Currently, everyone complains about the shortness of games. Campaigns often only last between 5-10 hours, and this is considered to be completely insufficient for a gamer’s needs. This is especially prevalent in the FPS genre, where one can sit down with Modern Warfare 2 and finish it in a single Saturday (of course it’s a prerequisite that you despise sunlight, people and air). With the hefty price tags games are carrying these days, it’s hardly surprising that we want a little more bang for our buck, isn’t it?<\/p>\n
Unfortunately we persist in making terrible decisions when confronted by the aforementioned mustachioed smoke. Games in their current, “too short” state are often left unfinished as it is. Almost everybody has that backlog of games they still intend to play, or still intend to finish. It’s a bit like that Thank You letter we’ve been meaning to write to Grandma for that delightful socks-and-underwear set she sent three Christmases ago – if we’re honest with ourselves, we never really expect that letter to be written, and we’ll never see the final boss in Bioshock 2. If all games took 100 hours to finish, we may never finish a game again. In line with the video game industry’s rapid growth, AAA titles are being released every month, and the “must play” list of games grows every single year. There’s a lot of quality out there, and if you’re an avid gamer, you want to get your hands on it all. If every video game was a 3-month long love affair, we’d never finish them before the next big thing came out, and we’d have our hands perpetually full with new releases. Not to mention the fact that with a drastic increase in game time, will most likely come a decrease in quality, especially in genres such as FPS.<\/p>\n
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Talk fast dude, I’ve only got 5 hours to finish this before my Diablo 3 preorder arrives.<\/em><\/p>\n 2. To Be Accepted<\/strong><\/p>\n Many hardcore gamers lament the fact that they are often perceived to be nerds, that competitive gaming is underappreciated and underexposed, and that parents will never understand it.<\/p>\n However, most of these people are liars. Almost all hardcore gamers secretly enjoy being part of something a little less mainstream. This is true of almost all people – everyone likes to be a little different. If you call yourself a gamer, you’re claiming membership of a certain culture, and gamers defend that culture, and its membership, with zeal. Imagine your school, full of jocks high-fiving and slapping each other on the butt after a long, afternoon Modern Warfare 2 session – does that sound like something you want?<\/p>\n Why else would gamers try so hard to draw a distinction between “hardcore” and “casual” gamers? The rising interest in video games has resulted in a wave of new people being avid gamers. The term “gamer” was no longer as meaningful as it once was. So we hurriedly packed all our sisters playing The Sims and all the Halo-playing jocks under an umbrella and labeled them “casual gamers”, thus keeping our own sense of identity, distinct from the masses. Only a real gamer knows why this is funny.<\/em><\/p>\n 1. The Gamer Girlfriend<\/strong><\/p>\n This unquestionably tops the list. Plenty of attached gamers struggle to divide their time between their lover, and their girlfriend. Gaming and girlfriends both demand a lot of time and affection, and keeping both happy can be a chore. What better then, than killing two birds with one stone? You get to spend quality time together AND game. Everybody wins, right?<\/p>\n Wrong. You find an awesome item together in an RPG – who gets it? If you’re with your friends it’s a simple matter of whoever grabs it first gets to wave it around and laugh. Try that with your girlfriend and you’re spending the night alone. Or maybe you’re playing a Starcraft 2 1v1 and you heartlessly Zerg rushed her?<\/p>\n Games, whether played in partnership or against one another, raise tensions high, which makes for an extremely volatile environment for relationships. Games cause just friends to fight; with a girlfriend it’s almost guaranteed. People in relationships are generally sensitive; you can rag on your friends all you want, but your girlfriend needs to be handled a little more cautiously. There are innumerable situations in games which are an argument hotbed.<\/p>\n In addition, people in relationships need escape hatches. You need to spend a little time apart; you need to have your own things that you like to do. You don’t really want your girlfriend coming to LANs with you and calling your friends n00bs. Or maybe you do. But then you’ll be one of those couples that fight over items and stuff. So shut up.<\/p>\n The Dream.<\/em><\/p>\n
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