Focus = Fun?

Lately my MMO gaming time has been down a bit, mostly due to DoTA, but also from the fact that currently I’m only actively playing LoTRO, and that’s with Aria, so we don’t log in a ton of hours each week. LoTRO is a great game to take at a casual pace, as there is always something to do, and even in short bursts of an hour or so you can make significant progress.

The down time has got me thinking how much game time has an effect on game enjoyment. All my best memories of games, be they MMO or not, are from games I was heavily invested in. The peak of WoW for me was raiding MC and BWL, making progress each week on new encounters. Both UO and AC peaked around the time my guilds were most active and involved in heavy PvP. My overall gaming highlight was being ranked #1 in Myth 2. In all situations, I was playing those games a rather stupid amount of time, generally around 6 hours or more each day, 7 days a week. You have a lot of free time as a student. Having graduated, that’s just not possible right now, and even if it was, I don’t think I would want to spend my life devoting so much time to gaming, not to mention Aria would kill me.

Maybe it’s just an odd coincidence, maybe it’s me just getting old, but I just don’t have that ‘pull’ with games these days as I did before. Yes LoTRO is fun, but it’s not ‘must play now’ fun. Same with the Wii, all fun games, but not anything like getting Final Fantasy 7 and playing it till your eyes bleed, taking a break, and going right back. And I think it might have something to do with consistence; the more you play a game, even if it’s just in smallish amounts but daily, the more you get ‘into’ that game and want to finish. Part of that is overall I just have less gaming time, but another factor is choice. I have more choices now than ever in what to play, and I can bounce around from one game to another at will. It’s fun from a diversity standpoint, but not so good for actually getting into a game and finishing it, hence The Witcher remaining unfinished despite being a great game.

So I think in order to get more out of the gaming time I do have, I’ll need to focus a bit more. Non-MMO games make this a bit easier because they actually have an end, so once you finish, you move on. MMO’s and open ended games like DoTA or Civilization are a bit trickier, since they never end, but at the same time don’t require quite as much time to really get into. DoTA you get into it for the length of a match, and as long as your skills stay sharp, it works. Same with Civ, but even less, since its turn based and you just need to remember strategy, not quick combos and twitchy gameplay.

The Return of the King.

Over the weekend news broke that Bungie Studios is leaving Microsoft and once again becoming an independent studio. For those not too familiar with Bungie, they are responsible for some of the best videogames ever created, ranging from Marathon (FPS), Myth (RTS), and of course Halo. Before the Microsoft acquisition, I personally always considered Blizzard and Bungie on the same level, both being top-notch developers. Blizzard had Warcraft, Bungie had Myth. Blizzard had Battle.net, Bungie had Bungie.net. Blizzard had the failed Warcraft adventure game, Bungie had Oni. Neither studio seeks to reinvent the wheel when going about game design, each simply takes an existing formula and refines it, creating a gem among its peers.

Now unless you where a big fan, most do not know about Marathon and Myth simply because Bungie started as a Mac-only developer, and later did not have the marketing muscle to really promote its games. That said, for those that have played those games, you know they were far ahead of the curve in terms on innovation, and overall had a blizzard-like level of polish that was clear to see.

Marathon had a deep story for a FPS, similar to Dues Ex, a game that came out years later. Marathon also had features such a duel wielding weapons, second modes of fire, and NPC teammates long before all those become standard. It also had a multiplayer game that rivaled Doom, and in many ways surpassed it. Problem was, it was Mac-only, and hence saw a very small audience.

As for Myth 1 and 2, they were the first games I was truly addicted to, going so far as to hold the worlds #1 spot in Myth 2 on Bungie.net. To this day I consider Myth 2 one of the all time great multiplayer games, even above Starcraft and Warcraft 3. The Myth games were also ahead of their time, using a 3D engine long before those become standard. Bombs would roll down hills, arrows traveled farther if shot from high ground, and you could spin the camera as you wished. Myth also featured a great storyline and used cel animation movies for key parts. Its online component, played on Bungies version of Battle.net, was amazingly deep and user-friendly, again with features that only now we consider standard.

When I heard the news that Bungie was going solo, I was ecstatic, as this means one of the best studios is once again out of Microsoft clutches and free to create games THEY want to create, instead of pumping out a Halo each time Microsoft finds itself behind in the console war. What the next project will be for Bungie is unclear at this time, but I would not be too surprised if they venture into the MMO space. While generally over-crowded, I have no doubt that Bungie could create something fantastic, something that finally pushes the genre beyond WoW 2.0. Either that or they plan to compete with Blizzard once again in the RTS space, releasing something to compete with Starcraft 2.

Time will tell, but at least for this fan, the future for gaming is a little brighter.