How Quickly We Lose Interest In Video Games
from the a-quick-hit dept
While folks are fretting about the impact of video games on aggressive thoughts and behaviors, Clive Thompson is taking an interesting look at how many gamers suddenly get sick of a game they’ve obsessed over for weeks. His theory is that once you’ve uncovered all the “layers” of how a game works, it loses much of its excitement. And, often, that happens well before you’ve actually played out the entire storyline in a game. He even points out that the more you play a game, the less you may like it, because you begin to notice the flaws and limitations built into the game.
Comments on “How Quickly We Lose Interest In Video Games”
uh....
Duh?
Re: uh....
EXACTLY! WE ALREADY KNOW
Re: Re: uh....
esp. true in recent games like Doom 3. It starts off and is scary and dark which works for a little while but after about 2 hours of not being able to see and expecting the same thing it looses its alure.
Re: all too true
Yeah, I usually love id games, and I didn’t even make it out of the Alpha Labs before I was bored out of my mind with DOOM 3. Never finished the game, and didn’t buy the expansion. HL2 on the other hand was gripping, and I played it all the way through. Was a blast.
I’m playing F.E.A.R now which is pretty decent. It’s not HL2 by any stretch, but still good. Also playing Quake 4, which pretty much sucks, but I’ve been playing Quake games since qtest.exe came out (bout 10 years). Makes me feel nostalgic for the days when shooters were basically new. I’m shocked at how much Q4 reminds me of DOOM3, and even appears to use many of the DOOM 3 art assets. id needs to forget about making games, and just concentrate on building game engines and technology. I know they are working with 3rd party developers now on games like Q4, but if they were up to the task, these games would be much better.
I’m looking forward to Enemy Territory: Quake Wars though, since I’m a hardcore Battlefield 2 player who loves large outdoor battles.
As for MMORPGs, I played Star Wars Galaxies as my first MMORPG ever. I played it for about a year, which was how long it took me to get sick of it. I would have stayed for a lot longer had they found a way to create more dynamic content. This is a problem for all games, and the subscription model in general. Once we explore all there is to explore, the game gets old.
Game companies either need to crank out new content faster, or find a way to make dynamic content if they want to keep people around paying to play their MMORPG longer. I can put up with game bugs, as long as they aren’t show stoppers. It’s the lack of fresh content that makes me leave an otherwise fun game.
There aer some serious Dungeons and Dragons dork game developers who need to step out of their Tolkien roots, and make some more MMO’s that are not Fantasy based. I prefer sci-fi themes myself, but would be willing ot try ANYTHING other than fantasy. Last time I looked online, there are about 40 new fantast based MMOs in various stages of dev. I know I’m not alone in this. Yes, there are a few other-than-fantasy MMOs out there, but VERY few, and they are aging. No good new MMO’s for Xmas 2005??
I was going to bite my lip and check out Guild Wars, but I hear it’s mostly instanced. No thanks, I like thew social aspect of true MMOs.
Re: Re: all too true
I know how you feel MindTrigger, but most are doing fantasy simply because it has worked in the past. Are devs afraid to try now a genre? = Still, there?s the fantasy mmo Vanguard: Sage of Heroes that?s shaping up and expected to launch sometime in 2006(early to mid-2006 at a guess).
Re: uh....
wow! people are getting bored of games quicker, AND people are going less to the movie theaters.
one would think that there needs to be a change in entertainment — possibly some innovation; something new perhaps?
FPS (First Person Shooters) get old after a while — especially after doing it for 10 years now. Same goes for redundant platformers and those driving games where everything in one game is identical to another (except the scenery & rear/cockpit of the vehicle you’ve chosen)
Entertainment should be stimulating. If i play a game and its the same repetitive stuff that has been done some place else — since 10 years ago — I’m going to get bored quickly. Same goes for movies who have no actual stimulating content.
The reason there is more hype about Game systems and less about the actual games is purely due to the lack of innovation on the programmers part — consumers want to see NEW stuff.
A 1991 automobile with a new paint job may be nice and may be easy to sell… But it’s still the same 1991 automobile it was before the new paint job.
no.. really?
thats obvious!
umm
yah…
Xbox Live
This is one of the reasons I love live. Some games which I would probably get bored of live longer for me because of the competition.
No Subject Given
Not sure what this has to do with “xbox live” if anything, its a rip off because all other games (PC, PS2, DS, PSP) online gameplay is free (minus MMORPG’s) while the Microsoft charges.
I do agree that gamers are tending to loose interest faster because we have seen so much but we also must consider the high developments costs of games now adays too.
No Subject Given
Ya, I am sick of the movie and game industry. The $ is the bottom line and everybody is afraid to move from a “winning” business model…
– hey, this is one reason I like the whole “mod” thing but not just limited to the look, but game play and engine as well.
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Yeah the bummer is, the newer generation of games/game engines are so complex that full mod projects have become too hard to accomplish. Even making a single multiplayer map with original art is a HUGE task. Imagine what it would take to make a single player addon to a game like HL2, or a Total Conversion of DOOM 3? I’ve seen countless mods start up and fail because it’s too damn much work, and you need a volunteer group the size of a REAL game company to put one together.
Mods were the main reasons games like the original Half Life, Unreal, Quake, etc continued to sell copies for years, even if they were “bargain bin” copies. Without the mod community these games don’t last more than a year or so before they are considered old. There were so many mods for Quake 3 over the years that I had to re-purchase it 3-4 times for various reasons.
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What incentive do game developers have to move to developing other game styles when you keep buying whatever shit they produce?
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Higher Sales
Hopefully there comes a point when even the average read-no-reviews joe will realise that the next Doom (likely XXVI by this point) isn’t worth buying.
Old games are still cool!
On the other hand, I still like to play old Atari and Nintendo games. In the future, the past will all be emulated!
A single game these days takes up more information than virtually the entire history of games up to a point. But, that history has far more variety than any new game today. Why don’t more game developers take time to add more intricacies to their games? Older games are more attractive for what they suggest than what they are.
Not just games
… hence divorce.