Question to Entertain toDay:

TechReport.com (which everyone even moderately interested in "hard," concrete technology should read) linked to an article on ArsTechnica.com (another tech site that everyone should read in conjunction with TechReport  for a "softer," cultural focus on technology) by Ben Kuchera about Why We Quit. Games, that is, not a job—or life, gods forbid—though with a few words switched around a quote like "the games fail when we sigh and turn the console off, suddenly losing interest in seeing where the story would have taken us."  Could apply to just about anything.  Don't we quit when the story of anything we're involved in—love, friendship, lifelong dreams—loses its luster?  This is how our lives fall apart so that new things may come from them.

But enough of this "collapse as an opportunity" crap.  The article is about when a game lets us down—the author's key example is a poorly placed checkpoint in Mass Effect—that places us in a position we're undeserving of; replaying an hour or more of progress that was entrancing the first time around but is sure to be a tedious slog the unwarranted second time through.  This, as Ben Kuchera astutely notes, is where we quit.  We've been cheated out of our time and effort, but—as with so few other things in life—there is no consequence to cursing indignantly, kicking out the power cord, and stomping off.  So we do so, protagonist’s peril be damned.

He calls on developers to pay more attention “to the moment when a player goes from ‘one more round’ to ‘okay, time for bed,’” to which I had an immediate knee-jerk reaction; what would a developer care whether you ever finish the game if you’ve already bought it?  They’re not going to make any extra money if you play it for five years, or lose any if you only play for five minutes.  All they care about is getting the game in your hands and the cash in theirs.  But, wait a minute.  Even if every developer was solely motivated by their profit margin—which, thankfully, most aren’t—Kuchera might be right in thinking this is an appropriate call to action.  No gamer exists in a vacuum—in fact, they’re among the best-interconnected cliques—and gamers are all-too eager to foist their opinions upon each other.  A game with a lot of those “aw, fuck it, I’m going to bed” moments may well feel the hurt.  Moreover, that greatest money-grubber’s paradise—downloadable content—counts not only on the player’s continued interest in the game, but also his progress.  The content of Fallout 3’s DLC “Broken Steel,” for example, is for a character that has already beaten the vanilla version of the game.

This could lead into all sorts of discussion about game developers; where their focus is, where it should be, and how much of the blame we can place on the shoulders of tyrannical publishers.