Today’s article just makes me feel a bit old, or at least the reasoning for it does. Think back to when you were a kid. If you were anything like me, your priorities were school, friends and games. During the week it was easy to come home, finish your homework and immediately plop down in front of the ol’ NES for a few excruciating levels of BattleToads, or whatever other sadist-developed game was cool at the time. Fast-forward a little. You’re a bit older now, your console has twice as many bits and you realize that many of the games you are playing are meant to be finished, and you start doing just that. The schedule is still the same: school, friends and games. Only now, you can sit and finish a game in a night or three because, hey, you don’t have much else to do when you’re that young. But now you’re an adult. You still love games, and their narrative evolution drives you even more now to finish the ones you start. However, the schedule is now drastically different. Work, wife or girlfriend, family, friends, maybe kids, chores, errands, and the list goes on and on. Somewhere in there, you try and squeeze in some time for the hobby you love, but here (finally!) is my point and question: Do the different methods of consuming games over different lengths of time alter our experiences with them enough to alter our perception of them, and is there an ideal way to consume video games?
It was actually another medium that sent me down this path of questioning, comic books. When I had the time and disposable income, I was in line every Wednesday (New comic book day for those of you who deem yourself too cool) to pick up the stack of books that had arrived for me, and each week I would sit and read the newest installments of dozens of different series. Apply the “I’m older now” formula mentioned above, and I find myself without the time or spare change to commit to a weekly or monthly comic addiction. Unless it’s something that I absolutely can’t wait for, I now find myself consuming my books in the much more user-friendly trade paperback format. This is a collection of anywhere from 4-6 issues, often times bound together in a hardcover. No time spent each week trekking to the store, and no time spent meticulously bagging and boxing them. Just read a big chunk, and place it on the shelf.
This streamlined process comes with a cost though. I’m always behind on whatever the biggest new event is. You’re reading Marvel’s Seige stuff? I’m just now getting through Dark Reign. You’re witnessing the return of Bruce Wayne? I just finished Final Crisis. Now, as long as I don’t run into any major spoilers, this doesn’t really affect me too much, but at times, I can’t help but catch a glimpse of some news and wish I was all caught up already. My new method of consumption often leaves me feeling this way when it comes to comic-con time as well.
But let’s get back to games. While the evolution of consumption is not exactly like the one that took place with comics, a change has indeed occurred. Time and other commitments place more than a bit of strain on my virtual interactions, and I wonder what that does to the way I end up perceiving a game once I’ve finished it. There are now two ways in which I experience my games: The review way and the leisure way.
The review way is what happens when we review a game on the site. We don’t always get copies early, but we like to have a review up within a week of release. This leads to long nights trying to storm through what a title has to offer and doing my best to come up with some reasonable perspective of it. But does storming through a game in a couple days lead to the best reflection on the merits of a game? Do all reviewers need to slow it down a bit if they are gong to give us an accurate depiction of the game? What if they missed something? Forget reviewers for a second, how do you feel when you go through a game super fast? Do you feel like you got your money’s worth? Could the perceived shortness of the playthrough make you feel cheated even though you actually spent 12 hours in those two days playing the thing? Could you really get into the narrative if you blasted through it like that?
On the other side of the coin is the leisurely way. While this sounds like the better option, it can lead to problems too. There are some games, good games mind you, that I have started and never finished due to my inability to commit enough time to them, or I lose interest or can’t remember what the story was about. There are also games that I have finished over a long, drawn-out period of time that just didn’t do anything for me, not necessarily because they were bad at any particular thing, but because I wasn’t invested in any consistent way. It’s kind of like watching a television series, missing a few episodes, maybe catching one here or there, missing some more and then struggling to get back into it, if at all.
Speaking of television, it’s a great example of how we generally consume long-form narratives. Television shows, and comics for that matter, with any sort of continuity could be likened to games. Take one season of a show. It gets doled out to us one week at a time, sometimes with little breaks in between. Add a season up, and we’ve got anywhere from 12 to 22 hours of narrative; sounds a bit like a game. This format seems to work for television, but I’d say that if you tried the “once a week” approach to a game, you might end up with some of the issues from the leisure example. Of course you could be the type that goes on marathon runs of DVR purging, a practice that I am often guilty of, but then is that the same thing as the review playthrough?
At the end of all these questions, the only not-so-definitive answer is, “Whatever works best for you.” If you’re playing and you’re enjoying, then you’re doing it right. However, the next time you let a seven hour game drag you along for a month, I’d urge you to question whether or not the method in which you are consuming it is interfering with your experience. The same goes for the next time you feel cheated by a 15-hour game that only took you the weekend. Was the game too short, or did you not take the time to smell those pixilated roses? Let us know how long you spend on your games or what your choice method is in the comments!