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Video Games
I was just watching
I grew up in the era that many consider to be the Golden Age of gaming: The period that covered the emergence of the NES/Master System, through to the acme that was the SNES/Megadrive era, and ending with the PlayStation epoch, which is when gaming began to become 'mainstream'. One of the myriad reasons I consider this to be greatest time for a gamer is because back then, the whole 'more content in games = greater popularity and sales' thing wasn't even a gleam in some marketing department douche's eye; after all, one of the most (if not THE most) prominent genre was the platformer, and all anyone could think to ask from them was that they be more like the Mario Bros. games It was more important at the time for a game to offer high quality content in concentrated doses, as the limitations of the cartridge format meant that developers couldn’t slap in another thirty-odd levels to pad out a game; instead, they had to create a concept that was relatively simple but would allow for enough complexity in the gameplay to keep the player interested. You may have noticed that a lot of today’s games require at least an hour or so of tutorials, as well as plenty of hand-holding in the earlier going, just so the player can come to grips with the gameplay.
This is just the beginning of the ‘too much’ phenomenon; after you’ve learnt the control layout and how to navigate the myriad menus, you’re confronted with the possibility of multiple endings. Now, even in the days of the SNES and the Megadrive multiple endings in games weren’t new, but those games didn’t require sixty to eighty hours to see them, and the methods by which to acquire those endings were relatively clear; you didn’t need to consult gameFAQs to find out which people you had to talk (or not talk) to, which conversation branches to choose, and how many mcguffins you had to collect to see a slightly different minute-long cut scene at the end of the game.
So is the overall gaming experience richer for the amount of content the technology allows us? It depends on who you ask, but with the average age of gamers hovering around the thirty year old mark, one has to wonder, after working all day and potentially coming home to a partner and kids, if spending a large chunk of your spare time grinding away to not much effect is worth it. With Nintendo DS, and likely 3DS, sales being as high as they are, one can assume that due to the games themselves being smaller and of much more consistent quality, that this is indicative of a desire to actually accomplish something without having to spend enormous amounts of time doing so. Granted, the scope of the stories on the handheld titles is nothing when compared to the likes of your Mass Effect’s and Final Fantasy’s, but with so many of us being ‘time-poor’, to use one of the more ridiculous terms of the modern era, we just don’t have the time to fully complete every game on the current-gen consoles.
What are the alternatives? The Wii offers many ‘pick-up-and-play’ titles, but the quality is often very poor. Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network offer a good variety of short and sweet games, but the cost can be prohibitive when you consider what you’re getting (and often, not getting) with a lot of the games. For my money, it’s emulation that provides those experiences I loved. It’s just a shame that the only way to get the quality and the sensible amount of content from yesteryear is to go back there.
