Interest breeds stimulation

Each one of us has a unique perspective based upon a vast number of contributing factors. Our minds are different by nature, but we may find some subject matter interesting, and create communities based upon our desired focus. Today the broad category that comes to mind is Gaming. The skill based and often thought provoking kind that steals away hours (or days, weeks, years? I feel your pain).

My perspective about a game is that if I play it for less than one hour per dollar spent on its acquisition (and possible retention, for subscription based models), I have failed to make a sound financial investment in the product. I won’t force myself to play, but it does influence future purchasing habits. Most triple A titles range between forty to sixty dollars where I live, and there are entire categories and genres that can be expected to fail meeting that time investment to play through the game once and see the majority of content included. Multiplayer options enhance replayability, but there are some games designed with replayability in mind from the foundation.

It’s not just replayability

Strategy, tactical, and role-playing games with a sufficiently difficult learning curve, diverse potential approaches to success, and complex enough internal systems that might cause a casual player to feel daunted approaching the material typically exceed my investment analysis. For me: RPGs clock in around 40-180 hours, tactical typically ends up 60-180, and strategy 100-180. Realizing that there is a soft ceiling in number of hours I play any given game, I started wondering why.

At 180 hours, I’ve explored most of the content, tried a number of different approaches, reached into the guts of a game and started putting my fingers through the loopholes. The puzzle that had my mind interested is solved, I’ve put it together and come to the end of learning what is new about the game. Further play would mean just enjoying the experience, or refining my techniques that are already allowing me to win on progressively harder difficulties. It’s true that I don’t always complete a game on its hardest difficulty before setting it aside, because the increase in difficulty isn’t the only thing that held my interest.

Thankfully there are many forms of stimulating media out there, and its fairly accessible at this point in time. When our interest wanes, it could be replaced by something else that serves to hold our attention and pull us into the content. I often favor engaging entertainment over passive, and as I migrate from one game to the next, I carry over skills and patterns of thinking that are constantly evolving and adapting to the new changes I encounter. This goes beyond hand-eye coordination, or the capacity for multitasking. Our entertainment can serve us in the future in wonderful, and often unexpected ways.