November 12, 2009
BEAT-En Theory
I’ve noticed something. I’ve been beating a lot more games since I got Gamefly.
I mean, I don’t think the amount of games I’m playing has really increased that much. I bought a TON of games before Gamefly. I still buy quite a few. But suddenly, when I get a game from Gamefly, I beat it. I do that thing where I go “okay, this weekend, going to knock this out so I can send it back” and play all the way through stuff. It’s… kind of weird.
I think a lot of it has to do with a lack of investment in the game. For example, take the game I just talked about the other day, Bound in Blood. There were sections of that game with many sidequests. Had I bought that game, I would have felt compelled to do them, which would have, perhaps, led to me getting bored of the game before I finished it. Since it was a rental, however, I did things like screw myself out of achievements, skip significant side missions, and so on, and I just shrugged and kept going. I plowed through it and had a good time, and it ended before I got bored.
I do this in almost all Gamefly games, and shockingly, I complete them. It’s actually kind of cool.
There’s probably something I can learn about my attention span from paying attention to that, one would think. There’s also probably something I can think about applying to the way I play the games I DO buy. Mainly the idea that optional content is a trap, and that I shouldn’t do it because then I’ll get bored! Maybe. The main quest or whatever should stand on its own anyway, right? It is the main quest, after all. I’ve already kind of clearly decided that I’m no longer a gamer who wants long games, so why do I make them longer on myself? I shouldn’t. I should just play through and not worry about missing things or anything else. Just play play play.
Play.