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rinueIt's winter, which means Ciro is playing Skyrim; the beautifully constructed outdoor environments feel enough like the real outdoors to fight off cabin fever.
I find myself mostly not playing. Part of that is a direct result of my play style, which is characterized by obsessive collecting; I spend so much time inventory managing to no purpose that quests are more work than they need to be. This is a danger for me in any situation that includes in-game money without an obvious mechanic for spending that money; if I don't really need to buy anything, but everything has a monetary value attached, the point must be to accumulate money. Yet no character in Skyrim ever says to me: my, look at all your money, well done. Nobody loves me for my money. It's a burden.
However, this is something I can overcome, and when I overcome it - when I decide to ignore the money - I have to face the fact that I find the game depressing, and depressing in ways that increasingly alienate me from mainstream console gaming. To wit: I like my games to have moral clarity, but the trend is toward moral ambiguity, and character models have become realistic enough that it upsets me to see violence done to them.
I don't want games to "challenge" me, or not in that way. I turn to other styles of art for that. For me, games are an escape where I get to relax and pretend to be a hero. That means I need to be able to be a hero. I want them to be a rest from the moral ambiguity of the real world, a place where doing the right thing does lead to the highest reward, and where even if you play a bad guy, it's with an understanding that you'll get your just deserts eventually.
I guess that means I ultimately don't think of games as art, because I am energized by watching films that other people find unbearably sad, and many of the scuptures and paintings I love are unsettling. It's the difference between being asked to empathize, and being given an illusion of control of a character whose only avenues are decisions I wouldn't make. In the former case, I know it's someone else. In the latter, I'm complicit.
To keep gaming, I may have to shift from fantasy titles to sports titles. For now, I'm mostly sticking with turn-based puzzle games. But neither of those grant the "immersion" first person titles strive for.
I find myself mostly not playing. Part of that is a direct result of my play style, which is characterized by obsessive collecting; I spend so much time inventory managing to no purpose that quests are more work than they need to be. This is a danger for me in any situation that includes in-game money without an obvious mechanic for spending that money; if I don't really need to buy anything, but everything has a monetary value attached, the point must be to accumulate money. Yet no character in Skyrim ever says to me: my, look at all your money, well done. Nobody loves me for my money. It's a burden.
However, this is something I can overcome, and when I overcome it - when I decide to ignore the money - I have to face the fact that I find the game depressing, and depressing in ways that increasingly alienate me from mainstream console gaming. To wit: I like my games to have moral clarity, but the trend is toward moral ambiguity, and character models have become realistic enough that it upsets me to see violence done to them.
I don't want games to "challenge" me, or not in that way. I turn to other styles of art for that. For me, games are an escape where I get to relax and pretend to be a hero. That means I need to be able to be a hero. I want them to be a rest from the moral ambiguity of the real world, a place where doing the right thing does lead to the highest reward, and where even if you play a bad guy, it's with an understanding that you'll get your just deserts eventually.
I guess that means I ultimately don't think of games as art, because I am energized by watching films that other people find unbearably sad, and many of the scuptures and paintings I love are unsettling. It's the difference between being asked to empathize, and being given an illusion of control of a character whose only avenues are decisions I wouldn't make. In the former case, I know it's someone else. In the latter, I'm complicit.
To keep gaming, I may have to shift from fantasy titles to sports titles. For now, I'm mostly sticking with turn-based puzzle games. But neither of those grant the "immersion" first person titles strive for.
