You Make My Games Stop Sucking

I decided to post about what games mean to me. Not an original topic, but it’s my blog so **** off if you don’t like it. No one’s forcing you to be here.

First off, I’m not much of a gamer. Sure, I’ve got some highly respected ones like Heroscape, Descent, and Last Night on Earth, but I’ve also got some that get panned by people like Apples to Apples, Fluxx, and Monopoly. I’m also not much of a gamer because I just don’t get the segmentation. You have war gamers, video gamers, pc gamers, ameritrash gamers and euro gamers. I just look for stuff I enjoy and don’t really pay attention to the faction it fits in beyond that.

One of my favorite games of all time is just a card game, cribbage. My grandfather taught the game to me and he taught me well enough that people don’t like playing against me anymore. This sucks.

But I was playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and trying to figure out why I was so bored with the game when I hadn’t even gotten out of the first chapter. And I started to consider which of my games I considered not so boring that I could play by myself for a bit of entertainment. And the conclusion I came to was that I just didn’t like any game; none of them. Even those highly respected ones.

And for a minute or two I tried to figure out why that was. Why couldn’t I enjoy putting maps or armies together in Heroscape or enjoy studying the rules for Descent so I could run a smooth gaming session? The answer came, and although simple, I feel it was important.

It was because it was just me. It was just me, sitting in my apartment, wondering what game to play for entertainment.

And the conclusion I drew that I feel is profound (for me at least) is that I will never have a game that I can enjoy forever no matter what because games are supposed to be a social environment. Without other people there all games will become boring and stagnant. Even single player ones.

Why would single player games, even exceptionally well made ones, get dull after too much time alone? Because single player games are what you do when you’ve had too much society. Too much of other people and need some time to be alone. But if you stay that way they lose their chief function, which is to release the tension that comes with being around other people.

For games to be enjoyable, you must have interaction. It’s a necessity that can’t be ignored. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to find a nice, tall geeky gal that likes Heroscape AND hockey.