Gamer Compulsion

What compels us to do stuff ?

I'm in a bit of a weird phase at the moment with the gaming. I have a bunch of games that I've bought recently but haven't played yet and a much bigger list of games that I never finished. And then there's the others which I go back to time & time again.

I played my first session for a while of Guild Wars 2 last night and have to admit that I really didn't enjoy it much at all. That's a curious one, because when it comes to gameplay it's mostly there and it is genuinely one of the better MMOs I've played. And that's all-time, including GW1, City of Heroes (very meh), Eve and WoW.

MMOs hit that compulsion thing pretty hard. Especially Eve with its player driven universe. Eve is the best example of a game that compels its players to keep in there in order to keep up with what friends are doing. Eve has a fairly freeform party setup which allows up to 250 players to be in the same fleet. That's up from a party of 5 in most MMOs or a raid of 25-40. So the more players you have in the fleet, the more powerful that fleet is. But one strength of Eve is that a small group of strong players with a fleet balanced across the ship types can and will take apart a much larger group of disorganised players.

So why don't I play Eve any more ? Well - it's 90% grind, 9% boredom and 1% sheer terror. There's a lot of grind needed to prepare your character for pvp. Most of the pvp time I had was boredom as we didn't find anyone to fight, with that 1% being when things happen.

The problem with the grind is that you find that you're spending so many more hours in the game doing preparation work for what's supposed to be the fun part. And that's where a game starts feeling like a second job.

If a game is becoming so important that it feels like a second job, or it is becoming more important than your actual job : GIVE UP THE GAME. I see that at work too, where organising their fantasy football league takes more time than they put into their job (that cost us big time). I used to run the project's indoor cricket team and we got consistently good results too, typically being 3rd in a league of 11-12. I gave up running that because it ended up taking too much time away from the day job.

No game is that important and if it is approaching that, you've become addicted to the point where the game is no longer entertainment. I guess WoW became that for me in the early days, although that was a particularly strange time. I realised what it was doing to me and gave up the guild leader position before something broke in my head.

I'm not feeling that compulsion with Guild Wars 2, although it is a better game than SWTOR.

That's curious that - so many games tick so many of the right boxes but when it comes down to actually playing them, it feels like a chore after a while instead of fun. I'd put the following games in that list : all MMOs, Borderlands, Skyrim, Terraria, Mass Effect 3. And there's a bunch more too.

Having a feeling of being compelled to keep up with the less enjoyable games distracts away from some of the unplayed games I have that I know would be huge fun : Beyond Good & Evil, Machinarium, Botanicula, Trine 2. And one I'm still looking at : Kerbal Space Programme.

So how about the games I do play way too much ? There's usually a good reason for that.

Story - Deus Ex HR has an excellent story and I feel another playthrough coming ... Similar with Mass Effect 1 and 2 (3 wasn't so great).

Simplicity yet depth - Moo2 and FTL definitely have this. As does the ancient Neverwinter Nights which had me obsessed before the MMOs took over.

Mindset - Settlers IV.

Yep. I have a game that I'll play just to put me in a particular mindset. If I'm needing a bit of mind numbing strategy, I'll fire up Settlers IV. It's a very slow Real Time Strategy and I have a build order that takes a very long time to mature. If my brain is buzzing, Settlers IV helps to calm it down. It's nowhere near the best RTS type game but it works for me.

Not much gaming today though. There's been F1 streaming from BBC (what the hell is wrong with Youtube's playback ? No issues on BBC, yet continual whirly-waits on Youtube) and we're currently at half time in the second cricket of the day.

Fingers crossed that England can overtake India's total. It'll finish just before I'm due to head out to the Wishing Well for drinks & munchies with the Eve crew. I'm done with Eve as a game but I still keep up with how the Volition Cult is getting on. They're a good mob and I count a lot of them as good friends. I've managed to stay in touch, whereas the WoW mob showed how they got a little too addicted to that game.

Curious how the people in a game renowned for spies and politics don't have a problem staying in touch but the people (Mercs) in WoW went a little crazy. But that's a curious one for another day.

Right now - it's England batting and me trying to avoid the compulsion to start off another HMS Iceangel run in FTL :-).

PS I also just picked up Alone in the Dark (1992 with its 2 sequels) and the two Independence War games from Good Old Games. Gotta find time to do more with those than just listen to the soundtracks.