The Real Purpose of Gaming? (Article)

Have you ever found yourself in the state of mind that you just don’t understand where gaming is going anymore? You find yourself so overwhelmed with newer and “better” games all throughout the year and for some reason it feels like something is just…missing? We look back at the games from the past, before the great console wars when many of us were just teenagers living out our high school years, and many of us begin to wonder if today’s games are actually worse than those from the old days.

What ever happened to playing for hours on end trying to find all the pieces of the Trifoce, or playing games ten times over just to find everything that there was to find in the game? I mean sure there are trophy/achievement hunters, but the drive of that system isn’t the same. I mean just playing for fun and nothing else, not trying to spend hours grinding for a trophy/achievement that half the time is a pain to get for nothing more than cheap bragging rights. Don’t even get me started on online multi-player. It is one thing to make friends and hold friendly competitions with each other in shooters or go on a massive co op campaign in games like Boarderlands, but the way random matchmaking for games death-matches in shooters and such is a little sickening. I’m not saying it is a bad thing, but some people live for this kind of gaming where trash talk and bragging is at a peak rather than enjoy a friendly competition and making friends through good sportsmanship. So basically what I’m asking here is what is to blame for these gaming voids in our lives and causing multi-player to become so immature? Is it our constantly increasing expectations that developers just can’t seem to keep up with, or perhaps it is the devs selling out a great gaming experience for flashy graphics?

The answer is both to a certain extent. Some devs these days seem to just be releasing the same re-hashed games with minimal differences just because the sales are practically guaranteed. Now from a business standpoint that isn’t a bad idea, nor does this make these games bad. That being said, it is very hard to get the replay value one would normally get from playing a game with innovative features and a deep storyline. I mean when you finish the single player game most people are pretty much done with it, unless there is a multi-player which that person enjoys. One thing to remember however is that these types of games are actually a sign of just how much the gaming community has grown over the years. Gaming isn’t just something for the kids to do when they finish their homework anymore. These days gamers consist of a large crowd of people, and with that large crowd of people comes a much wider range of gaming tastes and preferences.