Short games are good
On the genesis of this idea. Long takes about short games.
When I was in my 20’s, I strongly favoured video games that I could play for a huge number of hours. Skyrim-esqe epics with sprawling plots and worlds that become like a second home. Unending sandboxes like Minecraft would see me wander aimlessly for ages. Rogue-likes with infinite replay-ability were replayed, infinitely.
Thinking back on this, I can see that my gaming habits came from a few places. I went through some extreme financial difficulties and buying new games was out of the question. It was play what I had or not play anything. So, a “value for money” approach prevailed. I couldn’t pay £15 for a game that was only going to last three hours.
This approach also affected what I got out of games and what I looked for in them. There are games out there that can sustain an excellent story for many many hours, but this hasn’t always been the case (very pleased it’s improving though). Until Hades smashed onto the scene in 2018 the idea that a Rogue-like could hold story across its multiple loops was unheard of. Story took a back seat to the actual gameplay. How fun was it to exist in the world, to use my character to act in the world, whether that was puzzle solving or killing. I felt that I could get story and plot and drama and characters from other place: books, TV, film. But I couldn’t play games elsewhere.
I used to be a very uncritical, undemanding media consumer. I still can be – often I close my “analytical eye” and give everything over to a central concern: am I having fun? I have tried in more recent years (greatly aided by the process of reviewing) to examine what I like or dislike about something and why. I’m not always good at this but it is, to me, worth trying.
Over the years that I’ve been a capital-G Gamer, I’ve staunchly defended the idea that games are art. However, I am guilty of leaving that entirely unexamined in my own personal context. If films and books and TV are art, games are art, I said, and left it at that. More recently I’ve been trying to think about the purpose and value of art (talk about a rabbit hole of rhetorical questions) – establishing with myself first that there’s no universal answer to these questions and going from there. I’ll probably delve further into this as we go, if people are interested in what I have come to understand as a very personal set of complicated thoughts and feelings.
Time has passed and, inexplicably I am now a 30-something who is doing a degree, has a part time job, and various other responsibilities. My gaming time is incredibly fragmented. A couple of hours here or there. Finishing a 60-hour epic really feels unachievable now, especially something like, say, Sekiro (on my backlog for years at this point) that requires you to gain and maintain a certain level of skill. If I go a few days between play sessions I forget what the buttons do, let alone extremely precise timing windows for deflecting attacks. I’ve never had a period in my life where I go so many days in a row between gaming sessions.
Don’t get me wrong – I still played Starfield on release and Rogue-like is one of my favourite genres. I still value the modding community very highly and a modded, randomised version of Hollow Knight has allowed me to spend over 1000 hours playing a game that took me casually 50 hours to complete.
However, this change in circumstances has changed how I approach games. I have much less patience for busy-work now. I used to truly enjoy tuning my brain out, putting on a podcast, and farming stacks of wood in Minecraft. I probably still would if things hadn’t changed. But if I have three hours to play, am not sure when I will next get a chance to dive in, and am sacrificing doing something else to carve out this limited time, I feel like I need something different from games than I used to.
I want shorter games. I want to be able to experience stories that excite me, that amuse me, that make me think and feel, that move me. It’s rare for one game to do all those things (which is totally fine – I don’t think one thing should try and do everything), which means needing to play a variety of things. I want to be more thoughtful and mindful of the content I consume. I used to have time for so much, I didn’t feel like I needed to be picky. Now, I feel like I must be really deliberate in what I choose to dedicate my time to.
It feels almost like a pendulum that started out on one side of the spectrum and has now swung all the way over to the other side. I want less busy work, not just something to keep my hands busy. I want to think deeply, I don’t want to passively consume. I believe writing helps me process my thoughts and engage more fully. And as, fundamentally an attention seeker, if I write something I’m going to publish it. I genuinely love to know when people agree or disagree or feel some kind of way about what I’ve written. So out it goes into the world.
Short games are good, let’s play some.
I want to caveat this by saying that it’s a personal account of my own journey. When I say that it wasn’t until Hades in 2018 that Rogue-likes sustained their stories, it is not because I am refusing to acknowledge a game that you, dear reader, care deeply about. It is simply that I am one person who does not have an encyclopaedic knowledge of all games. I am not very good at keeping up with new releases. If I have neglected a game you care about, let me know why you like it so much and maybe I’ll play it.
I can’t wait to see where this journey through short games takes you. I don’t know a lot about them myself so learning about them and how they make you feel will be a real pleasure!
Very well written, looking forward reading more!