If there's one habit that I find a lot of folk who play games all have picked up at least one point in their gaming careers, it's the habit of the hoarder. I'm guilty of it and I'm sure you have been too, you just start picking up items in your quest to save the world and find yourself overly stocked in curatives and miscellaneous junk that you're never going to use. Which isn't to say that it's all useless, just that you are crippled by the stupid sense of "But I might need it later" without coming to the realisation that, 'later' is never going to come. It's a stupid malady and I can think of many a great game made 10 times harder due to stubbornness like this, and that's what I want to talk about today, like an addict working through their problem through group therapy.
The first time I realised that I had a problem was when I played 'Assassin's Creed: Revelations' all the way back in 2011. After the spectacular Brotherhood, Revelations was a game I was incredibly excited for and therefore I combed through every single interview, gameplay clip, and obscure detail about the game months in advance. Therefore I found myself fantasising about the base defence minigame, (which turned out to be tedious) the new hookblade (Which was such a lame fad that it never showed up in the franchise again) and the new crafting/bomb system. (Which was the source of my great shame.) In this new game, Assassin's could craft from a whole system of cool and unique bombs that could be used on the streets of Constantinople, the system seemed to have so much effort put into it that I just couldn't wait to get my hands on it and try it for myself. Only, I didn't.
When I got my hands on the game, for some reason I never once used a bomb despite my previous excitement, and it took me some time to figure out why. Eventually it became clear to me; it was because they were finite. That isn't to say that I couldn't just pop to a bench and craft some more, but the mere implication that I would run out of these explosives at all was enough to psychologically cripple me. 'What if I got myself in a tight bind and needed a smoke bomb?, what if I needed a crowd distraction requiring a pyrite bomb? I better save them for when I'm in real need, for when I don't have a choice!' But of course, that's not how game design works. If you hit a point in a game where the only way to proceed was to use a finite object that you couldn't easily source, it would be a frustrating roadblock and a bad reflection on the flow of the game. That's not even taking into the account that the entire point of systems like the bomb-crafting was to add options to the gameplay, and I was limiting myself to some non-existent scenario where those options wouldn't exist. Long story short, I was big dumb dumb.
But this wasn't just an Assassin's Creed problem, I acted like this everywhere! Whenever I had a daily power in Elder Scrolls, I would typically refrain from spending that use token for as long as physically possible, the same for curatives and even spell scrolls. (Despite how readily available that latter two actually are.) In Fallout I would hold onto every single Mini-Nuke I would find, reluctant to use the biggest and baddest weapon in the game even when I was in abundance. In Dishonored I wouldn't use any limited tools or even rely on my powers, knowing how the resource pool for activating them wouldn't regenerate. (Although that did land me with an achievement by the end) And in Resident Evil 1 I just would never pull out those big one-shot kill guns with the incredibly limited ammo that you'd find, once more robbing myself of the power they provided. Essentially I was tying my own hands behind my back in every single game I played for no reason whatsoever.
Ultimately I reached a point where enough was enough, and I had to make a conscious effort within myself to change. By my reasoning, in the pursuit of enjoying a video game there is no room for limiting yourself from play, at least not without cause. (Like challenging yourself or something.) What is the point of hoarding for a theoretical hard time down the line when you can have fun in the here and now? Does this mean that now I haphazardly drain down every single resource in all video games the second that I get them? No, but I try to be a little more free with my use of things. Just the act of using extras and consumables helps make the games I love just that bit more fun to enjoy, but it doesn't mean I have to do ridiculous things like give Donald and Goofy potions in Kingdom Hearts 2. (What do you think I am, insane?) So there was the journey I went on.
Although I was left with a curious query to ponder after such an experience and that was whether or not it was up to the developers to create a situation that warranted the use of optional items or up to me to reach that point in my mind where I was willing to spend them. As a self-confessed sadist who regularly opts to play games on their hardest difficulty, I recognise that I may not be the most relatable with this question-thread but I raise the query all the same. The mental gap that I had to cross in order to overcome my hoarding habit was that of reasonable retaliation, I only acted to the degree I felt was necessary at all times; so you could say that this spawned from a feeling that the games I was playing were too easy. In that light it is true, the games that are harder were the one's that got me to use my items in situations, but is that a failing on me or the developers who created tools that are sometimes unnecessary?
In conclusion, I think that we can all agree there is a certain folly to the act of hoarding, especially when doing so in the world of games. As a concept, I personally theorise hoarding comes from a fear of change and coming to terms with the end of all things; which just highlights how silly this is when applied to video game worlds and resources. That doesn't mean I don't understand and sympathise with those that can't cross that mental threshold, however, as I was there not too long ago. (In many ways, parts of me still are there.) At the end of the day, however, it's in the best interest of our pursuit of a good gaming time to realise; sometimes it's fine to spend a mini-nuke if you get a big-ass explosion out of it for your troubles.
No comments:
Post a Comment