Has this ever happened to you?
You’re a player of video games – what one might call a “gamer.” You’ve probably built up a backlog because of Steam sales and fall release schedules and not having time to play video games because of the rest of your life interfering. So you have some free time, you take the game off the top of the stack (or proverbial stack, as the case may be) and start playing. For the sake of argument, let’s call this hypothetical game Alan Wake.
So it turns out you don’t really dig this game that much, which is too bad, but it happens. Still, you’re desperate to fill the endless holidays hours (hypothetically) somehow or other, and this is the perfect time to check some things off the list, so you choose another. And another. Nothing clicks. This one is deeply flawed; that one just isn’t your thing. You give up on new titles and boot up a mainstay, a known quantity, maybe more than one. (Let’s call this game Endless Space. Or maybe Soul Calibur. Even Dark Souls.) And despite the glories of past sessions, the record of unbridled enthusiasm that can set you on logging embarrassing numbers of hours on a game, you can barely stand to play it. (Or them.)
You’ve got gamer’s block.
The most insidious part of gamer’s block is that it goes widely undiagnosed.
It’s all very well to talk about gamer’s block’s more famous cousin, writer’s block. The ethereal disruption of one’s creative forces, inevitably the only thing holding you back from your career as a novelist, your lasting contribution to culture and society, is a crime we can all rally against. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a heck of a bout with writer’s block in my time. My usual output here wouldn’t necessarily suggest that. Mostly, it afflicts my fiction projects. I’ve got some kind of…fictional-affective writer’s block, I guess.
But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. (I’m not 100% positive what I am here to talk about, but let’s go with the gamer’s block thing, because it’s a distressing experience.)
Worrying about having trouble enjoying a high-tech luxury like video games is sort of a first world problem, I know. And who cares? Read a book. Go play outside. There are worse things. But when you all but live and breathe games (with video or without), falling out of love can be a shock. Discovering that somehow you aren’t the player you were so certain you were is something like an identity crisis when this hobby pervades your personal and professional life. I found myself asking the question, “Why isn’t this fun?” in a manner I’m not used to: not “What design decisions have led to this being less fun than it could be?”, but “What is wrong with me right now that I’m not enjoying this?” It’s weird.
In the midst of this failure at escapism, one might observe that Alan Wake is a somewhat coincidental choice. A game about a writer with writer’s block is the first domino in the gamer’s block elaborate but precarious domino design resembling Abraham Lincoln and taking up the whole basement, practically. (This year has been one for the record books when it comes to me and mixing just the wrong game with real life happenings.)
I could dissect what I didn’t care for about Alan Wake objectively. I moved on to other games because of those things. None appealed, across genre, across medium. And day after day I was drawn back to Alan Wake, knowing full well that I’d tire of it within fifteen minutes tops, but at least I felt a need to finish it. I started to feel like I was trying to escape that game, like Alan tries to escape the Dark Force, or whatever it’s called. I ran to a nontrivial number of games and found no shelter. And this has happened before, at other times, with other games.
This makes me realize how important I am to my play experience. I know that the player brings any number of things to the game, that no amount of designing can ever control the player experience, only nudge it in vague directions. I’ve argued this point, and used this point to argue other points, for years. To me, this seems fundamental. And nothing illustrates it quite like the experience of not enjoying something when all the right pieces seem to be in place.
It’s times like these I think back to moments when I’ve had the opposite experience, marathon gaming sessions over short periods of time with a single game. One year during college, the first few weeks of my summer vacation before other stuff started happening, I bludgeoned Persona 3 into submission over the course of about 12 days or so – and that’s an 80 hour JRPG. You can do the math. I’ve occasionally had the wherewithal to finish a release within 72 hours of it hitting the shelves – notably, say, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. And I’m fond of both of these games, and can go on about why I like them just as easily as why I dislike Alan Wake…but they are hardly my perfect games. Persona 3 and MGS4 both have plenty of flaws that I identify as flaws, parts of their package I don’t enjoy. Yet they captured my attention like few games have, ever.
I spend a bit of time in contemplation of these mood swings, these polarizing experiences of the act of playing games that seems to defy what the games are. To say that sometimes I’m just “in the mood” feels unsatisfactory – that happens, too, but I feel like it’s a different phenomenon. And this frustrates both the player and the designer in me.
I’m optimistic that the holiday bounty of some titles I’ve been looking forward to will break me out of my gamer’s block. In the meantime, though, has this ever happened to you? Have you ever liked or disliked a game for no discernible reason? Discuss!
This kind of describes the phenomenon that I’ve intermittently experienced for the last 5 years. I’ve developed an almighty backlog of games I look forward to playing but rarely seem to get round to. When I do finally crack one open I am often disappointed. I invest a lot of time reading about games, but can’t seem to make the space in my life to play them any more. I feel a pervasive ennui that is hard to break out of, and makes me question if I still actually like playing games at all – if it’s really just a childhood obsession I’ve grown out of. Despite this, every now and again I’ll play a game that knocks my socks off, reminds me of my old love and shows me what a load of old rubbish my games-related “existential crisis” is. (For the record the games I played in 2012 that did this to me were the indie rogue-like FTL and the JRPG Persona 3.)
Boy, Dix, that sums up my feelings perfectly. Gamer’s Block indeed. I feel like I’ve had it all year. And like you, I judge myself for it. What’s the matter with me? Am I broken? Do I need a new hobby? If it’s a transient thing, I need it to go away now.
I too have a stack of holiday releases and plenty of vacation time, but like you I haven’t been able to get into anything. This alarming turn of events is not something I enjoy. I take some comfort, at least, in knowing I’m not alone!
A most interesting article, Dix. I’m not sure if I’ve ever had Gamer’s Block to the extent you describe but I can wholeheartedly agree with your assessment of the player as an important component of the game. Now I have started a number of games and had to put them to the side because I “just wasn’t feeling it” at the time, including replays of old favorites, but was able to pick them up again a month, six months, years down the road and thought the game was the best thing ever. Hell, I have a stack of old games I’ve started, barely scratched the surface, and then put to the side and want to get back to but am still not in the right mood to enjoy. Gentlemen, I wish your Gamer’s Block a fiery and quick death so you can back to playing and enjoying games again.
I have been there many times and am again. I played Deus Ex Human Revolution and enjoyed it. And since that everything is flat. It isn’t that I want another Deus Ex. It really isn’t my kind of game (except for a complex story line).
I still have Skyrim going but it is boring me. Time to end it. But every game I start is flat. It may be time for a long vacation from games and pursue other interests.
But I do have to finish Limbo first. It is sitting there enticing me to see if I can get the little guy to the end.
Kay
It’s a small but significant comfort to know I’m not alone, m’dears.
It has been a general issue for years, and one I’m fairly confident I know the answer to in my own experience; A game is not really, truly, deeply what I want or need right now.
Our games, or a subset of them – those we most often love, at least among Tappers I’d dare to suggest… They tend to be simulations of an experience we cannot have in the real world, whether that be derring do and demon-slaying adventure, exploration of a ruined wasteland full of dark secrets and danger, a fantasy world where many of the rules do not apply, and new rules of magic and madness do… Being the secret agent, or simply going on a deranged killing spree.
Whatever takes your fancy, love.
Problem is, they’re imperfect. They’re so much better than nothing – they give me what I cannot have. But they don’t give me all of it. And eventually, after months of heavy gaming in addition or to the exclusion of other aspects of my day-to-day life, the few things that are completely absent from the gaming experience (as opposed to merely being flawed, lacking simulations) reach a critical point where I lose interest in the virtual because my hunger for the actual has becoming an aching void in my metaphysical stomach.
I want the real thing. I want the bite of cold on my skin, I want the pain of an impact, I want the flash of eyes when someone is angry with me, grateful toward me or otherwise aroused in some capacity or another by my self or my actions. I want reality.
My activist work a year ago with a group of local protesters and squatters gave me a taste of this like never before. Others attain a small measure of it by engaging with other people and challenging tasks at work, or in their education.
Some go out for the night, in most Western cultures, though the intensity of the experience can be a little too much for the fragile mind, and the imbibtion of alcohol or other mood-altering narcotics.
I haven’t had enough of the real, lately. And so I woke nine or ten hours ago, aching to play a wide variety of games – found several on the holiday sales and made a few further purchases – cleaned out my harddrives, downloaded and installed several, made breakfast, showered, shaved, procrastinated by a thousand other practical and impractical means and now… What am I doing?
Desultorily poking at an obviously inferior b-movie of a game, Sniper: Ghost Warrior, almost as though unwilling to touch another, worthier new game like Galactic Civilisations II, or Recettear, or an unfinished oldster like Assassin’s Creed 2 or Dead Space.
Nope, none of that for me. I’ll take my bland, buggy B-game and hate it, but keep playing it, until I stop, as I stopped within minutes of turning on Monaco’s beta, Alpha Centauri, or Natural Selection 2.
Curses.
…
At least I’m not alone <3
And as for your writer’s block, every day I feel sorely tempted to write an article for submission to you, Tap, and where do my writing energies go instead, when they finally pop the cork? On impromptu rants like that, in the comments threads of a thousand websites, into Skype chat windows, or – heaven forbid – onto Facebook comment threads.
Oh this sucks…
Standing in front of a shelf with 2 free hours and none of my 50 games (that’s not including my Steam collection…) and nothing seems to grab me. You spend 20 minutes literally just standing there staring at the shelf, expecting that the perfect game for this moment is just one that you missed seeing, sandwiched between Just Cause 2 and that copy of Trivial Pursuit your wife made you buy cause its the closest she’ll come to playing video games… But no – it’s not there… Eventually you boot up the PS3 and just decide to play something off the hard drive… only to scroll through another 20 or so (actually, probably another 50… geez I have a lot of games…).
It seems strangely indulgent and whiny to complain about this… “Alas, I can’t find something to play in my plethora of purchases… woe is me!!” Burt fuck it – it’s how I feel.
Funny tho, when the opposite happens.
Ever started a game, said “no… not my cup of tea right now…” and just shelve it. Not that it was bad – you just didn’t feel it at the time. You’d come back to this game several times over the course of, say, a year and a half, every time just not feeling it.
Then one day it just clicks.
I once started writing a short story 10 times over the course of a 5 – 7 year period. I great idea, just every time I wrote something, it wasn’t right. Then, one weekend, the whole thing just poured out of me.
It happens with the games too… you find the “feeling” and for the next 2 weeks, there’s nothing on your screen but that game. The most recent one for me was the first Darksiders. Great game – but it took me a while to find the moment. Unfortunately, I have a lot of other games on the shelf like that… Fallout New Vegas beacons to me, but I feel like I need to do more Fall out 3 and Skyrim before I move on – not to mention that I still have a lot in Oblivion too! And then Assassins Creed – two games behind, but I gotta follow the story. Seems like I make incremental advances on completing these games every few weeks…
Anyway. I’m sure I can finish this post, but I’m not sure I’m feeling it right now… perhaps I’ll come back and finish it someday…
My main problem is time, and I also tend to be a bit of a completionist and don’t like installing/loading up a game to play if I know I don’t have the free time needed to commit to it and play through to the end. So, during the past 5+ years, I’ve bought a lot of games through Steam/Big Fish/GOG/GamersGate and also boxed, but I just end up playing some of the more casual or flash online games that I know I can finish that very evening. I have a plan on getting past this quirk of mine which I’ll be implementing in 2013. I better get past it, because I know I’m missing out on some truly epic gaming experiences! The last really epic game I played through which made me say ‘WOW’ was Bioshock. I bought ‘The Secret World’ from Amazon the other week when it was on sale for $15, and even though it is a monstrously big game with lots to explore, I really am excited to try it out now that Funcom made it playable with no monthly fees.
I don’t so much have gamer’s block as ending block. For the last couple of years, I run out of gas at the 3/4 mark in a game. Is it because I fear yet another unsatisfying ending? I tend to spend a lot of time on a game and I’m really getting tired of everything getting fumbled at the end. More and more it feels like devs just string a bunch of “cool stuff” together until they get 20 to 30 hours of gameplay put together and then arbitrarily call it quits. I’ve adjusted by simply teaching myself to recognize the wind down and stopping. It’s like one of those relationships where it’s race to find out who dumps who first. Unfortunately, and after a while, this also makes even starting a new game less and less attractive. It becomes a bit of a vicious circle. The snake devouring its own tail.
lakerz, you probably have the right idea. Just play a little bitty game that you can wrap up in a day or two, (though it would still take me a week…).
I’ve tried going back to older games that are tried and true but usually drop those even faster. What to do?
it’s very comforting to see these other responses, why must all of life be soured by the occasional dissonance?
I am constantly in one state of block or another. copmoser’s block, arranger’s block, student’s block, gamer’s block…but creatively, I feel similar to some of the other people here that what’s important in life is to work every day, to scratch another x on the calendar (spent this year learning viola for the orchestra, that was a lot of x’es!)
and then suddenly, I was staring at my GOG.com shelf, bewildered.
Fortunately, I have a very close friend with whom I share a game collecting hobby, and that really helps expose me to interesting games that sometimes only he can discover, and I get really excited when I find something within my niche interests (Gemini Rue) that I cans share with my buddy, expanding both of our enjoyment. I think the secret to maintaining a healthy creative experience is to spread your joy outward, and getting the satisfaction of sharing an artistic experience with others. I find that I can still have great private creative work done, but I keep the cycle of interaction going so the block never settles in the sand.
Yeah, I’ve totally been here too…
Though part of your problem might be that Alan Wake itself just isn’t very good – kind of dreary and repetitive. At least it’s short. But for something more inspiring in the same vein, might I suggest Deadly Premonition? 😉
But, yeah. I have a million games these days and I sometimes end up tripping over myself figuring out which one I want to play. Like Arctic says maybe I’ll spend an hour looking and then realize my play time is up and just browse forums for the rest of the day. Lately, though, because I’ve had a week off, I’m enjoying gaming again. Though this year for me it’s been all about the adventure games.
Scout said…
>>I don’t so much have gamer’s block as ending block.<<
Me too Scout with STALKER but it is not because I will be disappointed. It is because this game is just so hard for me (I am not a first person shooter gamer and my reactions are slow and I get tired of dying, dying, dying) that I have given up trying. But I am so close to the end that I can't take the icon off my desktop. That would be total defeat. So it sits there and mocks me every day.
Kay
Amanda, I think about adventure games more and more, lately. The Walking Dead especially looks good right now.
Oh, it’s so good. I’ve only played about an hour of it but it’s SO GOOD. It’s the kind of thing that can break gamer’s block.
Kay, I and all the Stalkers of the world are proud of you. Not giving up, keeping that icon on your desktop, that’s the mark of a Stalker! The Zone is your second home.
My character stopped at the ferris wheel near the end of Stalker. Standing around the corner out of range from the sniper in the ferris wheel and that is where I left him. I felt okay about stopping there and leaving the zone.
I may have stated is before, but I played the XbocX port of the original Onimusha. It required you to use the dpad for movement(!). But I loved that game so hard. It’s easier to forgive a game’s technical shortcomings when it nails the intangibles so well.
Oh, and I’m stuck on Alan Wake as well. I like the story and want to see it through, but some of the gameplay elements just get tedious.
I liked Alan Wake a lot. Incidentally, I’ve told several friends I think it has the most impressive graphics of any game I’ve played. Ever. That’s a small part of course, but the look of the game was an important part of what kept me interested. I also get sucked into King-esque horror easily, so that helped. Different strokes and whatnot.
Scout, you absolutely must play The Walking Dead. Aside from Dark Souls, it’s the best 10 hours of gaming I experienced in 2012. That goes for anyone, even if you don’t read the comic or watch the show. I became interested in the show because of the game but to be perfectly honest the game is way better than the show. Can’t comment on the comic.
Melodius Punk, have you played Immortal Defense? If not, I recommend it, highly. It’s a very long game, but an example of a long game that is worthy of attention because the gameplay constantly evolves and the story becomes increasingly satisfying. The free demo version also offers about 30% of the entire game, which can last a good 4-8 hours depending mostly on the pace you set for yourself.
Anyone else with gamer’s block, you can always go back to Fallout, the classic that never ages. I get out of my gamer’s block funks by going into serious roster management sessions of my favourite sports games (FIFA particularly – one day I will get Bury into the Premier League).
Good call, xtal. Alan Wake was a great game. Simple but perfectly tuned for… Tension, plot intrigue, combat satisfaction and a touch of silly humour tinged with darkness.
Best played with a friend.
I’m right there with you, Scout. I’m about 1/3 of the way through Dragon Age: Origins, 2/3 of the way through both Fallout: New Vegas and Mass Effect. Just can’t summon the will to finish. And then if you come back to them 6 months later, you have to start all over again because you can’t remember what you were in the middle of doing 🙁
I suppose that most of it is burnout. I’m almost 57 now, and have been playing and reviewing PC adventure/RPG/shooter games pretty much since their inception in the late 80’s. I haven’t really been buying any new games for the past few years and my backlog of not started or unfinished games is still around the 30 game mark. Meh.
Hey metzomagic! New Vegas has a decent ending. Of the three you mentioned if I were asked to finish one I would choose the Fallout game.
Thank you for writing this. And thanks also for the interesting comments. I have found this has become more of an issue with age. I’m 31 now and have been an avid PC gamer for fifteen odd years. GOG, Steam, Youtube Lets Plays and recent indie titles have helped to rekindle my interest in playing games and thinking about games, but a couple of years of intensive play have maybe run their course. Too much of a good thing, as they say. It is frustrating to have what you know is a great game loaded up in front of you requiring just that “spark” from your own self to give it the breath of life, only to feel unable to manage it. “Gamers block” as sexual block?