Leveling Down

My 70+ 360 games…will I really play any of them again after beating them?

cmfl3x and I have both feeling less into gaming as of late, and after talking a bit about it, we’ve made the decision that starting next week Leveling Down will switch into summer hours mode. We’ll be going from alternating posts each weekday to only posting on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. cmfl3x feels that maybe on his end, he just likes to be out more during the summer so he won’t be spending as much time gaming. On my end, I’ve suddenly started taking gaming less seriously and will share my thoughts further on that after the break. Regardless, we both feel that we aren’t able to write up enough content daily for the next few months so we’re scaling back a bit. Maybe when Fall hits, we may jump back to the daily posting schedule again but starting next week, expect for the first entry to come from cmfl3x on Wednesday (Monday is Memorial Day holiday here in the states), and I will post again on Friday. In a way, this will be good too since we won’t necessarily be “struggling to come up with new articles to write”. The truth is, we’re just not consuming games quickly enough to write as much as we used to.

Read on for my introspection as to what has changed for me in my gaming life.

Ever since returning from Japan (and maybe even some of my gaming thoughts began moving in this direction before my trip), my outlook on several gaming aspects of my life have changed. I don’t know if this is due to simply “growing up”, having more responsibility, or simply wanting to do more in life, but here are some things that have definitely made me realize that I’ve leveled down some more.

1. I no longer care about Achievements
It’s weird – when we were growing up, we would just play games on the NES or something and just play them to enjoy them. We played them how we wanted (i.e. Contra’s 30 men code) and had fun. Since Achievements have come out, they have in a way dictated the way I play games. Thankfully for me, they haven’t dictated which games I play (I still only play games I want to play rather than “easy Achievement games), but they still make me play these games the way the developers want me to play them. If that means going through the game 5 times, I used to do that -_-

I loved how in Final Fantasy XIII, I could just sit and play through it without even running to my computer every few minutes to make sure I didn’t miss an Achievement. When I started playing my PS3, I made the conscious decision not to care about Trophies at all, and well, I’m getting a chance to just play games to play them and it’s quite refreshing. Part of me was thinking I would try to at least make my way to 100,000 before not caring about Achievements, but it looks like I’m already at that point today.

2. I no longer care about my game collection
I look at my collection of hundreds of games and wonder to myself, why am I holding onto them? In a way, part of it was fun to collect great games, but when I really think about it, am I really going to be going back to play Call of Duty 2, Fable 2, the original Gears of War, etc.? They’re just sitting there on my shelf and not doing anything. Granted, most of these titles are only worth a couple of dollars at this point, but for me to realize that the only reason why my game collection is so large is because I probably can’t even get something decent for them has made me realize that I’m not as passionate about gaming as I once was nor do I have the time or luxury to really go back and replay games.

3. I no no longer care as much about game sales
I used to love hunting for gaming deals. Any decent game that I didn’t own yet was on my list. But in the past month or so, I’ve practically let go. Games like Alan Wake, Red Dead Redemption, 3D Dot Game Heroes – all sorts of recent major releases have gotten large sales at gaming retailers like Amazon and Gamestop, but I simply don’t care. Maybe if Alan Wake went on sale for $20, I’d pick it up, but I realize that deep down I’m not as enthusiastic about picking it up as I would have been last year. I don’t know if the reason for all of these sales is because the market is over-saturated with too many games, but it certainly feels this way to me. There’s practically a new notable game out every week or so. I just don’t have the kind of time to get through every good game now!

4. I no longer care to compete
Kill to death ratio. Win/Loss ratio. Ranking Up. All of that stuff used to dictate how passionate I was about competing in multiplayer games online. Nowadays I’ve come to the realization that I just can’t keep up with the kids these days. In a way, I almost feel like I understand what it’s like for an aging professional athlete to have to come to terms with retirement. They get older, and find themselves in a world dominated by younger, stronger, and faster opponents. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy playing multiplayer games, but I am willing to accept the fact now that I most likely won’t be able to be a top-tier player in anything I play due to the limited amount of time and drive I have to getting good at a competitive game of my choice. I don’t have an entire summer free to just play games like my youth. In a way, that’s ok to me though, because in games like Starcraft 2, I’m still enjoying them regardless of whether I win or lose.

But Wait!
Having said all of that, the one major counterpoint is that I still enjoy playing games. I’m excited about trying to pick up the Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker PSP bundle and exploring titles I missed on the PSP (if I can somehow sneak it by my wife), I’ve logged 30 some games in Starcraft 2 this past week alone, and I still read up on gaming news daily. I still enjoy playing games that are fun to me. I think that it’s just that my priorities have changed and for those of you that know me in real life, it’ll probably be interesting to hear that I’ve finally decided to wrap gaming around my life rather than the other way around. I’m not ready to give up gaming just yet (I don’t know if I ever will), but I have definitely leveled down some more. This probably means less time and less seriousness online, but I’ll still be around and kicking as I haven’t leveled down to 0 just yet.

Be Sociable, Share!

•