So it's been a few weeks/months since my last post, mainly because I've had a bit much on my mind to get me too riled up about games, but something struck me today which is an important issue in the gaming community, and to a greater extend our history.
To start with a shitty anecdote, today I decided to play a game of 2048, which for the three of you who don't know (hi dad!) is a game all about sliding number tiles with numbers on them to increase the number on the tile until you reach the converted title '2048'. You can play it for free and I personally think its one of the best games from this year, and Dark Souls 2 came out this year! Anyway, while playing my game, a friend of mine said off handly "Oh, still playing 2048 Will?".
OK, so a lot of you may not see what my apparent problem is, but what that rather boring story was trying to get at is: Why do games have a lifespan?
Lately I've been finding it rather strange that people consider playing an old game a rather odd habit, as if I should always be playing the best and most talked about game at the time. I'm not saying new games are bad, I just bought a copy of Destiny which I'll explain my thoughts on at a later date, probably, but why do people consider it so strange to play and old game?
This problem doesn't even occur in other media. No one would judge you for watching an old film, like Jurassic Park, or even Metropolis, but with games it seems as though most of them have this public interest life span that causes people to forget about them as soon as something new comes along. I mean hell, 2048 was released THIS YEAR! Why is it so odd for me to be playing it?
It really gets on me that, with a few exceptions, people only seem to care about whats new and on the market. As soon as something drops from its day one release price, it drops from the public eye. One major example for all of you it Titanfall. You guys remember Titanfall, that game everyone said would kill Call of Duty and received near perfect review scores? Nope, neither do I. Hell, I'm pretty sure the Halo 3 servers are more busy than the Titanfall ones!
I think this basically comes down to two major problems. Firstly, is reviews. Reveiws are a natural part of any art that gets released, and games are no exception. People want to know if what is new is any good, because new games cost a shit load of money, especially if you live in Australia. New things also excite people. I think that this leads to the second problem, which is that in games, we don't really have a 'Nostalgia Critic' and most old games die with systems. Its a lot harder to have a conversation about the original Legend of Zelda with someone who doesn't own a NES, than someone who hasn't seen Die Hard. If you want someone to see Die Hard, I'm sure netflix or Hulu has it for you: Playing a NES or finding a digital copy on the Wii store is a lot harder. Because of this, the general lifespan of a game is limited by the system. In fact, thats probably why Microsoft is going about re-releasing all the number Halo games this year: So that people new to the series can catch up. As well as making Microsoft an extra buck or two, it allows a series to remain in the public sphere longer.
However, neither of these explain why something released this year, like 2048 or Titanfall is so easily forgotten. I've heard that Titanfall has mainly been forgotten because it really didn't have that much replayability, and most people wouldn't pay that much for only multiplayer (that's the reason I didn't get it).
Well that's my two cents on the issue. Personally I think this is a bigger issue then the fact that it looks like COD 11 (or whatever) is going to just be the same thing all over again, and that the industry is getting stale. There are hundreds of great games out there that people just forget about. If you're sick of current FPS, go play System Shock 2, hell, if you are sick of current games just play Star Wars Battlefront, and remember how good a lot of the things we already have are.
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