Hiatus? SHMIATUS!

Posted on | Thursday, 14 April 2011 | 1 Comment

I've thought a lot over the past few days about what I might like to do with my life... Suffice to say I'm not sure - time is on my side however! 22 years of age as of this post and, with Dragon Age COMPLETE (cue fanfare) I ask myself; what's next?

I have been playing Heroes of Newerth - you can read a bit more about that in a "professional" context here but, strictly off the record - I'm tired of it. I won't go into the ins and outs of how and why but suffice to say; following a particularly poor game, my best friend posed this question to me;

"I thought we played games for fun?"

While not so much a question as a statement it still rang true. Given the amount of time I have dedicated to playing games, talking about games, buying games, browsing games in my life I would now expect, no, demand that the very minimum I get from it is enjoyment. But too often do I find myself frustrated, angry, or, and perhaps worst of all, apathetic towards my favourite hobby.

Crysis dragged on, The Witcher was a struggle in parts, Dragon Age was unremarkable in the extreme and only two infusions of creativity have kept me going over the past few weeks - 'don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story' (which I wrote about here) and 'Digital: A Love Story' both by Christine Love have given me hope yet that games can approach a level of narrative sophistication that is sorely lacking in a medium so intent on improving itself through everything other than story - be it graphical fidelity, sound quality or even particle density - I couldn't care less. Games look great on my ps3, on my ds, on my PC - hell, 'Digital: A Love Story' is a blue box with dodgy text in it.

I live in hope that one day soon the misguided quest for visual perfection is halted and people realise that it doesn't matter how good a game looks; a good looking turd is still a turd after all, but how a message or story is written, delivered and portrayed is what is increasingly important in my enjoyment of games. Sure, it's selfish, but I'm getting bored.

Maybe I'm growing faster than the medium - Planescape: Torment is heralded as the best story in a game ever and will be 20 years old next year....

In other news - I'll be giving this blog a little more attention with the aim of moving onto an actual real life website soon enough - but what to put on it? I feel that's a discussion for another day, in a dingy bar over a glass of whiskey (which I don't even drink.)

So how do you feel? Maybe I'm overreacting after a long day (it is 2 am after all) or have we reached a plateau?