It’s not about how high the number is, but rather the journey of the number.
This past week, I caught up with a friend who works in the media. We reminisced about our past as well as thoughts about the trend of gaming. A lot of good games that entertain have come out in recent years but something also made us take pause. We thought about how games were sometimes unnecessarily long with hours that do not make sense if applied elsewhere.
If you were to ask somebody to do 40 hours’ worth of work for $60 (tip exempt of course), would somebody actually take it?
The answer of course is no, we would also be asking authorities to go check out that company for wage suppression. Yet, we see the same thing happened with video games. Make no mistake, gaming, unlike other entertainment mediums, is an active activity. Listening to music you can simply sit down and enjoy. TV, watch it take in, and get involved. It differs with gaming whether it’s sports or tabletop where the activity requires you to do the work. It’s especially true for gaming.
They have been great strides in the conversation about quality time gaming. On the player side, there’s an emphasis on prioritizing gameplay and not necessary length. People constantly thinking about completion for gaming. On the developer side, we’re seeing discussions about engaging players rather than just content and rather if the development that is not played is worth developing.
Thus we should push the concept of quality time gaming. It means having purposeful gaming that makes the experience from developer to gamer enjoyable for the experience. Instead of watching the clock, or pushing the boundaries of engagement via time spent, it means more memorability and enjoyment.
This work is necessary because of the discussions of burnout. Between all ends of people feeling more exhausted, a deluge of games, expansions, and downloadable content coming everyday, just the thought of games can overwhelm even the most engaged persons. By emphasizing quality time, not only in development but in gaming experiences, we can work on ways to resolve these feelings of burnout.
We really need to keep on engaging with the concept of making a player’s time valuable. We do that by deemphasizing how much you can do and emphasizing the amount of emotions and enjoyability you can get from the players. If we can continue the trend, we might actually have a better ecosystem for players, developers, reviewers, and make the entire gaming atmosphere better.
