Requiem for a has-been gamer

August 16, 2006 on 10:26 am | In Life, Playstyles

In this thread over at Grimwell, we've been discussing the most recent features announced for the World of Warcraft expansion.

But we then veered into what features target what types of players, and I realized, fully, where I am at as a gamer.

I'm just not equipped to take these games too seriously anymore. Not the way they define "serious" at least.

Taking these games serious is the realm of others in either different stages of their life, or simply with different lives. I peaked in my need for immersion with SWG, and it took a personal toll (though nothing irreparable, because I smarted up right quick). I'm never doing that again, for the same reasons I never bother with RMTing. I can appreciate why it's done, but neither is worth it to me. Games aren't feeding us through feeding tubes, so there's only so much of that real world anyone can afford to give up.

I like where things are headed for some folks. But it's also why things are also heading in a very different direction for others. 10 years from now, MMOs will not be defined by a person sitting at a computer playing within a singular graphical client to the exclusion of everything else around them. That's because I don't think the next generation of gamers would put up with that crap. They are the very essence of multi-tasking because they wish to maintain their beed on the pulse of [i]all[/i] things. WoW is going to be a dinosaur to them.

Personally, I love what's here. I can only afford to love it so much though. There will be games I'll never bother playing beyond what I can get for free at the various AGC/GDC/GenCon/micro-E3 events that come. I started realizing that with FFXI when it was at E3 in, err, 2004 I think. I'll never buy that game, nor Lineage 2, nor most of the recent Eastern imports. They require way more of me as a person than I have any interest in giving anymore. Looking back, I was pretty hardcore for a time in the early 2000s. I don't foresee a time in my life when I ever will be again. It's generally easy ti tell how much a game will require by playing it. Sometimes though, I only need to watch who actually goes to a game to see whether I'd fit in with it

Further, I'm realizing my interests in this genre have shifted. From an experiential level, I still loves me my adventures and all. But as an observer of all things MMO, I've realized I am less interested in how businesses can leech more cash from the current diku-lovers than I am about who's making what for the [i]next[/i] generation of gamer.

That doesn't mean I'm any less excited about Age of Conan, Tabula Rasa or Pirates of the Burning Sea of course. It's just that, no matter what innovations they will have, if they require consecutive hours of play with no chance of AFKing and choosing not to log in at all sometimes, then I won't be there.

No problem really. I don't expect every game to be for me. As long as they capture enough players for their own business needs, nothing's done "right" or "wrong".

It's just that now more than ever I need to honestly assess what's right or wrong for me, and in doing so, that cuts off a fair chunk of the diku-inspired and virtual lifestyle side of the genre as they are currently defined.