Inside the mind of a veteran gamer.
Why do we game?
For many it's the challenge. Someone has effectively just dared you to risk a quarter and try to drive that car, or assemble falling blocks, or battle through endless armies of who-knows-what.
For others it's escapism. Lose yourself in the tale of four adventurers seeking to rid the world of a prophesied menace, and do so in a manner that no television show or motion picture can emulate.
In the end, we do so because it's fun.
More and more, however, it seems like people are gaming for the wrong reasons, ususally surrounding the concept of "achievements" that really only serve to show that a person has spent more time in a game than they necessarily wanted when they were initially drawn into the game. This isn't the "replay value" that we desired in generations past, this is something manufactured to simulate that positive feeling towards a title. A person did not play "Super Mario Bros." over and over again because the NES told him he or she had not yet seen the fireworks on each and every level. A person replays this game for the same reason one may reread a particularly beloved book: it was the cause of positive feelings and it was crafted so well that even years later, it can cause those same feelings again.
Too often I see and hear about people grumbling as they struggle through content spoon-fed to them in order to attain some goal that wasn't ever in mind when they'd original purchased a game. I myself am no better, as I've hammered at games just to get a sprinkling of points towards a "gamer score" that no normal person gives a darn about. Is a person any less of a gamer because he or she has perfected an aspect of a game that was not considered by the dev team and therefore is not tracked by an achievement? What of the gamers that are happily enjoying software on platforms that have no such gimmicks?
No place is this more endemic than in the realm of the MMORPG: that dystopia created on the promise of gaming with the community at large.
Here is a genre that gives us a means to escape our normal lives as numbered cogs in a faceless machine and what has it morphed into? A myriad of online worlds where you, the player, are commanded to follow a specific set of rules to become a numbered cog in a faceless machine known by names such as "guild," "free company," and "raid group." This is not the genre that was envisioned by Lord British when Ultima Online was created, but alas, I think that dream died with the assassination of Lord British himself in UO's beta.
No longer are players individuals seeking to save (or perhaps bring some level of destruction to) a world, in part or whole, with the goal of reaching a peaceful end where they may retire into a comfortable life of a merchant. No, there will be no peace today. That horrible entity merely slumbers, waiting for the next opportunity to rear its ugly head and inevitably give the players a few more points towards the MMO's version of a gamer score: "end-game gear."
The players themselves seem content in making this even worse by clamoring over each other in order to be the first to kill an obviously unkillable boss, or wear some outfit that merely serves to make defeating the unkillable boss faster for...another outfit? Inevitably these people demand more unkillable bosses, literally demanding that their world be made worse for the sake of their greed, caring not for a community that is now beneath them.
From this comes the biggest issue I see with the MMO genre: in a game that should be endless, why do we feel the need to have an "end game?"
Of course I know the simple-minded corporate answer for this, if the players beat a game, they leave a game. For a genre that subsists on monthly fees or microtransactions, this is the end-all, be-all rule. But in that answer lies the problem. So much time and effort is spent developing a progression via just combat that other aspects are either just tacked on as a "value add" feature, ignored entirely or sneered at with derision. Games that have endured the test of time have, for the most part, avoided this modern rule. An "end game" is never reached as the game has no end. In fact, it's very likely that even within the same piece of software, two different players are playing different "games" entirely!
I implore gamers everywhere, please think about what you are doing. Are you playing a game you enjoy? Have you found yourself absorbed into the community and the online world? Or are you, in fact, existing a bizarro world where you're doing 8 hours of work a day and paying someone else for the privilege? If it's the latter, then perhaps it's time to sit back and realize "I won!" Then, at the very least put your monthly fee towards a new world to save. Better yet, find a world where you can retire as a blacksmith in some backwater town and tell stories of your previous life as an adventurer prior to taking some debilitating injury to an extremity.
For many it's the challenge. Someone has effectively just dared you to risk a quarter and try to drive that car, or assemble falling blocks, or battle through endless armies of who-knows-what.
For others it's escapism. Lose yourself in the tale of four adventurers seeking to rid the world of a prophesied menace, and do so in a manner that no television show or motion picture can emulate.
In the end, we do so because it's fun.
More and more, however, it seems like people are gaming for the wrong reasons, ususally surrounding the concept of "achievements" that really only serve to show that a person has spent more time in a game than they necessarily wanted when they were initially drawn into the game. This isn't the "replay value" that we desired in generations past, this is something manufactured to simulate that positive feeling towards a title. A person did not play "Super Mario Bros." over and over again because the NES told him he or she had not yet seen the fireworks on each and every level. A person replays this game for the same reason one may reread a particularly beloved book: it was the cause of positive feelings and it was crafted so well that even years later, it can cause those same feelings again.
Too often I see and hear about people grumbling as they struggle through content spoon-fed to them in order to attain some goal that wasn't ever in mind when they'd original purchased a game. I myself am no better, as I've hammered at games just to get a sprinkling of points towards a "gamer score" that no normal person gives a darn about. Is a person any less of a gamer because he or she has perfected an aspect of a game that was not considered by the dev team and therefore is not tracked by an achievement? What of the gamers that are happily enjoying software on platforms that have no such gimmicks?
No place is this more endemic than in the realm of the MMORPG: that dystopia created on the promise of gaming with the community at large.
Here is a genre that gives us a means to escape our normal lives as numbered cogs in a faceless machine and what has it morphed into? A myriad of online worlds where you, the player, are commanded to follow a specific set of rules to become a numbered cog in a faceless machine known by names such as "guild," "free company," and "raid group." This is not the genre that was envisioned by Lord British when Ultima Online was created, but alas, I think that dream died with the assassination of Lord British himself in UO's beta.
No longer are players individuals seeking to save (or perhaps bring some level of destruction to) a world, in part or whole, with the goal of reaching a peaceful end where they may retire into a comfortable life of a merchant. No, there will be no peace today. That horrible entity merely slumbers, waiting for the next opportunity to rear its ugly head and inevitably give the players a few more points towards the MMO's version of a gamer score: "end-game gear."
The players themselves seem content in making this even worse by clamoring over each other in order to be the first to kill an obviously unkillable boss, or wear some outfit that merely serves to make defeating the unkillable boss faster for...another outfit? Inevitably these people demand more unkillable bosses, literally demanding that their world be made worse for the sake of their greed, caring not for a community that is now beneath them.
From this comes the biggest issue I see with the MMO genre: in a game that should be endless, why do we feel the need to have an "end game?"
Of course I know the simple-minded corporate answer for this, if the players beat a game, they leave a game. For a genre that subsists on monthly fees or microtransactions, this is the end-all, be-all rule. But in that answer lies the problem. So much time and effort is spent developing a progression via just combat that other aspects are either just tacked on as a "value add" feature, ignored entirely or sneered at with derision. Games that have endured the test of time have, for the most part, avoided this modern rule. An "end game" is never reached as the game has no end. In fact, it's very likely that even within the same piece of software, two different players are playing different "games" entirely!
I implore gamers everywhere, please think about what you are doing. Are you playing a game you enjoy? Have you found yourself absorbed into the community and the online world? Or are you, in fact, existing a bizarro world where you're doing 8 hours of work a day and paying someone else for the privilege? If it's the latter, then perhaps it's time to sit back and realize "I won!" Then, at the very least put your monthly fee towards a new world to save. Better yet, find a world where you can retire as a blacksmith in some backwater town and tell stories of your previous life as an adventurer prior to taking some debilitating injury to an extremity.