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As of my freshman year, I will be posting content centered around a certain topic. You can expect my blog posts to feature well-written sentences.
Brady Bryan
I'm sure that everyone remembers their first time playing their first video game, or at least what the first video game they ever played was. For me, it was a racing game for the first Playstation when I was only two. Of course we all most likely did not know how to play or what to do our first time around, but for those of us that decided to stick around and continue to play, we became familiarized with what was expected of us over time. We had to defeat the boss or beat everyone else in a race or just go on an adventure. It was the first time we ever had a virtual interactive activity where our stimuli experienced new stimulus. As confusing or uneducated as that sounds, it was something none of us had ever experienced before. Fast forward to today and those of us who chose to continue playing video games throughout the years have either continued to feel a nostalgic enjoyment when playing or watching a game announcement that features beloved characters, beloved gameplay mechanics, or fantastic music, or have gradually dwindled in responsiveness to the latest games such as myself. Backtracking somewhere between the first time we played video games and the current timeline, we can find ourselves playing games that could hold our attention for days upon weeks upon months. While this may be due to limited options to entertain ourselves with, we could just sit down and play our games in any way that we wanted without being pressured to complete a mission with the utmost urgency. When I was around ten years of age, I would come home from school and play Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 for the Playstation 2. As any aware person knows, Dragon Ball is a franchise that is heavily associated with large, grand-scale fights of grandeur. I would rarely play the story mode (mostly in part due to my not knowing that there was a story mode as I simply wanted to beat up enemies) and instead play the training mode for days and days. I would choose my character and another character to be my opponent, and create my own head-canon, essentially creating a story mode of my own. As extremely repetitive as this was, I was never bored since the fights were "cool-looking and awesome." When I play Budokai Tenkaichi 2 now, I'm still surprised at how well this game holds up today in terms of animation, gameplay mechanics, user interface, etc., but needless to say, I'm not as "on cloud nine" as I used to be when I played it long ago. Much of that wondrous excitement has dwindled as more and more games came out over the years. This can be attributed to the feeling becoming commonplace with the release of numerous other games that illicit the same feeling to the point where it no longer affected me. This could also be the result of the newer games not living up to the hype that video games years ago once did, although this can be refuted by the fact that earlier video games had a stronger affect on us as it was a medium not fully realized. I truly am envious of fans that are able to become overwhelmingly overjoyed when they see something that is enticing from a video game advertisement as it reminds me of the times when I once felt that way, namely open-world games. Seeing everything that the player is capable of performing in a large-scale environment was (and still can be) a wondrous feeling. Recap:
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Brady Bryan
Remember the magical feeling we would get from playing video games as a kid? Remember experiencing a fun, engaging, interactive piece of media that no matter how repetitive your style of gaming was, retained the same enjoyable sensation for hours on end? Yeah, what happened to that? Where did it go? I no longer feel the same way I once did about video games about ten years ago. Comparably, it feels as though I am experiencing a less severe version of burnout when playing despite not being the creator of the game. This has been a feeling that has been looming over me for the last two years. Even when I procrastinate on accomplishing something such as homework, I get the urge to play video games over anything else. However, I get that empty feeling that I can't seem to shake. The biggest factor is that I know that other people are experiencing the same feeling. There are countless times where my friends (or sometimes myself) are harassing each other to play a multiplayer game together such as Rainbow Six Siege, but immediately get bored of the game after two matches (three if lucky). At this point we either get on a different game or we stop playing completely. One moment the fervor to play a game comes, the next moment it disappears. The fervor to play dissipates faster if we lose or die continuously (which is extremely commonplace). After all, dying is less fun than living. Instead of playing games to have fun, I have been playing video games to pass time, which feels sinful to me because my personal enjoyment of video game comes from aiming to have the most fun I can, disregarding time as a factor and/or result of gameplay. However, since I get this feeling with pretty much any game, every game feels the same to me in some way, shape, or form. Obviously playing Pokemon or Mario should not feel the same as playing Call of Duty or Rainbow Six Siege, but unfortunately it does. Perhaps there is an instance where I do not feel such a despicable feeling while playing games that has to do with the content of the games that I have come to familiarize myself with. This was more of an analytical look at how video games have been affecting me for the past couple of years, and how it affects my cognition of the fictional world, which in turn affects my cognition of the real world. When something you once loved so dearly that you were practically inseparable becomes a cyclical pattern of dull or limited enjoyment, that sinking feeling seeps into other activities. With that being said, what made games so special in the first place? Why do we feel so incomplete playing what we love? Think of this blog post as the first part of an analytical chain of posts. Recap:
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AuthorBrady Bryan is quite familiar with blogs since he had to frequently post on his blog in 6th grade. Although its been a long time since then, he still knows what a proper blog should look like. Archives
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