Angry Video Games
I love video games. So does my boyfriend. But what happens when they don't love us back. We give our time and energy to play in the rich universes digitally created, but what happens when at the end, after all the dust has settled, we feel empty or angrier than before?
I stumbled across this issue recently with Destiny 2's1 final expansion and the raid2 that was released with it.
Core of the Story
Night after night, week after week, my boyfriend would play the raid with his friends and every night he played he'd sink into bed at 1am defeated. They were getting nowhere, every night they'd grind for hours just for the game to reset at the end of the week. They'd be stuck in the same room for hours, the whole time arguing as they got increasingly frustrated.
While challenge in games is good3, this was just mean for the sake of it, not difficult, but an intentional waste of time. The game that used to bring him so much joy was sapping the happiness from him before my eyes. We're adults now, we have jobs, pets, and responsibilities. The game expected so much from us but failed to deliver the fun that we hoped for.
He had already stopped playing Destiny 2 for its own merits, there have been plenty of better games in the past six years, but rather for the friends we still maintain. With us living in a new city maintaining these friendships is harder than ever, but in one swift move, all of that abruptly ended. The fun stopped and what's the point of playing then?
What Now?
They've stopped playing the raid, half at my request and half from the realization among themselves that it didn't make them happy. They've largely gone back to whatever they found fun in the game before this fiasco4. I'm not sure how to feel about everything that's happened, it's good they're back to having fun, but what is the takeaway from all this? I'm not sure there is one.
So I return to my first question; what do we do when the games we love don't love us back? We can give and give to a game, but what happens when that time isn't rewarded? Do we move on, and focus on the things that originally made us fall in love with the world that they've created, or is the genie out of the bottle? I'm hoping and betting that we can go back, the developers overstepped - but not irreparably so - we can still find good in what's left behind. I just hope going forward the developers have the same respect for our time as we do for the hard work they do to bring these fantastical worlds to life. In the long term, we're going to have to find a new game to pass the time with friends, but until then we have this game we love and hate.
Wait, Was This All Just a Rant?
Yes.
Footnotes
Destiny 2 is a 2017 looter-shooter developed by Bungee.↩
A raid is a 6-person activity that has players going from "encounter" to "encounter" defeating enemies or bosses. They are generally played over several hours or days depending on difficulty. There are checkpoints, but they reset every week.↩
I recently posted about challenges in video games Thoughts on "Getting Good".↩
Currently the summer solstice event.↩