Blitzy

Goken, one of my "clanmates", made a respectable comment one day when we were training, and it's only recently that it dawned upon me the saddening truth of what he meant. That comment is indeed, the title of this blog. If you're too lazy to look: "Just 22836261 more hours of gameplay and this'll actually be fun."

Thinking about it now, he had a very good point. Many games, in particularly MMORPGs, require some form of time input from you in order for you to experience more of the game, and Rohan was no exception. Even though we could see all of the worlds and all of the environments, the most fun aspects of the game seemed out of bounds unless you'd put in enough time. For example, the Guild Wars seemed amazingly exciting as they pitted real players against real players in actual battles, and our tiny guild often discussed how we would participate in these "once we were a high-enough level". The male competitive streak ultimately worked to our disadvantage here; people were such a high level in the Guild Wars that the lower players had to reach that boundary before having fun in the game.

 A European player taps out at level 80 in only 27 hours, the new level cap for the expansion "Wrath of the Lich King" for World of Warcraft

This paragraph from Eludamos (http://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/article/view/64/95) pretty much sums this "inertia" effect to the tee:

"The fundamental principles of some modern genres of digital games require long-term involvement from players who want to enjoy their activity to the maximum extent. For instance, it takes substantial time and effort to "level up" a character in MMOs, which is necessary to explore new territories, acquire new items, pursue new quests, and collaborate with other players (Yee, 2006; Williams et al., 2006). In browser games such as "Travian" (www.travian.de; cf. Klimmt, Schmid, & Orthmann, in press), players need to invest time and effort to build up economic and military structures that can be used to prepare a large-scale attack or simply defend the own empire against hostile forces. In clan-based gaming, it frequently requires several hours per day of "training" to maintain one's acquired skill level and keep the ability to participate effectively in team battles. In other words, for these kinds of digital games, players need to invest considerable resources (time, thinking, physical effort such as sleep deprivation) in order to continue to have fun with the game."

Annoyingly, this describes us gamers to the core. We pour so many hours into these games so we get better and access better equipment and more maps and the like, but we ultimately get bored of that new stuff in the end and long for more!

It's not just MMORPGs however. Single-player games are often criticised for vamping up the difficulty curve for players, and the only way players can experience the next part of a game is if they overcome that difficulty curve. As Dara O'Briain said when being interviewed for Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe (the clip of which is below): "No book or film has pauses which quiz you on what's just been covered, and restrict you from seeing the rest if you get that question wrong."

Thinking about it, I can see their point. I remember as a kid playing all my games on Easy mode using cheat codes to warp from level to level until I'd reached the end. I guess I was less of a gamer and more of a tourist; I just wanted to see all of the content that the game had to offer. Arguably, get my money's worth. These days, you have to work to get that content. You pay £30 for the game, but it will depend on your "worthiness as a gamer" that reflects how much content you'll actually get from the game and how much value for money that game will actually have.

I miss cheat codes. :(