I believe that it was Albert Camus who said (and this is at best a loose paraphrase), “Life is a quest to recreate our first few great experiences.”  I have thought about this quote many times since it was first thrust upon me back in my college days at You old Fogey U, and I think I understand what he meant.  When we are young, everything was new and exciting, and we all want to re-experience the thrill that we got when we first (fill in the blank with the activity of your choice).  Sometimes we are more successful than other times.

I’ve been gaming since back in the first days of pong (and I only obliquely mean the video game).  I still remember the adrenaline rush that my buddies (Doofus and Honker) and I got from trying to beat each other at the game (and then trying to beat each other with the game after we lost – we were NOT good sports).  Our love affair with the game lasted months.  That’s pretty incredible when you consider that it was something that we could do, with better graphics and the chance of seeing a girl, in real life (though the game paddles did hurt a bit less than real tennis rackets).

Then came “Tank”, “Space Wars”, “Rip Off”, and a host of others.  Each time the game was new and exciting, but the love affair was shorter each time.  There were some notable exceptions.  I shoveled unholy quantities of quarters into “Galaxians” and “Galaga”.  I force-fed the “Star Castle” machine enough quarters to choke Bill Gates.  I’m pretty sure that I spent more than the GDP of Bangladesh from 1960-1980 on “Gauntlet” (accountants are still crunching the numbers on that one).  And my name is still spoken in suppressed and irreverent giggles by Starcraft players everywhere.  But regardless, on the whole, each new game, unless it was something radically new, got less and less attention, and the thrill was over more and more quickly.

Fast forward to now (I really wish I could have fast forwarded to now.  I still can’t believe that I wore my hair that way … actually, I wish I still had hair to wear that way, but that’s a different story).  The video games today have little resemblance to the games of yore, both in complexity of game-play and appearance.  However, a common theme in gaming magazines and gamer conversations in general is, “seen it, done it, gimme something new.”  In other words I’m not getting the thrill that I used to.

We’ve got FPSs, RPGs, MMOs, HMOs ;), Top downs, Over the shoulders, side scrollers, etc.  But, aside from a few quirky off-beat games, like Katamari Damacy, has there really been anything new or different in video gaming in the last few years?  The most ground breaking games recently have been games that just combine elements like the FPSRPG Fallout 3.  How many times can you re-invent the wheel?

No, I’m not predicting the demise of the gaming industry.  As long as new gamers are born, and chronologically enhanced gamers cycle out, the industry can keep going.  But, where is the next new twist that will give you back the same shiver of excitement that you experienced when you found Ocarina of Time, or the first time you defeated the Overmind, or went up against the Umbrella corp.?  Is there going to be one?  My first gaming experiences were pretty intense (and embellished by decades of fond memories).  I hope that the current batch of game designers are up to the challenge.

Tags: humor