Angrist
08-18-2008, 05:01 PM
I have this theory:
When Half-Life 1 was released in 1998, it was awesome. Half-Life 2, released 6 years later, was basically HL1 but much better. But somehow it felt off for me. It took me a while to understand what it was: it made me feel so incredibly lonely. Walking through those abandoned buildings or dark caves... I hated it. It even made me feel a bit depressed and I couldn't play it for very long periods.
But: I never had that problem with HL1, even though it had even less story and characters! How is that possible? My theory: because it was launched in a time where gamers were still used to loneliness. Most adventure games had you walking around on your own. Whether you were a female bounty hunter in space, a tough marine fighting mutated monsters, or a mustached plumber: you were alone. (One of the few exceptions was the RPG genre, where you had many characters to talk to.)
But times have changed. We live in the time of instant messengers, of mobile phones, of online multiplayer, of MMORPGs. We are not used to spending an evening all on our own. If I look at myself, I feel pretty miserable when I haven't spoken or chatted with anyone all day. And it works the same way in games. I don't want to run around solving everything myself, I want to communicate every now and then! Most games have incorporated clever systems for this. You get radio calls which provide you new objectives. You meet people just for the sake of meeting them. Even the expansion episodes of Half-Life 2 do it right: you have a cute companion at your side most of the time. There's constant communication, constant interaction.
But Half-Life 2 did what the creators wanted it to do: make me feel like the last man on earth. Bah.
When Half-Life 1 was released in 1998, it was awesome. Half-Life 2, released 6 years later, was basically HL1 but much better. But somehow it felt off for me. It took me a while to understand what it was: it made me feel so incredibly lonely. Walking through those abandoned buildings or dark caves... I hated it. It even made me feel a bit depressed and I couldn't play it for very long periods.
But: I never had that problem with HL1, even though it had even less story and characters! How is that possible? My theory: because it was launched in a time where gamers were still used to loneliness. Most adventure games had you walking around on your own. Whether you were a female bounty hunter in space, a tough marine fighting mutated monsters, or a mustached plumber: you were alone. (One of the few exceptions was the RPG genre, where you had many characters to talk to.)
But times have changed. We live in the time of instant messengers, of mobile phones, of online multiplayer, of MMORPGs. We are not used to spending an evening all on our own. If I look at myself, I feel pretty miserable when I haven't spoken or chatted with anyone all day. And it works the same way in games. I don't want to run around solving everything myself, I want to communicate every now and then! Most games have incorporated clever systems for this. You get radio calls which provide you new objectives. You meet people just for the sake of meeting them. Even the expansion episodes of Half-Life 2 do it right: you have a cute companion at your side most of the time. There's constant communication, constant interaction.
But Half-Life 2 did what the creators wanted it to do: make me feel like the last man on earth. Bah.