I am an attorney in my mid-30's, married with a small child, and a lifelong gamer. I remember being blown away by Pitfall on the Atari 2600, playing games on a tape drive attached to my friend's Commodore 64 (do young people even know that computers used to run off of screeching tapes?), lusting with envy at my friends who had Colecovision, and then one-upping them by getting my first Nintendo (which I had to share with my brother). I've been gaming for so long, its pretty safe to say its a life-long hobby at this point.
As I've gotten older, obviously I have less time for gaming. When I was in college, I used to look at a game that took weeks and months to finish as a great thing - and moreover, a great value, since I had relatively few dollars and comparitively bucketloads of time. These days, a game like that annoys the hell out of me. Unless the gameplay is fantastic and varied, I don't want the experience to take me half a year to finish - I'll be bored to tears before I'm ever done.
And thus we come to the reason for this blog. I review various gaming websites and magazines before I make my purchases, notably IGN.com, Game Informer, or GamePro. And while those guys do a great job, I often find that they are speaking to an audience that doesn't include me. For example, lots of publications praised Fallout 3 for the massive amount of things you can do in the game world, praising the over 100 hours of "content" in the game. Don't get me wrong, Fallout 3 is a great game - but at the end of the day all of that content wasn't nearly as valuable to a guy who can fit in at most 5-10 hours of gaming a week, especially when the main storyline was fairly unsatisfying.
At the end of the day, I can't fault those reviews. The game DOES give an incredible amount of "value" in terms of content - you can play that game and nothing else for weeks (especially with the downloadable content that Bethesda has been providing), and therefore your $50 goes a long way. But for someone like me, for whom paying $50 is not a big deal, but finding 100 hours is near impossible, it just wasn't that great a value or a game (still a good game, but not my favorite).
That's the perspective I'm hoping to bring to this blog - how gaming fits into the life of someone with serious work responsibilities, family obligations, and an overall busy lifestyle. I'll be pointing out aspects of games that matter to me, like:
- save mechanics - good luck telling a screaming infant, "wait until I reach a a save point!" - you'll wind up with a screaming wife.
- gaming session length - can you get anything accomplished in this game in a one-hour window? If not, its not going to fit my lifestyle.
- quality vs. quantity - having a ton of "content" is only great if the content is fun. I'd much rather pay for a tightly wound, well-crafted and entertaining game that only lasts 20 hours, than a 100+ hour grindfest where you do repetitive tasks over and over.
- lazy design - I don't have enough time to game, do you think I have time to read copious FAQ's and Game Guides to learn how to play the game? In the 21st century, no game should include content that you need to consult a FAQ to locate. If you want to make a game so complicated that it needs a guide, but it in game - I already paid your for the game, I shouldn't have to take on a research project just to play it.
Hopefully, I'll also be providing some perspective on how games have changed over the years, how they fit into a working adult's lifestyle (and how they do not) and other random thoughts that relate to gaming, work, and play. Thanks for stopping by, and feel free to comment, question, or virulently disagree!
Cool to see someone putting up some thoughts on games for people having time constraints. Yeah I used to love those 8 hour raids in EQ. Now? I have better things to do with my Saturday afternoons.
ReplyDeleteI think many of the things you've brought up has explained my love refound love of FPS games. I get on, play, finish a round, and drop off without a worry.