On Gaming

So it looks like seven posts per month is going to be the new standard? I'll be honest, I'm not sure if I should aim for seven for February so the archive will have a nice sort of symmetry, or focus on getting back on track, writin as much as I can as often as I can. The former would certainly feed my latent OCD tendencies, while the latter would produce better writing and a better me, since I'm happier when I'm writing (as we've discussed) and I've noticed that when I'm being prolific, it shows no matter what I'm working on. I get more polished, more crisp, more focused, when I'm writing every day. That's not just my own opinion either, but something that I've had people tell me. When I work every day, when I make the commitment to do this every day, it shows in the final product. And that's worthwhile.

I don't know if this happens to other people, but I find myself engaging in all kinds of mental gymnastics when it comes to my work. I spend far too much time thinking about what kind of music produces the best writing, whether what I ate that day has any effect on my creativity, whether I played any video games, and on and on and on. To some extent, I've noticed a few correlations, especially in the video game connection, although oddly, not quite in the way you'd expect.

It'd be entirely reasonable to assume that playing video games leads to a reduced work output as I struggle to balance the need to write with the desire to game. And yet, I've come to realize that it's not so much the time I spend gaming, but what I'm playing that really effects how I feel about writing and how much writing I'll manage to get done. In particular, single player games, especially those with strong stories, really serve to inspire me and motivate me to tell my own stories; Dragon Age, in particular served as a great resource when I'd get stuck on trying to make a character's voice sound distinctive.

On the other hand, multiplayer games (both of the MMO and competitive variety) absolutely murder my work ethic. I know that I definitely went on a bit of a spree with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and that for a few weeks there, I was playing it as often as I could and far more than I should have been. As I showed with the Dragon Age example, I don't think that games are necessarily damaging to my work... they can sometimes be a helpful resource for getting my mind thinking and coming up with my own characters and ideas. But multiplayer games... that's another story, if you'll pardon the lame ass pun.

In multiplayer games, I'm not thinking about characters, or voices, or story. I'm thinking about the game, about winning, about doing whatever it takes to play as hard as I can and do the best that I can. And that competitive drive, that desire to win shuts down the other parts of my brain. There's no voice when I'm playing to win, there's no pondering about what sort of epic narrative might be spawned from my struggle; there's only me, and my opponents, and my objective. Nothing else.

The other problem with the multiplayer games is that they're terrible time sinks in a way that Dragon Age and other single player games could never be. That seems a little bit odd, since it's the single player RPGs that get the reputation for being massive, 60 hours or more a playthrough. The problem, though, is that with Dragon Age, yeah, I'd play it for a long stretch at a time, but it was easier to pace myself, easier to say, "okay, I've played enough for tonight." This happened for a few reasons; within the context of the story being told, there were moments of rising action, climax, and falling action, as you moved from chapter to chapter in that particular narrative, and so there were natural stopping points where it was okay to sign off for the night. Also, although I was very, very excited to complete the game and find out "what happens," there's also the sobering knowledge that part of the thrill in a single player game is the feeling you get when everything's new, when you don't know how it's going to end or what's around the corner. When you find a game that you really, really love, and maybe if you're like me, you try to make that experience last for as long as you can.

Multiplayer, on the other hand... there's no balance, no ebb and flow. There's just the conflict, the victory, the defeat, and then the next game. And the urge to play "just one more game" is overwhelming. It's all-consuming. It's addicting. So many times over the past month would I find myself logging in to Modern Warfare to play for "a few games," only to realize that I'd been playing for hours on end. And even after realizing that it was getting late, that I should do some writing, the urge to play "just one more game" was hard to resist.

Don't get me wrong, I love the multiplayer aspect. I love playing games with my friends. I love the competition. But more and more, as I feel my World of WarCraft days fade further and further into my past, as I realize it's been more than half a year since I "seriously" played that game, which is the longest I've gone without it since I first began playing in 2005, I realize that there is a very dangerous "too much of a good thing" going on with our games today. I can recall, quite clearly, a younger version of me who squeezed every last drop of playability out of my games. I remember always trying to find more things to do in games, anything to make the game last longer. Maybe that was because games were shorter back in those days or maybe it was because I had way more free time as a kid. Maybe a little of both, I don't know.

What I do know is that somewhere along the way, the whole "all good things must come to an end" rule got broken. The multiplayer game where you could play for as long as you had someone to play with became the massively multiplayer game, which were also called persistent worlds in the either days, and were very much defined by the fact that they did not end. Ever. You played until you burnt out, or something new came along, or your life shattered and you were dragged kicking and screaming back into the real world.

I love Dragon Age; it's currently my favorite game to play and I'm sure will be for a while yet. But I know that no matter how much I love Dragon Age, there will come a time when I'm done with it, when it will be time to move on, because there's nothing left to do. It happened before, with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It happened with Mass Effect. It happened with Oblivion. It happened with Morrowind. No matter how much I loved those games, eventually, it was time to go. That is not to say that I love them any less now; I have fond memories of all of those games, memories that I'll keep with me and cherish. But there came a natural end to my playing of those games. There was a point when I was done.

Multiplayer and massively multiplayer games don't have that natural, gentle break. They go on and on and on, into infinity, essentially, since the only thing that'll stop you from playing is you. There's no natural break. There's no sense, ever, that it's time to let go and move on. At one point, I thought that was kind of cool; after all, if you're having fun, you don't want the fun to end. The last page of a good book always makes you a little sad that it's over. It sucks when you realize the credits are about to roll on a great movie. You aren't ready to leave when those things happen.

And yet, I can't help but feel that's the difference between playing games as a child and playing them now as an adult. I shudder to think about what would have happened to be if there were MMOs when I was a kid, when I was utterly incapable of grasping the idea that too much of a good thing was even possible. If I could conceive of such a thing, it would be only in the very vaguest sense. Here, now, at this point in my life, I can understand and appreciate a finite limit to my enjoyment of any particular game. It means I don't have to worry about falling into addiction, about losing control entirely.

I like playing games. Love it, in fact. My collection is pretty extensive, and I very much doubt I'm going to grow out of it any time soon, or really, ever. And I like playing games with my friends. And I like the idea about being able to immerse myself in the fantasy worlds, the escapism, the release from normal life.

For brief periods of time.

There have to be limits. There has to be a time when you say, "okay, that's enough," and move on. That's healthy, that's responsible, that's mature.

But more and more, I realize that the MMO tries to break those limits. Not just tries, but succeeds. And that's dangerous. That's unsettling.

There have to be limits.