X3: The Reunion

They would have to be the most famous last words for any relationship, "It's not you, it's me." Everyone has heard them, although I must admit I usually get the opposite, "It's not me, it's you" but that is a whole different story. These words signify the end of the relationship. Gaming has a lot of similarities with human relationships and, I am sure, if the adult entertainment industry has their way there will be a whole lot of "other similarities" added to that line of thought. They are similar in the respect that you invest a lot of time in them. You share some good times and some bad times with games and, in the end (especially with MMOs), you find that you have spent a lot of money and haven't really gone anywhere. Sometimes you finish a game and you are angry with the ride that you have been taken on. There are also other times when you play a game and you find that you have really enjoy playing it. Maybe, you even think that it is one of the best games you have played, but for some reason the game just doesn't keep your interest so that you can see it through to completion. You have one of those, "It's not you, it's me" moments with the game.

Games of yesterday were not like today. Can you think of how many people you actually know who finished Space Invaders or Pac-Man? These games were nearly impossible to finish by mere mortals. They had the other advantage of being inanely repetitive as well. At least today with many games (even RTS's) they tend to weave in some sort of low budget story in order to keep you interested. While you enjoyed playing these games of yesterday you weren't terribly disturbed that you didn't finish them. Also, you didn't have the prospect of selecting either painfully easy or insanely hard difficulty levels in order to play the games either. You got what you were given and you played the game. I am a fan of Space Invaders and I do enjoy loading up Taito Legends just to play it (and Elevator Action, my favourite). But these games were games which you generally did not finish. Firstly, they were played in an arcade. My parents wouldn't let us spend a very long time playing games there. They preferred we played the Atari 2600 at home. As time went on gaming made a massive shift in the gaming dynamic. The advancement in technology gave developers the opportunity to create games which were more than just a single screen. They became worlds in which you could adventure. They created unique places which you could visit and they also developed characters which had more dimensions than Pac-Man.

The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind

As gaming went on people started to spend more time with games. The games themselves became more involved. Game types developed beyond the simplistic notion of Pong and gamers found themselves investing time in building altruistic characters ingame which were more than just an avatar of themselves. They were things that we wanted to spend time with. The places which contained them shifted from the two dimensional plane of the original Zelda to three dimensions. Suddenly the worlds which the gaming spaces occupied were larger than life and our time investment in them increased. However, for some reason, the difficulty to finish them decreased.

Games have definitely become easier. However, they have the guise of being less repetitive. I say they have the guise of being less repetitive because people will argue that you do different things in different games, but, to be honest, most shooters come across as being virtually the same to me now. (Example: Yeah, you are a one man army. Yeah, you shoot stuff. Sometimes there are rudimentary puzzles for you to complete. Sometimes there are not. Ooh ... end of level baddie ... I hope he is not as easy as the one at the end of Doom 3.) It is the stories behind the games (as cliched as they may be) which have developed in order to keep people entertained. Otherwise, we find ourselves involved in a number of repetitive tasks in order to complete the games. While story is a major development in gaming (remember the story behind Double Dragon ... someone has kidnapped your girlfriend ... you must save her ... ooh fight your brother in a bizarre twist at the end ... that was a major advancement in story gaming). The worlds which games occupy has also advanced. X3 reunion and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas are two games which occupy massive worlds and involve different game types. One of these games I have loved and finished (GTA) the other I have loved but have not finished. What is it then that makes us love a game but not find ourselves able to finish it?

Pac-Man represents classic retro gameplay.

X3 is an interesting case in point. Firstly, it was released practically unfinished. You had to wait for quite some time before the patching process made the game playable. This meant that the game had to be put on the back burner for a while. Whereas San Andreas was patched mainly due to the Hot Coffee mod. Otherwise San Andreas was a highly polished game. The big difference with these two games is around story progression. With X3 it was possible to tackle the game with the story enabled where you tackle the X3 universe as the character Kyle Brennan. Otherwise, you could turn the story mode off and just play the game as either a space pirate, trader, or mercenary (of sorts) and face the possibility of never ending the game. You don't need to play the story mode of X3 in order to unlock specific aspects of the game, which is what happens with San Andreas. It is not possible to turn the story off in San Andreas. The story was required in order to open up specific areas and aspects of the game. Most of the game world is closed to you in San Andreas forcing the gamer to play through the story mode. However, if X3 is played as a sandbox game without a story then the game, potentially, does not end. The player continues to pick up and play the game whenever they feel like it. There are not many games currently on the market which offer this type of limitless playability.

Games, such as Morrowind are massive in scale, they require a significant investment of your time in order to complete them. It requires a level of commitment which is longer than some relationships. This is one of the games which I did not complete but loved playing. As a point of comparison you have Oblivion, the successor to Morrowind. A similar style of game play, but far easier to complete. It appears that Oblivion has been intentionally made this way. Personally, I don't believe that I have to finish a game in order to enjoy the experience. For me Morrowind was a far more satisfying gaming experience than Oblivion. Oblivion felt a bit light weight when you compared the two.

The implementation of stories in to games have created the need for a game to end. While the gaming industry pushes more towards the sandbox type open world games then it is going to be possible for gamers to spend more time in the gaming world than a story will allow. The possibilities of creating gaming worlds which just exist for the pure pleasure of the gamer are becoming a better realized reality. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. attempted to mix a story based game with a game world which randomly generated missions based on what was happening in the game world. This created the possibility of opening up the story based game to offer the gamer more to do in the world, even though the world wasn't a true sandbox. X3 also managed to do this with some success. What we will begin to see is that gamers will play games not to finish the story but to be a part of the gaming world created by developers. This is an interesting prospect. It means that gaming worlds will only be limited by the imagination of developers. It means that "It's not you, it's me" will become a distant reality for gamers as there will not be the need to finish the game, this will be replaced by the gamer wanting to spend time in the gaming world.

"It's not you, it's me," can be a good line, because it can keep the door open for a possible next time. (If you say, "It's not me, it's you" I can guarantee you this doesn't keep the door open.) You might want to pick the game up again later, but there is also a pretty good chance that you will not. With the massive growth in retro gaming there are a lot of gamers who are revisiting a lot of old titles. Many of these titles are being re-released on platforms such as Steam and Xbox Live Arcade. Some of these titles are also being revamped for the modern day. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is one of the most popular games on Xbox Live Arcade and another example of a game which cannot be finished. Do we really need to finish a game in order to have enjoyed playing it? or, will large open world games make this notion a thing of the past? Where you will be able to pick up and play the game and enter the game world and do whatever you want at any time.


Games I have played and loved but never finished:
Arkanoid
River Raid
Paradroid (C64 Goodness)
Elevator Action
The original Bard's Tale
Half-Life (the jumping puzzles in the alien universe just piss me off)
Fallout 2
The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
System Shock
X3 Reunion (story mode)
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved