All Work and No Play Makes Games Boring

Some people believe that games are more fun when played drunk. Alcohol has the wonderful ability to cloud the mind from deep thoughts and twists the world into funny proportions. That's probably what makes it more fun: less thinking and more laughing.

Some would say that today's games are boring. And it's not because games aren't exciting or adrenaline pumping - games now seem to be mere assembly line versions of the same thing before them. The first person shooters are just re-skinned copies of Call of Duty 4. And it's not just the repetition in these games either, but this generation's titles just feel a little sombre. Subject matters have transitioned from raccoons stealing junk with style to cinematic experiences of uncovering the secrets to a mysterious serial killer. There seems to be an established central dogma that good hardcore games must be mature rated, and mature rated games must be gloomy. Where is the fun of it all? Why can't games be games anymore?

An amateur journalist has once criticized developers for being too adolescent to keep pushing the boundaries of the industry. The backlash from developers follows that they are anything but adolescents. The fact is, developers grew with the industry, from its infancy to its current state. So, no, developers are not adolescents at all. If anything, they are too senile. These masters of the industry are no longer the teenagers working in their garages, so it is understandable that their games have grown with them.

What is bothersome, however, is that the general public has become used to the idea that maturity stems from the gallons of gore and frames of sex. Gamers are conditioned to disdain fluffy characters hopping in a field of colorful dandelions under a soft and gentle rainbow. Even games that include more colors than brown and gray are now too "casual" for the hardcore gamers, which is sad, really. Have the days of hardcore glitch-fest on Super Mario Brothers Melee been forgotten? Is another playful banter between Jak and Daxter no longer yearned?

To be fair, though, nobody is going to argue that Little Big Planet deals with serious matter, nor will anyone argue that Little Big Planet is a game for the feeble minded casual gamers. But gems like Little Big Planet seem to be the exception rather than the rule. These casual hardcore games stare down at the prospect of extinction, being replaced by the "emo" era of death and destitute. Even the game that stars a cute little Pitboy with commercials that promises a tone of sarcastic black and white smiles at the coming of a nuclear winter turns out to be purely a tragic bleakness. That's false advertising.

Then there are the indie games. These short $10 games get the heart of what has originally made games so popular. It's not always about the routine commercialization of war. Sometimes, gamers just want to fly some flower pedals down a valley. Sometimes, gamers just want to sit next to each other and laugh together, while watching zombies burn. These games have found what gamers need: more fun and funny than blood and gloomy. Screw realism and launch the avatar into some giant billboard for no reason. But, alas, these downloadable games are only short distractions between sessions of bloodbaths on Killzone 2.

So games are boring now because they don't take gamers into a fantasy land anymore. Games are making the same mistakes that Disney once made with its trend towards live action movies. Most gamers don't care about some philosophical dissertations on the realities of the modern times. They belong in some textbooks or literary journals, which means that they are mostly boring. Sometimes, games are fun because of their lack of realism. Sometimes, gamers just want to play games that make them laugh again.