Halfway Save Syndrome: What's the reason?

Vacation? Videogame Time!
It's probably no surprise with being finally getting off from classes and having the opportunity for enjoying the wonderful *painful* object known as the sun. That naturally everyone would be inside, all day, playing videogames. Continuing with this logical thought process it would make sense, you would be finishing these games, but what happens, when you just for no justified reason, stop playing?

This is how you can sum up how my end of scholaring and vacation has been, over the course of the last 3 months I can't recall if I've actually managed to finish, a single game I've bought or been gifted. To sum it up an impressive list can be said.

L.A Noire : Halfway
Saints Row The Third : About Halfway, and in coop
Braid: Maybe 30%?
Alan Wake: Halfway
Limbo: About halfway
Dead Space: About halfway
Deus Ex: Human Revolution: 30%
Portal 2: About 30%
Batman Arkham City: Halfway....
Revenge of the backlo----

Got A Problem With That?
Okay enough of that, the question is, what makes us quite plainly, just put down games? And it's a question i've been wondering myself. Alan Wake and Dead Space are fantastic titles, but for some reason, it always feels like it's too much effort to pick them up and start playing, indeed you could even go far as to say, I almost feel too lazy, to click on a damn icon twice. But this is, well frankly speaking, complete Bulls---.



This is what really has been pestering me about the game industry, it seems lately, that games become stale before I'm actually done enjoying the meal? The issue is, why and how can so many diverse and unique games, given stellar ratings, for some reason or another, feel so boring. Frankly, the odd thing I find as non-sensible as it may make comparing all of these games and their dynamic gameplay styles, it just doesn't feel new.

Sure you can criticize me as much as you like for my choices of 'boring' and 'boring gameplay' but the fact still stands, for some reason or another, i've been getting bored. What I feel the problem is, is despite what you call it, and despite the new mechanics you bring in, if it's either Braid or Alan Wake, you're still following the rules of what is called a 'genre'.

When It Is Natural, When It Is Not
We all know why we get bored of games, we finish all the missions, beat the game silly 100's of times, get all the end game achievements, items etc... we get bored when there's nothing left to do. I feel this is partially a reason games like Minecraft have as of late managed to garner as much success as they did, when Minecraft was originally under the run of Notch, the game is based around, unrestricted freeform building, or to be plain unrestricted freedom for the games mechanics, and Notch continued to add more and more mechanics. In doing so one could say a new 'genre' was either born or born anew, and for the players, the game was always kept fresh with new niches in it's own new genre leading to the craze we have or we've had..

For example,Portal, RPG's, and to certain degrees first person shooters like Doom and Quake, these helped define new 'genres' some perhaps new 'niches' (mini-genres), but do we find it most surprising as of late the games which have to put forth some of the biggest budgets , are in fact First Person Shooters, and RPG's?

To a certain degree it could be arguable this is why retro games for many gamers still remain the most enjoyable, they aren't trying to imitate or improve on old material, they are the original, the material for which all games have slowly spread out in style from, and because of this it could be said they are
closest to the very genre of play they represent, whether they started it or began near it.

I just got this new game Fantasy Modern Duty Wake The Sixth

It's why one feels given to argue, does a game always need to focus on new and 'improved' features to do better, in a way yes it does, to certain degrees it's acceptable games may even 'need' to do this. If videogames however gained the popularity they had today because they were new, a different 'genre' of entertainment, even to a certain controversial degree 'art'. When do we draw the line and think of something new and never attempted, and when do we turn a 'genre' from genre into niche.

This can be said for almost all degrees of entertainment and even visual arts, when we look back at things like Silent Movies, 70's TV shows, and retro games, you can always tell that in each iteration something dramatic changed, for silent movies it may have been sound, for bad 70's TV it may have been an actual plot, and for Retro Games it may have been graphics, but the question is, even when we've evolved out of a medium, sometimes we need to look back at our history to learn how to take the next steps.



The Wonderbook does not qualify.

I'm not discrediting modern videogames entirely, I will most indefinitely eventually finish these titles, but if they truly are deserving of they're status as standout games in our generation of videogames a game you'll have to force me to put down well I haven't felt it much from this generation, in its evolution of videogames, I hate to say it but this generation hasn't made much actual progress when it comes down to the core of a game, how it plays, how it's different, and how it changes our view of its genre, but hopefully, it can change.