Too many games, so little time

Being immersed in a world is everything a gamer can expect from a game. To be one with the character, to forget about our mundane problems just for a few hours.

But there comes a time when even the most passionate gamer needs to leave the console or the computer alone. Whether is it to go to work or to have, you know, a social life, gamers needs to take breaks. It’s hard to go back to real life after eight hours of demons slaying because some gamers are so immersed in the game that they think about it over and over again, and they don’t stop until they finish it. And let’s be honest, nowadays it’s really hard to stop playing; the games are getting better and better, their world building is getting more imaginative.

They are also getting longer. Much, much longer than they were in the past.

And this, for a casual video game player, is a problem.

Long games are sometimes problematic for casual players

“You said that being immersed in a world is a good thing, so why suddenly games being too long is a problem?” you may ask. Well, let’s start with the facts:

To finish The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – and by “finish it” I mean not only finishing the main plot but also the majority of the side quests - you need more or less 100 hours. It’s a lot. Now, 100 hours is basically four days of playing the game non-stop, which is so unhealthy so please, don’t try this at home!

So, we have 100 hours of the game, and let’s say the player has a day job, eight hours five times a week. We also have to take into consideration the time it takes to get ready for the job and to the job. Next, we have food preparation (our gamer is a healthy gamer who makes their own food, with vegetables and meat and so on), and social life. Also, sleep.

With all that let’s say that it will take two months to finish the game, which is more or less the time I finished the Witcher 3.

Even gamers need free time for other things 

But! Yes, there is a but! We need to remember: The Witcher 3 is not the only game available. There are other games that are being released and they all seem very tempting. They’re different than the Witcher, some shorter, but most of them aren’t shorter at all.

The Witcher 3 was released on 19^th of May, and to finish I we need two months, so 19^th of July should be the time of hitting the end credits. In the span of two months 23 games were published, including Batman: Arkham Knight, LEGO: Jurassic World, and God of War: Remastered. Even if we finish the game by the end of August we still have big titles that were also released in this month, including Dishonored for PS4, Gears of War Ultimate Edition, and finally Until Dawn.

And yes, I know not all of these game might be the ones that the Witcher 3 player will be willing to play instead of slaying monsters as Geralt, but there are always new games to play. AAA games, indie games, mobile games, they all take time to get into, figure out mechanics and the plot and such.

There are also games that we miss to play, because they’re so dear to us. Few times I had just started a game, but in the end I came back to my old favourites to meet characters and welcome the world they live in yet again.

I often come back to my favourite games 

The games are getting longer, and there are more available than there were even before.

I can understand that some developers want to make the experience of playing their game more unique and exceptional.  But they’re not creating that atmosphere by telling the player – yet again – that he needs to go to the other end of the map to find this thing, bring it back, and then go and find another thing and so on. You’re not playing as a postman, for god’s sake. Also that kind of narrative, the ‘fetch something and bring it back’ is repetitive and gets on my nerves so much.

The story doesn’t have to be long to be amazing. Of course, it can, but with so many games out there it would be a shame to just create a plot and quests for the sole purpose of making the game the longest it can be.

What do you guys think: are games nowadays getting too long? Or maybe you would like to play only 100+ hours games? Let me know in the comments!

The end is only the beginning, or how video games shouldn't have clear-cut endings.

“Oh, crap I did not see that coming at the end! When she met with him and that thing from the beginning became clear! Holy crap that was amazing!”

That’s a quote from me when I’ve finished a particularly good book which blew my mind. I screamed that internally, intensely staring at the last page of the book, hoping, even praying for some new words to magically appear.

Sadly, that was the end. The story was no more. The characters shook their hands, nodded politely to each other and went their ways.

The End.

“Yet, it's the end, Friend of mine.” Sang Sibylle Baier. The end is simultaneously a thing we love and hate. We love it because it gives us a sense of completion and we hate it because it means the story – a part of our life – has finished. We can try to revive it by starting the whole thing from the beginning, but there’s no fun when we know how things end, right?

Humankind was always obsessed with stories and particularly their endings. We always wanted and always will want to get to the very last chapter, the last episode, the last cut scene. We need things to end so that we can move on to other things and then to others and so on. How a story ends matters, because as a reader or viewer we want that moment of “oh crap I did not see that ending coming!” to happen. We crave that sense of completion.

Oh, the end is so tempting, isn’t it?

I am too, like the rest of the world, obsessed with endings. I like to finish things, not because I like them but the completing part is important. Can I sit and read for six hours just to end one book which I don’t particularly like? Hell yes, I can. I’ll read the epilogue even if it means more facepalming and headdesking.

However, video games endings are quite different.

You’re not only playing as the main character but at some level gamer becomes the main character. His worries are gamer’s worries, his adventures are gamer’s adventures. So when the ending doesn’t include the most important part of the game, the player is sure to revolt.

But should endings be clear-cut?

With games like, for example, the Witcher 3 it would be hard to not have a clear-cut ending. First of all, there are so many plots and characters that at least some of the quests had to end early and then the player’s choices would be visible on a beautiful art that accompanied major quests. But what about the “find my daughter” mission, which is the drive for Geralt and Yennefer? What about those seemingly unimportant quests like killing Radovid and reconciling Ciri with her biological father? These quests had an effect on the main ending of the game, but should they? I mean, the whole game was created out of a not clear-cut ending, in which the reader basically didn’t know what the hell has happened. Did Geralt and Yennefer survive? What happened with Cirilla? And how the hell did Andrzej Sapkowski dared to finish the saga the way he did? The Witcher – three games made by Polish developers – one of the biggest fan fiction in the world presents you with a possible, non-canon in Sapkowski’s eyes, ending.

Before I even got to the first half of the main quest, I looked the possible endings of the Witcher 3 up. Not because I really needed to satisfy my curiosity, but because I wanted to do everything just right for Ciri to survive. She was my teenage hero, as I read the books when I was 13 (NOT a good idea to be honest, but well, at least, I didn’t have nightmares), and I needed this game to end on a good note for her. Screw Geralt and his incapability to stay faithful to one woman, Ciri needs to have a happy ending! So, I watched all the endings and chose the perfect one of Ciri (and me).

Geralt and Ciri / via: thewitcher.com

After some time, when I was thinking more about how the story ended I thought “wow, wouldn’t it be so much better for the games to end on the same notes as books?” Not only games are using characters and places created by Sapkowski, they’re also using the unfinished, not clear-cut ending to continue the story. It would  be amazing for CD Project to acknowledge that they have created their own story but still establish that after all there wouldn’t be The Witcher: Wild Hunt without the books.

Wouldn’t it be so much more awesome for the game to have a similar ending as Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture had?

via: wikipedia.com

Published in 2015 by The Chinese Room, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is a game about seemingly normal English town. Everything is beautiful, the sun is shining, the people…well, the people are not there, as they have vanished and the player doesn’t know what happened to them. By walking around traditional English countryside, following light that transforms into human silhouettes, the player pieces together the story by listening to characters in non-linear order.

The ending is peculiar, one that has stuck in my mind for quite some time. The ending… doesn’t say anything. We still don’t know fully what happened, where the people have gone to, what was the light and were did it came from. There are no answers, only questions.

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture / via: www.stuff.tv

And this type of ending, this not clear-cut story which doesn’t present answers just more hypotheses, speaks to me on a special level. It a) provides me with different alternatives to how the story could end, b) treats me as a highly intellectual creature and c) you can’t spoil it to anybody because what is there to be spoiled?

Of course, putting not clear-cut ending after the player has spent hours and hours creating the characters, levelling them then beating the game, is risky. Some players might hate the ending and they might rant on Internet about how horrible it is. They may even pressure the developers into creating a DLC with a ‘proper’ ending that will not only add few hours of gameplay but will also neatly close loose plots. Some may say that the ending depends entirely on what kind of story developers want to create. It may be so, however, the ending is only a part of the story, not the sole purpose of creating it.

What kind of endings do you prefer? What was the most disappointing ending in a game you played? The most satisfactory one? Let me know in the comments!