding turn and instead of being a honest and enthusiastic lover, I have become a disinterested philanderer jumping from one game to the next often without giving the game enough of a chance to shine.

Where am I? Who am I? Oh… it must be new year right?

I mean it’s just so easy right? Everytime I turn on my computer there’s a thousand blogs, interviews, tweets and developers pushing different games, touting new groundbreaking systems, fascinating stories and intriguing characters. Everyday my mental list of games I must play gets longer and longer and focussing on any one title becomes increasingly difficult.

I love these guys too much.

This problem is made worse by the ease with which we can acquire games, Steam, the App Store, Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and the eShop (included begrudgingly; here’s why) aswell as countless others have all made the purchasing of games as simple as reading a review. When I was growing up, buying a new game meant a twenty-mile-round trip to the nearest Blockbuster accompanied by an irritated parent (or worse, sta grandparent) who couldn’t understand such an absurdly expensive hobby. Although it may have been annoying, this hassle added to each game’s value, and while I don’t miss the hassle I do miss that feeling of holding a new game in my hand. I miss excitedly reading the instruction manual on the way home and racing from the car to my bedroom as fast as I could to play my new game. It’s something I hope I can recapture.

The realization was like an evoker blast to the head.

Actually I only noticed this problem a few months ago when I was on a trip in China, which (in case you didn’t know) is fucking huge, so trips take a long time. Even longer when your stingy boss (not Games in Asia) will only pay for buses! During this long period of enforced captivity, I began playing Persona 3 and it blew my mind how much I enjoyed it. It had been so long since I had sunk that amount of time, effort and energy into one game that I had forgotten how exhilarating it can be to get completely entrapped within one game. By the end of the trip I had connected to the characters, the story resonated with me and I felt that curious bittersweet sensation of game both enjoyed and completed. It was a damn good feeling!

When I returned I acquired a copy of The Last of Us Us and once again gave it my complete and undivided attention! I completed the game in three days and enjoyed every clicker-blasting moment of it. Now I am restarting Fire Emblem: Awakening and attacking it with the same abandon and finding it so much more rewarding than when I played it off and on.

Another shockingly good game worthy of undivided attention!

My resolution is simple: focus on a few games and play to completion. Now obviously this will not be applied to everything, for example don’t expect to see me maxing out the character in every MMORPG I play and I certainly won’t be completing games I don’t enjoy but the general principle is sound.