#oneaday, Day 332: Fire The Canon… He’s Not Pulling His Weight

What are those games you have to play?

The answer, of course, is none at all, but there are plenty of people out there who believe that you can’t call yourself a “true gamer” (whatever that means) unless you’ve played this game or that game. And for sure, at one point that was true, simply because the volume of games being released was such that it was easy enough to keep up to speed on at least all the big releases, if not absolutely everything that was available.

Nowadays, though, gaming is such big business that it’s impossible to keep up with triple-A releases, let alone delve into the increasingly-awesome pool of independent and/or smaller titles out there.

Rather than this being a frustrating thing, though, this is a very positive sign. Speak to someone who’s a film snob and they will probably turn their nose up at the prospect of a Michael Bay film, yet there are plenty of people out there who go and watch various childhood-raping movies that ensure you can never look at Transformers in quite the same way ever again.

And it’s the same with gaming. There is no one set “canon” of games that you absolutely must play. I’ve come around to this idea, having had it first mooted by my good buddy and fine, upstanding gentleman Calin. There are games that are important to the history of gaming, sure. But they’re not things that everyone has to play. If everyone plays all of the stuff from history that is supposedly “important”, they’ll never get to anything from today. It’s a balancing act.

What I’ve been wondering is if it’s possible for someone who is a full-on gaming enthusiast to spend their time playing nothing but non-triple A titles. Surely there are enough indie and “cheap-fu” titles out there now to enable someone to have an enjoyable experience without having to spend $60 a time for the privilege? And yes, I’m using dollars to illustrate my point because I’m in the States. When in Rome and all that.

This approach isn’t for every gamer, just like watching only foreign and/or arthouse movies isn’t for everyone who purports to “like movies”. I love ASCII-based roguelike Angband, for example, and have sent any number of heroic @-signs to their death now, but I don’t expect everyone to find that sort of experience palatable. I can certainly play that game and find it enjoyable, however, and there are times when I’d pick playing that over something like, say, Halo. I’d certainly always pick it over Call of Duty.

But there are people who feel the opposite too. And it’s pretty cool that we’ve reached a stage where we can say that about the gaming industry. The only difficulty that comes with this territory is the fact that the gaming press is not able to cover everything that is out there, meaning some spectacular stuff can get completely overlooked, or sell poorly, or be unfairly judged.

This is where word of mouth comes in. You found something awesome you think friends might enjoy too? Tell them. Don’t keep it to yourself. I know that I’ve convinced at least a few people to play Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale since I started banging on about it a few weeks back, and I’m sure there are others out there who might be interested in trying other things I’ve mentioned. Similarly, my obsession with Persona 3 and 4 can be entirely attributed to a blog post my friend Mark wrote extolling the virtues of Persona 3, a post which was enough to make me think “I have to play this game.”

We’re in an age of active involvement and active socialisation. The gaming press still certainly has a place—I should hope so, anyway, since I’m involved in it—but there’s just as much importance, if not more, on word-of-mouth recommendations and discussion.

Think about the last game you played. Was it something you played because reviews were good? Because people were talking about it? Or something you took a chance on and then felt like telling everyone how good/bad it was?

In my case, the last two games I played (Recettear and DEADLY PREMONITION) were the latter two. I took a chance on Recettear and adored it. And I couldn’t not play DEADLY PREMONITION after hearing some of my closest friends discussing it in appropriately reverent tones. I actually can’t remember the last time I bought a game purely on the strength of a review.