It’s Not Me, It’s You
When things were bad in my life, and people were being shitty, video games have always been there. When I was stressed in high school because of whatever meaningless teenage crisis I was having that week, I often would escape into Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger. When I got stuck living with my sister and my environment was a living hell, I sought refuge in Star Ocean or Tomb Raider. These days, I still play video games but I don’t find them as enjoyable as I used to and earlier today I made an off the cuff statement to my closest friend about the ills of modern gaming:
“Because modern gaming is an endless hellscape of DLCs, seasons, expansion packs, in game purchases, dailies (as in daily quests), endless grinding, and monotony. We miss the older generations of games where it was "complete" when you bought it.”
So in essence, modern gaming, my problem isn’t me, it’s you. You’ve changed; your industry has changed as a whole. Matured. Grown up. Survived. And in my unwanted opinion, not for the better. Kids these days don’t know what it was like or where games have come from (unless they take it upon themselves to seek older games out) they just go about their business in whatever games they like to play and pretty much just stick to newer or current things.
I’ve been playing Elden Ring for what feels like an eternity (at the time of this writing I’m at 160 hours) and while I’m enjoying my time exploring the open world and seeing what I can get to and discover, I need this game to be over already so I can move on to the next games on my list. It’s not that I’m not enjoying my time, it’s that I feel like this could have ended several hours ago. When you have the problem of ‘hey what’s that over there?’ like I do in open world games, this game is pure torture but of the best kind. But after 160 hours, I’m kinda over it and want to see some sort of resolution.
Another thing wrong with modern gaming beyond game length or lifespan, is choice paralysis. In my youth, games were few and far between not only because it was mom and dad flipping the bill when it came to new games coming in but because releases weren’t as frequent. These days there’s a virtual digital vomit on to each gaming marketplace every week and we’re drowning in choices. That’s both a good and bad thing in my opinion. Some small indie game that a small group of people spent countless hours building gets released only to be steamrolled by whatever AAA gorilla happens to come out the same week. But in the wake of AAA gorillas that take 100 to 200 or more hours to finish, I’m finding these small indie games more palatable.
It also is not helping things when companies realize people from my generation are waxing nostalgic for some of those old games from back in the day and have decided to re-release them with new visuals and in some cases some new (and unnecessary or unwanted) content. It’s almost like the universe (perhaps the matrix itself if you subscribe to simulation theory) is like “well, I can’t give you back your mom and dad but I can remake all the games you played back then.” Perhaps something is trying to reach me through the static. Sure I don’t mind making another run through Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI for the Nth time, it’s fine, my backlog can wait a few hours more, right?
Growing up in a small town in suburban North Carolina, it never occurred to me in my youth that I'd go and do all this amazing stuff in my life or that I'd witness some of the things I've seen. If I could go back and tell kid me that I'd eventually own nearly one of every video game console there was and that we'd all be playing virtual reality games and have VR machines in our own homes, I'd have called you a liar for sure. If you'd also had told kid me that computers would be very widespread and that I'd someday own one (well, several) of my own, I'd have called you crazy since they were extremely expensive (not that they aren't now, but still). If you had also told me back then that I’d finally own copies of a lot of games that I’d poured over in old issues of Nintendo Power Magazine or GamePro or any of the other long gone print magazines, I’d have jumped for joy but not been thrilled when I find out this doesn’t happen until my early 40’s.
I also thought that maybe joining the Game Club in ResetEra’s Discord would maybe help me chip away at my backlog, but those people are so conniving and ruthless about what they want to win the raffle or even play that its turned me off participating completely. In the last few weeks I’ve gotten a couple pings from the server about rules changes to the raffles and I just can’t be bothered. I’ve even stopped participating in chat (mostly due to Elden Ring and work) or even bothering to read people’s thoughts about what games they’ve been playing. It’s also no help that an acquaintance of mine and I have been playing co-op Portal 2, which I remember finishing back in 2011 with Stuart.
As much as I don’t want to, because the very idea makes me feel like both a cheat and a failure, I’m just going to have to go through my backlog and decide whether or not I’m going to play this game or that. I only have so much time and so many things I want to accomplish gaming wise that choices will need to be made. Stay tuned.