Game Play Ebb and Flow
There is a pretty good article over at Wired about the gradual burnout we have when playing a game. I find this to be true with most games I play. Of course the game grabs our attention when it is first played. But after a while the interest in the game eventually ebbs. One of my most recent examples is Nintendogs. I purchased the game when it was first released to the public and I played it for about a month, but I’ve not touched the game since.
We humans seek constant novelty, so only gameplay that has nearly infinite permutations — like chess — can hold our attention forever.
Of course if the game has great mechanics, like chess, you can always come back and play it again at a later time. One of the few video games that I go back and replay is Advance Wars and possibly StarCraft, since they were well made. Sometimes it is great to go back and play the old school games like Pac-Man or Q-bert, but that doesn’t last long. What other games out there are like that you like to go back and play?
October 24th, 2005 at 4:41 pm
Old school solitaire (draw 3) and Madden football. If I still have some RTS games around, sometimes I’ll go back to playing those for a brief period.