Gaming Rant: I'm Not In This For Your Revolution

As stated in my Mass Effect 2 rant (and sparked by a conversation with my good friend David), there are many things about role-playing games that annoy me. I’m sick of the petty victories of “dinging” a level, of gaining a skill point, of getting a weapon with a purple name. I’m sick of statistical optimization. I’m sick of saving the world. And most of all, I’m sick of not caring about the characters, especially the non-character they give you as your central protagonist. Normally I would attribute this last part to never-ending disappointment with humanity, but when all I have to work with are the same archetypes over and over again, I’m inclined to think I’m not the only part of the problem.

Gaming Rant: The Bioware Game

In my rant about gaming Stockholm syndrome, I mentioned some of my fairly radical opinions on Mass Effect 2 and by extension Bioware’s extended library of games. The topic of making computer RPGs fun is something I’ve been struggling with for awhile now. I am sure anyone who doesn’t replay Planescape: Torment every month has at one time or another questioned the fun they have with modern RPG releases. We are hypothetically at the apex of digital immersion, where graphics engines are capable of more details presented faster and more smoothly than ever before (note: capability and execution are two different things, as shadow glitches and clipping and so on still permeate many, many games). We have professional game design schools which specialize in training the next generation of developers. We have everything we need to make great advancements in storytelling and revolutions in game design. And yet, we are still remaking Baldur’s Gate, tarted up with space magic and Cthulhu monsters.

Gaming Rant: Five Hundred Hours Are Not Enough

As my Steam page informs me, I have officially played five hundred and one hours of Left 4 Dead 2 as of last night (Update: As of 8/7/12, that amount is up to almost 740 hours). Considering I bought the game when it was new (a year and a half ago), I can safely say this is ridiculous, and that I am ridiculous by extension. It’s not as if I play the game competitively. I’m not part of a league, nor am I in the business of making new maps for the game. There’s challenging aspects on the higher difficulties, but it’s rare that I play on anything above Normal. So, clearly I don’t play it for the challenge, and I’m not insane enough to think game development is good for anything other than melting my brain into slag.