It’s said that roughly 90% of gamers don’t finish the games they start.
I am NOT one of those people.
I think what puts me in that 10% is my love for storytelling on the screen and the types of games I play. I’ve never been that into multiplayer. When I play a game, I love the solo experience of going through the storyline and seeing it through. I love feeling like I’m living that story, especially when I can make choices.
To know how I got to playing this way, I guess we need to go back to my 9th birthday. I quickly ripped away the wrapping paper as all kids do on their birthday to reveal… my first gaming console – a PlayStation 2! And my first game, Ratchet and Clank.
For the first six months I owned the game – I got through two levels. Later with a friend, we managed six. It wouldn’t be til my stepdad came into my life that this would change. We found common ground and bonded through gaming, and together we got through further than I ever had before.
The further we got, the more I became absorbed into the story. The more I wanted to know what happened next. When we weren’t playing, I was thinking about it.
Now I’m not entirely sure when it happened, but we finished it. The relief and excitement I felt after being stuck on those early levels for so long cannot be described.
My stepdad or my friends and I would go on to finish other games I’d started when I was younger. I got my first Xbox in 2010 and we finished all the Halo games. The good times we spent together coupled with experiencing these stories pushed me to see them all through.
In the last few years, I’ve started to think about the games I finish, the games I just can’t get through and the games I could play 100 times over. I started reading people’s thoughts in forums, blogs and watching YouTube videos. All the different thoughts of others helped me put into words why I loved certain games so much.
I think today I can play a game and easily begin to decipher why I love or hate it. I think it’s so interesting to contemplate and explore what makes one game’s story so great and how it got there. That’s the kind of thing I love about gaming and what I want to talk about with you through this blog…
Space & Lasers 