Mythokia

ArsTechnica recently ran an article on the dying of classic video game arcades and many gamers today talk about them with a kind of wistfulness. Unfortunately, despite being a gamer myself, I am unable to share that same nostalgic feelings.

I don’t fancy arcades. Wait, that sentiment is not strong enough to express what I feel. Let me rephrase my point.

I hate arcades.

That is not to say that I’ve always felt this way towards arcades. I did beg my parents for money to allow me to visit arcades when I was still in primary school, that is to say, when I was between the ages of six to twelve. Past that however, I cannot recall a single instance of wanting to be in an arcade voluntarily.

It would seem that as I grew older, I actually started to despise the arcade more. Right now, I see them as a horrible entropy of noise and light, blaring and flashing at me from every direction. It’s a seizure inducing place. I love being able to sit in the quiet comfort of my chair, being in an room that has just the right temperature, and completely immersing myself in a virtual world with zero distractions. The arcade just isn’t a conducive gaming environment.

One’s personality also changes over time, and so does the activities that he indulges in. The same applies within the context of gaming. Aside from all that noise and crowd, it seems that the genre of games that I play shifted. I used to be a huge FPS (first person shooter) fan. I played every sequel of Unreal Tournament, every sequel of Quake, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Battlefield 2, and most recently, Team Fortress 2. However, I am no longer able to obtain the same sense of gratification from these games that I was able to before. I am only able to manage perhaps, two or three hours a week playing Team Fortress at most. Past that, it feels like “why bother?”.

The above mentioned games all share common similarities with arcade games. There is no compelling reason to play them. They’re all in essence, an infinite loop of a grinding treadmill. It is not the same as in an MMO, whereby I might spend ten hours getting a level, but that one level is as intrinsic as it can get. I get to keep that one level, and as long as that virtual world exists (the game isn’t pulled offline), I’ll forever be one level higher than I was before. In an arcade game however, when I come back tomorrow, even to the same machine, I’ll have to work through all of that again. There is no persistency, there is no goal and hence, actions simply have no resulting effect.

Not all shooters are the same however. Single player shooters generally much more like an RPG. They have a compelling storyline to follow. Sure, I might have to kill a couple hundred Covenant grunts in Halo along the way, but there is real and visible progress being made that is relayed through the advancement in the finely crafted story.

A huge sandbox is what these shooters and arcade games are, and being placed in a sandbox with another individual so that we can spend the next couple hours trying to mindlessly blow each other up over and over again is no fun. Remember that episode of Stargate SG-1 where Jack O’Neill and Daniel Jackson got stuck in a time loop? It’s exactly what these games are. No matter what you do, you always start back at zero again. That’s the reason why I choose to play RPGs and MMORPGs, and I can never bring myself to play the same kind of shooters I once did before.