Kotaku game day bookThe latest thoughts from a Kotaku employee about a game we play.in the World of Warcraft: ShadowlandsI’m level 59 and 7/8, I’ve completed three of the five new zones and I still don’t think I’m enjoying myself. in the Fate 2I stumble across Europe clumsily (sometimes embarrassingly late) figuring out what the hell all my witchcraft powers are doing. Except for a few fleeting moments, I don’t smile, giggle with joy, or sob in an emotional moment. I just sit at my desk and click and click while I watch the numbers go up. My body is completely neutral, as if it were being controlled by an invisible hand like the one I use to control my avatars in the game. By almost every metric we need to evaluate games, I’m not having fun. And yet I am not Not Have fun.
Each day, I faithfully log into both games, wondering if this will be the day something meaningful happens. Will the lightbulb miraculously burst over my head? Am I finally going to have that “Oh, I’m having fun” Eureka moment? But even after a long game session in which this moment inevitably does not occur, I look forward to following the feeling again.
It could be that pointless clicking is just my twisted definition of “fun”. But the truth is, I just think I don’t mind when Impressive and Fate 2 Swallow large chunks of my time and pay very little emotionally in return. In fact, I want them to waste my time. in the World of Warcraft: ShadowlandsI spent most of yesterday completing every quest ahead of me. I completed the Maldraxxus and Ardenweald zones in maybe five or six hours, with just half a handful of moments thinking, “That was cool.” The rest of that time it was just my warlock slinging spells, I got frustrated that my demon pet wasn’t fueling as well as I remember, and even more frustrated when a dungeon quest took more than one run to complete . It sounds absolutely joyless was joyless, but strangely enough, I agree.
It can seem like a game that is not “fun” can be a major sin – the time and money we sacrifice for it are finite and precious. Good games should maximize both, but that doesn’t mean that Impressive
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Calling these games “comfort games” is as close as possible to describing my relationship with them, but even that doesn’t feel entirely right. Doing these tasks feels like maintenance or upkeep: something my body has to do every now and then to keep it working optimally. It’s not exactly a compulsion, not a need, to light up the lizards in my brain and say, “Must. Play. Impressive. “But I know that sometimes when I’m enjoying the choice between another Hades Run or squirrel away the hours with a few people I don’t know in the Fate 2I choose the latter somewhat irrationally. That may sound awkwardly close to calling myself “addicted”, albeit luckily without the inappropriate traits of true video game addiction. Why is that good, one might ask? Honestly, I don’t know it is! It’s just something I do, not for some “good” reason, or because it’s my job, or because it makes me feel good, because it usually isn’t. These games exist in this weird gray area where I neither enjoy them wildly nor passionately hate them, but that feels okay. There’s something right about that.
Play Shadowlands or Fate 2 Feel like you’re in the purgatory of the video game, waiting for the game to go good or unplayable bad, and realize that you likely won’t either. When I play these games I feel consumed with an empty void and spit out after a few hours, which is no worse – which, ironically, is exactly what happens to many planets in Fate 2 and my own character in World of Warcraft.
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