My relationship with video games has changed drastically since I was a kid. I used to be constantly excited and looking forward to multiple upcoming releases and could spend hours enthralled by extremely slow, exploratory gameplay that was often barren when it came to actually finishing the game. Now I try to fit gaming into the nooks and crannies of my schedule, intensely weighing whether it’s worth doing so in order to meet my obligations, and often finding that the new games I play just don’t send my brain enough dopamine rushes to feel like they’re worth finishing.
Part of that is, of course, due to maturity, updating perspectives and priorities, and my realization that bragging about platinum trophies no longer carries the same social acceptance as it did on the playground. Those of us now in our 30s and 40s should certainly expect an evolved perspective, but is part of that change in experience due to the games themselves? Is that awful inner voice that draws us ever closer to uttering the age-revealing phrase, “Games were better in my day!” actually at least a little bit true? That’s the question a new video from I’m Not Playing That attempts to answer.
The video is about the old-fashioned endeavor of going to a video 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 entertainment). Those of us familiar with it may remember the feeling of almost overwhelming possibility as we looked at walls full of potential blockbusters.
Was every single title on the shelves a real smash hit? Certainly not, but coupled with the feeling of excitement and newness that came with renting games in the late 90s, even the Superman 64 box set exuded the aura of a long-lost treasure.
Browsing the Xbox Games Pass or Steam store should, in theory, evoke a similar sense of wonder and excitement, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, as we so often hear from people who have a backlog of purchased but unplayed titles that they may or may not get around to eventually.
One ghost screams, “We need to play this all weekend, with minimal and strategic bathroom and food breaks!” while the other mutters, “Maybe it’ll be fun to get around to it sometime.”
The relationship between player and game may have once been simpler, more engaging, and more open to surprise. The modern atmosphere is one of total exploration, as players and testers quickly examine each game from every angle and instantly share their findings with the world via the internet.
This approach has obvious advantages, but it also creates sterilizing standards that tell us more and more precisely what is fun and what is not.
Everything is run through a processor that assigns it some sort of score, which may or may not be arbitrary to us, and if a particular game does well, it’s immediately refined and recreated en masse, often with disappointingly poor results.
Where exactly did the magic go? Did we become less and less satisfied as our understanding of the world increased? Did the number of games increase but at the same time become watered down and/or did their inspiration get replaced by algorithmic data insights?
The answer to both questions is probably yes, but stick with I’m Not Playing That as it takes us through a more detailed examination of the phenomenon of the evolving relationship between gamers and the games they play.
