Playing Games The Wrong Way: Using The Internet

Sorry for the clickbait title, but it’s true. We have all been playing video games wrong and not getting the full enjoyment out of them. This can be for many reasons, regardless of your age and responsibilities. It’s all due to an innovation that changed gaming forever, but its effects are both positive and negative. That innovation was the…

…Internet

Starting as early as the PlayStation 1 and Nintendo 64 era. The internet became more accessible for the average person. If you didn’t have access at home, it was likely that your school or local library did. But for most people, the effort of looking for a game guide online was beyond them. There were video game magazines that provided guides. But you had to be lucky that the game you were playing was popular. Or that an official game guide had been commissioned. I remember purchasing Pokémon Stadium and Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask official game guides. Unfortunately, both game guides have been lost to time.

By the time of the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube, everyone I knew had some type of computer. With access to the internet. I had one and with it I also had a printer, which I could then use to print off game guides.

So why is the internet bad for gaming?

Discovery

Having the internet easy to access means you can look up guides so that you do not have to discover the finer details of the game’s mechanics. If there is a particular item that you need to find, instead of working it out yourself. You can dip onto the web to find the answer yourself. This results in you are missing out on the gratification of figuring it out yourself.

Important plot points and/or spoilers only take a few days to surface after a game has been released to the public. Sometimes it is even beforehand with game leaks. One prime example of this is that everyone knows what happens to Aerith in Final Fantasy VII before even playing the game. It’s a massive part of the game and how the characters develop. Another example is the identity of Venom Snake in Metal Gear Solid V. If that hadn’t been revealed to me, I would have enjoyed the game even more.

Back when you could only get this information via print media. It was unlikely these plot points would have been mentioned unless it was for a game walkthrough. Or if the game had been out for many years. Game developers had a tighter hold on their sensitive information since not everyone was online.

Rushing

With stores such as Steam, Epic Game Store, platform-specific stores the number of games that a gamer has access to is higher than its ever been. According to Steamspy, the average game in a person’s library is around 10. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but many Steam accounts go unused, so the average library is for active users is a lot higher. This doesn’t even consider subscription services which come with hundreds of games each. I find myself in a rush to complete games so I can play the next big thing. It means you don’t get to play games 100% through anymore.

It’s not only the gaming industry that incentivise you to play games quicker. Everyday life gets in the way regardless of your situation. There are choirs to do, people to see and careers to pursue. The way life is at the moment, people are pushed to find other income streams to make themselves better. Rather than being able to sit down and relax. Play a video game and enjoy the experience.

So, What Can You Do?

These tips will only be suitable for people who do not work in the video game industry. So, if you review games, run a blog, or other video game role then this won’t be useful for you.

Step 1 – The first tip would be to remove payment details from all video game stores. This includes Epic Games, Steam, and platform specific stores. This will prevent you from buying games as you’ll have to enter in your payment details each time.

Step 2 – You will need to create a list of all games that you currently own. Ignore any free to play or massively multiplayer games such as Call of Duty Warzone and World of WarCraft for now. For each game, make a note of whether you have completed the game and whether you are likely to revisit it in the future.

Also include the platform that you have the game on, as well as the genre of the game. Save this on a Google or Excel spreadsheet in the cloud.

Step 3 – Go through the list of incomplete games and note down how many times you have tried to play the game. If it’s once or twice, that’s fine. But if you’ve played it more than five times without progressing, it’s best not to include that in the future. Highlight these games in a red colour.

Step 4 – Add a column for rating how much you want to play the game from 1 to 5. 1 being I don’t want to touch the game, and 5 being I want to complete it right now even if I have only five minutes to live.

Step 5 – Any games that have a rating of 4 or 5, highlight them green. Any that have a rating of 1 or 2 highlight in red.

Step 7 – Next look at new releases for the coming year (check out GameSpot). Are there any games that you want to buy If so, add them to your list limiting it to 5 new games a year. If you can’t think of five new games, look at your wish lists and add them on to the list. We only want to add five new games at the start of the year.

Step 8 – Remove the filter from the initial spreadsheet and apply a filter for green coloured cells. Check which platform they are on. We want to start with the platform with the least green records.

Step 9 – Filter by name so that you can only see the game you are playing. Complete it then move on to the next game.

Conclusion

It can be hard to enjoy games with so much going on. But by having a schedule of what games you are going to play, it helps a lot. By getting rid of games you have no interest in, will allow you to slow down and enjoy the games you are playing.