The Simple Joy of Games

We've all been there: We have productive, relevant plans for a weekend, like doing laundry, cooking a meal opposed to eating that pizza your ordered last Monday and maybe even cleaning your cat. Then your friend links you a flash game. 

It starts off innocently enough. You're wrestling with the controls for the first few games, using expletives and getting a feel for what you're suppose to do. Then it becomes an addiction. Soon you're jamming to Erasure, beating high scores and sending the URL to everyone you know so they may also join your army of Helpless Flash Game Addicts Anonymous. 

At least that's what happened to me a couple weeks ago when my good friend linked me to Robot Unicorn Attack. 

It was bad. Within hours I had beaten his highest score and downloaded the music. I caught myself speeding down the freeway, [unabashedly] singing with the lyrics in the privacy of my car. 

So what is it that makes these simple games so addictive and relevant? Well, they are an escape from the monotony that is work or school (of course, I'm not condoning checking your crops on Farmville while in your Physics class) but more importantly there is joy in the simple and rewarding. 

MMOs have become prone to this disease, and it isn't all bad. Blizzard is the most famous for doing this. WoW mainstreamed the MMO, making it appeal to the masses by simplifying the things that made earlier games more difficult for the more casual gamer to pick up, such as the need for complex math and hours of your time to be rewarding and competitive. In fact, this was a trend that only came about recently.

Up until then, games were simple. Think Pac-Man, Pong and Dig Dug. These were games that anyone could enjoy and sink minimal time into to find the experience both rewarding and valuable. In fact, many gamers I talk to that call themselves "hardcore" reminisce over these little pieces of awesome.

However, in the modern MMO climate, many gamers have deemed this as an undesirable quality. Many argue that when you simplify the games, you are ruining competitiveness and alienating a large player base. However, MMOs were never meant to be static entities, appealing to only one small group. They are giant, diverse worlds that are ever-changing and evolving.

But just as the games we play are evolving, so do the gamers. In the past ten years, I have gone from high school student to college student. My priorities have evolved, therefore causing my expectations of what makes a game appealing and fun evolve. No longer do I want to invest six months into leveling a character and an additional six months into gearing them, as I did with Dark Age of Camelot. When I log into an MMO, I want the experience to be rewarding for the little time I have available to invest. Not to say I want bosses to shower me like virtual loot piñatas, but I do appreciate the delicate balance that is being identified in more modern MMOs. 

So while many argue that this is a horrible thing, games are simply picking up the gamers they left behind when they became more complicated, as well as evolving to retain the ones who have had to reorganize their priorities as their lives have changed.