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Scott Anderson
United States
Casper
Wyoming
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THE WEEKEND GAMER (#1)
The part where I rant about something . . .
Welcome to my weekly column! The title isn't very imaginative, but I think it gives a sense of the perspective from which my gaming is presently confined. I'm a 28 year old attorney with a wife and 2.5 kids (a 5 yr old girl, a 3 yr old boy, and another boy on the way - which I conveniently timed so that he would arrive right in between GDC and E3)! I long for the days when I could come home from school and play video games. For better or worse, I am now at a time in my life wherein I get home from work with just enough time to eat dinner, help put the kids to bed and try to watch one or two TV shows with my wife, trying to stay caught up with the TiVo. I occasionally find the time to fit an hour or two of gaming in on a weeknight, but most of my real game sessions occur on the weekend. Hence the lame title of this column - “The Weekend Gamer."**
**I reserve the right to change the title at any time if one of you suggests - or I come up with - something cooler!
As a correlation to my limited gaming time, I have also developed an ever-growing affinity for indie games. As I sit here and try to figure out how to sum up what draws me to indie games, I think I can boil it down to the following generalizations (which I will be expounding upon in future columns):
• Innovation - Indie games are typically innovative in one form or another. Whether it’s due to a unique gameplay mechanism or just the way the game is presented, indie games often challenge the status quo and our gamer preconceptions.
• Art Style - I'm over-generalizing here, but indie games seem to have a higher quotient of 'prettiness.' I should probably qualify that to say unique prettiness. CoD:MW3, Uncharted 3, Halo: Reach, Crysis, Forza 3, etc. are the epitome of gorgeous, high-end graphics.; but what I'm talking about here is different. Just look at some of the top indie games of 2011 - Bastion, Trine 2, Limbo, Outland... The visual styles of these games are fascinatingly unique.
• Digestible Length - Don't get me wrong - I've loved every minute of the ~30 hours I've put into Skyrim so far (and I know I'm just scratching the surface and can't wait to pour another hundred hours into it) - but one of the greatest things about indie games is that I can generally play one from start to finish in a week or two of my weekend (and occasional weeknight) gaming.
Although I don't want to over-generalize our fascinating, awesome, diverse user base here, I feel it's safe to say that many of you are similar to myself in some of these regards. Many of us are out of school and working in careers. Many of us are especially interested in either older classics, or the more innovative titles that can be bought in Steam sales or Humble Bundles and can be easily digested in the precious time we have left after fulfilling our professional, familial and other responsibilities.
I believe that we are in the midst of a great transitive period of gaming. The days of grown-ups... "growing up" and giving up video games are over. We are the generation that grew up playing video games and a large percentage of us aren’t just going to stop because we’re getting older. I cannot imagine that I won't be playing video games the rest of my life, and I'm sure many of you feel the same.
So I hope you’ll find this column interesting and worth your time. You can expect to see it here every Monday morning. I look forward to your input in the comments below!
Snippets and Tidbits . . .
Tweet of the Week: courtesy of @CPCharity
Video of the Week: College Humor’s Battlestar Galactica RPG (Sorry - I can’t embed this one, but it’s definitely worth clicking on the link if you’ve seen BSG!)
What I played this week: Ico (PS3), Trine 2 (Mac and XBLA), Portal (Mac), League of Evil (iPad), Crimson Steam Pirates (iPad)
What I hope to play next week: I hope to finish Trine 2 (or at least get close) and get back into Skyrim after taking a week or two off from it (only because I know as soon as I power it up, I won’t want to play anything else for a while).
Parting thought: “Games make us happy because they are hard work that we choose for ourselves, and it turns out that almost nothing makes us happier than good, hard work.”
-- Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Happy and How They Can Change the World
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