I’m not a big gamer, which might surprise many of you because I have a very long history with video games and my obsessions with them. I don’t shy away from talking about them with people who may or may not be interested in the subject, obviously this puts me squarely in the category of geek, nerd, or whatever other epithet you choose, and I’m fine with that. In fact I consider it more a badge of honor than a derogatory term. The reality is though, I’m a casual gamer with core sensiblities.
Rarely do I finish games and for good reason, my attention span barely lasts 8 hours per game; if I find the story and the game-play engrossing and fun, I can extend that span to about 12 hours before I begin losing interest. I don’t think I am in the minority here, so many games these days try and extend the game-play to 20, 40 and even 80+ hours. Often times the developers make you go on these ridiculous “fetch quests” where you have to revisit locations you’ve already been in order to collect something to enable you to continue. This isn’t fun and it’s a cheap way to extend the game. It’s a technique they used frequently in games from the 1990′s, particularly in 3rd-person, action-adventure games like Banjo-Kazooie and well, pretty much every game that came out of Rare. I don’t have the time to play this type of game these days, and I want the story to move along without it being held up because someone wants me to think I’m getting my money’s worth.
One such game I’m playing now, Prince of Persia does this. I am forced to go back through locations I’ve already played through to collect “Light Seeds” so I can gain powers that will allow me to progress. If running along walls and swinging from one pole to another wasn’t as fun as it is, I would have given up a long time ago. Even though this game extension technique is unforgivable in this day and age of games, reviewers still gave it high marks. Much higher than it deserves.
A couple of games I played recently did it right. One of my favorite series is Uncharted on the PlayStation 3. While Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves have a fair amount to collect, I don’t have to; I can go back later and collect the treasures in order to earn money to buy additional skins, behind-the-scenes videos, concept art and various other weapons, cheats and render modes. Thankfully the game-play and story is by-far the best experience a gamer can currently have. Another game that did it right was Assassin’s Creed II. In this game, there is literally hundreds of items to collect, and while there are a few you have to collect along the way, the developers presented it in a clever way that I didn’t mind going back, in fact I looked forward to going back and finding these things that fleshed out the story a little more.
I am currently playing Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Rocksteady did a great job on the collectibles. I don’t need them to progress, but I’m frequently presented with a riddle from the Riddler when I enter a stage encouraging me to find the answer. Although this is a game I want to get through quickly because I want to send it back to GameFly, I can’t help but take a little time to look around and explore my surroundings in the hopes the clever answer will make itself known. It is these touches that encourage me to continue, and makes the overall experience of finding these collectibles bearable.
I would much rather a game be six hours long and have a lot of things that I can go back and do once I finish the game than be 20 hours long and force me to collect stuff as I play. Like I mentioned in my examples, some games do it right and other games do it wrong. The core problem is, many developers don’t have enough respect for a gamer’s time, and that is why I’m a casual gamer with core sensibilities.
