Open World Blues

2015 was a wonderful year in gaming. I mean we got Batman, The Witcher 3, Metal Gear Solid V, Fall Out 4, Xenoblade Chronicles X (XCX), and a whole list of other blockbusters. Hundreds of hours of content released in a single year, and all I can think about is all that time. Vast and sprawling worlds have been made for me to explore and enjoy—and there is so much to see and do in them—but I can't help thinking of the lack of time there is to do so.

2015 brought that realization: I simply didn’t have time to enjoy every game I wanted to. My backlog of Steam games is so big that I don't even remember what games are in my library! I sometimes peruse games on sale only to realize that I already own them. For some reason, discovering that I already own the game makes me averse to actually playing it.

So I took a step back and decided to forgo my Steam backlog. I had this sense of wonder with the gaming world in 2015, simply because I played the games I really wanted to play—and played them to completion. Then, when I was done, I would find another game and play that to completion as well. It was almost like I was a kid again (except for the work and time restrictions and the—hoiven mayven!). For someone who has nearly 200 games in his Steam library alone, this shift to focusing on a few games until they were done was refreshing.

But the games I played last year are all open world games. Besides a slight detour with The Talos Principle and Rocket League (more on this game in a later post), I sunk hours and hours in Batman Arkham Knight, The Witcher 3, and Metal Gear Solid V, It took me the whole year to beat just these three games. I spent so much time on them that I haven't even scratched the surface of XCX.

Despite how well made these games are, I guess I'm getting burnt out  I am all for having the freedom to travelling the world of the game as you please, but it seems like each game throws the kitchen sink at you while you flounder around in the water searching for a life vest. Batman, being the worst offender, had a supposedly small city filled to the brim with content. The Witcher, despite being the beautiful adventure that it was, was ridiculously huge. I mean, it took me hours—real time hours—just to get to certain places in the game. The map was always littered with question marks to explore. Metal Gear Solid V made it a pain to do stealth missions because you had to travel miles just to get to your destination. It all felt like meaningless gameplay—no, it actually felt like negative gameplay. I mean traveling from point A to point B was a detriment since there were guards you could easily miss.

And it took XCX to finally burn me out when it comes to open worlds. I originally was super excited for this game when it was announced, but it ended up being my downfall. When I got the game, I came home and tried to dive into it, but once I saw sheer amount of information on the screen and struggled to read the small font size, my brain shut down. The towering landscapes and the staggering amount of customization options were everything I wanted in a game, but with this vastness of the landscape and plethora of choices came the feeling of a lack of progress: the sense of adventure in XCX was lost. My virtual journeys through these multiple worlds have left me, well, virtually tired. Maybe I just need a break before I can dive into such a large game again.

I always wondered why there was criticism of linear games. Those types of games can still be fun, challenging, and story-driven in ways sandbox games do not seem to be.

I understand there are no set rules for gaming and that trends and popularity dictate the saturation of the market, but I don't think I like the "do everything and go anywhere" trend. It just doesn't appeal to me as an adult gamer. When I was little, I used to rate games based on content. If a game was 80 hours long, it was great, whether the story was coherent or not. But if a game was less than 20 hours, it was too short to be any good. It was over too soon. Even if the game was great, as a kid I thought that a game that short would leave me wanting more. It was deficient because I would always be waiting for its sequel. Still, there was that feeling about games—something to look forward to even if the game was short. But now games don’t give me that feeling anymore. They saturate my palate with so much filler that by the end, I’m a bloated mess. I view games as accomplishments now, or rather experiences to check off on an imaginary list that I need to have to keep my “gamer membership card” or something.

The saddest realization I've come to is that I will someday have to give up gaming. I don't think I could sustain a healthy “real world” existence if games go the way of Sword Art Online. Or maybe I might be eating my words in 20 years. Maybe the pull of virtual reality would be too strong for me to resist. But,  that were the case, I would have lost a part of my gamer’s soul. To completely replace this “real” world for one constructed virtually would be an utter resignation of my humanity as I see it. It would mean that I am part of the population of people who have lost all motivation to recognize—

Whoa... this is too weird for the new year, so I'll end my train of thought there. I think I'll lay off the philosophical mumbo jumbo and make the next post a Comic Grab Bag.

To all my readers, have a safe year!