Why We Play

Everyone has different reasons for playing video games. Some of use it in our professional lives and careers while others just use it to pass the time or have fun with friends. But aside from personal motivators there are also several aspects of games that make them appeal to a deeper part of us. A good friend of mine brought up a particular article (attempting to find it) that discussed how video games satisfy a set of needs that often are not met in someone's professional career.

Diving deeper into that thought of games having the ability to satisfy needs that otherwise remain unmet; a point that my friend Travis made was that games provide a certain level of creative freedom that other activities may not. This applies to everything from playing games to making them. People definitely seem to desire a degree of autonomy and creative variance in their lives which in turn fuels other creative habits.

I resonated with this idea of games satisfying needs since it pretty accurately reflects my motivation for writing about and playing many of my favorite games. I specifically love games that permit me to create my own characters and allow myself to have access to the larger-than-life scenarios that games often hold. This often alleviates the more mundane tasks presented in day to day life. It really isn't limited to games either, this desire for adventure and exploration is the same reason I'd watch a movie or read a book.

As I grow older I feel this need for experience deepen and thankfully I can say that my particular habit of playing games is one that will continue to expand and cater to my desire for these larger-than-life experiences.

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A Spectator Sport

When I was growing up I would occasionally find myself watching one of my friends play a video game for brief periods of time if it wasn't a multi-player game or just didn't interest me that much but I never really went out of my way to sit down and watch someone else play a game. More often than not I'd vastly prefer to play the game myself rather than just watch someone else do it for me. However, nowadays we have seen a massive surge in the popularity of spectating games of all kinds; anything from multi-player games like Starcraft 2 or League of Legends to single player hits such as Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

Why would anyone want to watch these things? Well I find myself particularly attracted to watching certain "Lets Plays" by various people on YouTube, my personal favorite is Cry. I find these interesting simply because they aren't games I would normally play. I also enjoy the commentary on these videos as they add to the experience.

The recent surge in "Lets Plays" on YouTube has also created careers for the more successful channels, the most popular one reaching upwards of two million subscribers (Tobuscus/PewDiePie). More popular YouTube channels can enter into a partnership with YouTube that allows them to profit off of their videos and they are quite profitable when each video can hit over several hundred thousand views.

In addition to YouTube there are also sites like Twitch.tv that allow gamers to stream their gaming sessions live to large groups of people. This format is much more common for multi-player games as the appeal is wider.

Another point of interest is the developing world of e-sports which offers some hefty prizes (The World Championship prize for League of Legends was three million dollars). These kinds of games are extremely competitive and other players watch and follow specific gaming teams in the same way one might follow a sports team.

I'm interested to see where things go from here as we move forward with competitive gaming. With new games coming out so frequently there will continue to be an increase in content for people to spectate and enjoy. 

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Video Games as a Medium for Storytelling

I've always loved games. Ever since I started playing Mario for the first time on my cousin's SNES as a tiny child I have adored them. I count myself lucky to have lived in a time where games have gone from something so simple a concept as Pong or Pacman to something as complex as any number of current generation games. But it's not the fancy graphics or game mechanics that fed my love for gaming all these years...it was the stories they told.

Story has always been a central concept in every form of media entertainment and that goes two-fold for video games as it opens up a dimension that is typically untouched in things like movies or music. That dimension is player interaction and input. If I go to a movie or read a book I'm bearing witness to a story that is playing out on that particular form of media. With a game however, I'm often taking up a role in those stories, sometimes changing and sculpting them into my own story.

This is why I love games and also why I love the idea of game development. Every time I pick up the controller I know that I'm stepping into someone else's world, their story, it's quite daunting at times but I know that this was crafted in the hope that a player will experience the story the creators were trying to tell.

Some of the things that really encouraged me to continue gaming were things as simple as a game having multiple endings or side stories, things that I could change of my own volition. How many books or movies end differently based on the audience's input? The opportunity to really live out a story is what made games so gripping for me.

All that being said, I do have to admit that recent games just haven't satisfied me in the same way as the games of my youth. I could have become jaded at some point and that spark have been lost in the shuffle somewhere in my adolescent years but I still reflect back on those older games and wonder what they did so well that current games don't.

I've thought about the effect that our ultra realistic graphics are having on storytelling and I feel like there could possibly be a connection. Back when games like Legaia, Dragoon, Symphonia, and the obviously relevant Final Fantasy series were rather popular (FF still is) there was far less technology to work with when designing these games.

This leads my to believe (and this is my opinion) that perhaps all those innovative game mechanics and shiny graphics take something away from the importance of story. Don't get me wrong, there are still some fantastic games with solid stories out there, Skyrim was one of those games for me (Side Quests!) as anyone could guess from the plethora of guides that exist on this blog but I digress.

I find myself enjoying more games that would fall under the category of "indie" rather than the bigger launches. I find that these games are made by people who are absolutely dying to tell their story and that's what really clicks with me.

I found that this humorous take on the "retro" games vs. the new games was an accurate judge of how other gamers feel about the subject. From just looking at the like/dislike ratio it's plain to see that I'm not the first person to have these kinds of thoughts.

Credit to freddiew and Rocketjump for the video!

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