Binge gaming
In studying my gaming habits, I’ve noticed that I play games in one of two ways: in small doses over a long period of time, or in large doses over a short period of time.
The former category is made up of games with high replay value but no story to complete — sports games, racers, fighting games, and so on. I may typically play Super Mario Kart or Tetris for just a half hour at a time, but I’ll keep returning to them over the course of weeks, if not months or years.
The latter category is made up of linear or narrative games that can be finished, like RPGs or shoot-em-ups. I prefer to “binge” on these games, plowing through them in a few long play sessions. For example, I was replaying Chrono Trigger last week for my Blogs of the Round Table post, and got to the final battle after just four nights — but each night I had played for several hours. Why? Well, it’s fun, of course, but I also like holding an entire work in my head at once so that everything is fresh in my memory.
As it turns out, I consume a lot of media in the same way for just that reason. I’ll listen to one album almost exclusively for a week at a time, I’ll comb through years of archives of newly-discovered blogs, and I’ll read entire novels in one or two sittings (even long ones like David Copperfield). If this sounds strange to you, consider the ways in which we can now watch TV shows or read comic strips. We all drink from the firehose.
The issue I’ve had recently is with episodic games like On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. The artificial splintering of the narrative keeps me from playing the way I want — there’s not enough material for me to binge on, but I don’t want to wait for months to get a resolution. If I had started Chrono Trigger last week and paced myself to finish it in December, I’d go nuts.
Games have spoiled me. Unlike TV shows or comic strips, I’m used to having their stories available as quickly as I like. With episodic gaming, though, that option is no longer available. Maybe I need to wait for the box set.
I approach games the same way, the difference being that I have almost no sustained interest in the latter category. I’ll pick up something like Super Mario Galaxy and play it heavily for a week or two, then complete what I’m able and never touch it again. And of course if I get into something like a GTA game or Bioshock I’ll mash through it in a few days or a week, generally staying up til the early morning to do so.
My pattern though is to binge heavily on an anticipated title, then spend the ‘down-time’ until the next one is released by checking out old or second-string games that I’ve heard good things about. So I finished GTA4 recently, and now I’m going through a stack of games that includes Front Mission 3, Haunting Ground, Graffiti Kingdom, Mario RPG: Thousand Year Door, Eternal Darkness, Urban Chaos Riot Response and more. I usually don’t see these interim games all the way through, but at least it gives me a broad base of titles to draw from.
Have you thought about how (or not) re-playability of an episodic title affects whether you can handle the wait? I haven’t honestly played a lot of episodic games, but I think that if it was something with a high degree of re-playability then it might not be such a big deal.
Steve: I generally don’t go back to the latter category either, which is probably why I’m a bit turned off by episodic gaming — I feel forced into a way of playing that I don’t particularly like. I do make the occasional exception though, as with Chrono Trigger, or Ocarina of Time, or…hmm. I wonder how many games there are that I’ve played completely through more than once. I’d guess there’s fewer than a dozen.
I’m intrigued by your binge/downtime pattern. I don’t play nearly enough games to sustain a cycle like that, but it seems like you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself to keep abreast of the industry. Do you find that playing those second-string games feels like work? Maybe that’s not a foreign idea to you anyway, given your job, but if I were in your shoes I’d be worried about burning out.
Ben: I’m not big on episodic games either, as outlined above, but I actually can’t think of any episodic titles that are eminently replayable. It seems to me that the very purpose of breaking a game up is to prevent you from being satisfied with one section; that way they ensure that you buy the next one. The business model relies on the game being fundamentally incomplete.
A few days after I finished Precipice, I figured I’d go through it again to see if I missed anything
importantreally funny, and maybe collect the rest of those robot pieces. I got about twenty minutes in and gave up — there’s just not enough there to sustain multiple playthroughs. Meanwhile, I bet I could replay Chrono Trigger annually until I die and enjoy it every time.I don’t know if this comparison holds water, but Portal I find very re-playable. At a stretch it’s “shortness” might incline some to consider it an ‘episode’ in a larger narrative arc – certainly allusions to Aperture Science in HL2:Ep2 make me think that it might not be a bad way to think about it.
Interesting idea. I see where you’re coming from, but I’m not sure I’d consider Portal “episodic” so much as just “short.” True, it does take place in the Half-Life universe, but it still feels largely self-contained; I get the feeling that if it hadn’t found runaway critical acclaim they’d be happy to let it stand on its own. Maybe a better test would be the replayability of the Half-Life episodes, taken individually.
With episodic gaming, though, that option is no longer available. Maybe I need to wait for the box set.
I have the same problem with comic books. I HATE getting tiny snippets of story and having to wait a few weeks for the next morsel. For this reason I’ve been more or less exclusively buying the bundled comic compilations that contain an entire story arc. I have to wait much longer, of course, but I find myself enjoying the story much more without the jarring breaks. That, of course, or entirely self-contained graphic novels.
I still haven’t played Portal — arrgh — but I’ve played Beyond Good & Evil through about four or five times, and PoP:SoT possibly even more. They’re both narrative games (i.e., category 2), and they’re both short (like Portal). But another factor is that they offer a choice of languages, so once you’ve played them in English, you can go back through in French, Spanish, German, whatever.
I don’t speak or understand any of these languages particularly well, but it’s a fun way to learn, and you get some out-of-the-way vocabulary. Subtitles help, when they’re available. Little Big Adventure 2, on its own, taught me enough French to test out of a year of undergraduate coursework!
Matthew: I hear you. I wonder how much cost has to do with all of this. Creating a world for a game is a tremendous amount of work, and it’s only getting worse; from a financial standpoint it probably seems wasteful to create all of that for just one game. In fact, I think I remember Shigeru Miyamoto citing that as one of the reasons for putting Link’s Crossbow Training in the Zelda universe. I’ll see if I can dig that quote up.
Peter: Well, that’s certainly an approach to replayability that I’d never considered. Well done! :)
It’s interesting to see why people replay games, because the reasons rarely seem to match up with the purported “replay value” additions. I sure as hell won’t replay No More Heroes to collect the trading cards, and I didn’t go through Ocarina of Time to hunt down Gold Skulltulas. It’s almost as though designers will just add in any time-consuming activity they can think of to make a game longer, regardless of whether it’s fun or not.
Whoops, delayed response!
No, I don’t feel burned out or pressured to play lots of stuff.. it’s more like I always feel the urge to be playing SOMEthing new, and when nothing highly-anticipated is on my plate, I like to fill the space with lesser-known titles I might have missed first time around. When you cast your net wide enough there’s always something interesting to be trying out.