Why We Game, Part II

Why We Game, Part II: Anticipation

The buzz is everywhere. Anywhere you turn, you will hear it. Whether it comes in the form of tv or radio commercials, paper advertisements, or good old word of mouth, the buzz is there. Every day, you will see or hear the buzz, usually surrounding some cool new gadget or device that will "change the world" but will more likely leave you a few hundred to a few thousand dollars short

Buzz surrounds games as well, even more so than many other consumer products. The wait and anticipation surrounding the game has almost become an industry in and of itself. For months, even years before a game hits the market, there will have already been a slew of websites and dedicated fans eagerly awaiting that one day when it will hit the shelves and their cd-rom drive. Game companies thrive on the interviews and developer journals that surround an imminent game release, releasing just enough information about it so that fans will always want to know just a little bit more.

Some of this is PR, marketing by publishers and game companies that know that they have a franchise or a hit on their hands, but more often than not, the hype around games comes from gamers themselves, either those willing to rabidly follow its progress knowing that a release will not come anytime soon, or those who put up fan sites to spread and disseminate the word that the "next great thing" is coming. And unlike traditional consumer markets, there is little marketing driving this hype. Sure, journals, interviews, and screenshot releases are all part of a large marketing scheme, but in the end, it's the users who decide whether or not the hype is something that will succeed or fail. Lately, we have begun to see more and more traditional marketing interrupt this process, through television commercials and poster ads. But for the years between a game's announcement and its release, the hype is still almost entirely user driven.

Of course, with some things, the hype and anticipation builds to such a point that the real product no longer has a chance of living up to the projected image of how the game should be played. Developer journals are one thing, reality is a different beast altogether. Given time and an imagination, something most gamers have, one can envision the perfect game for himself, based on the tidbits that a developer leaves behind. Unfortunately, unless that person is very, very lucky, the real product will almost always be different, and in the eyes of that gamer, lacking. Hype becomes a great blessing that ensures a gaming audience for a developer. But it also means that the bar has been raised, and that the developer now faces a large hurdle to overcome the expectations of their audience. Sometimes, it works and you get a Halo or a Baldur's Gate II. Other times however, you get Daikatana. More often than not, the game that eventually comes out falls somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, a good game, but just not good enough to fulfill every aspect of a gamer's ideal fantasy.

But the idea of this series is not about hype, it's about fun, the kick we get from playing games that keeps us on the edge of our seats, even if we are not able to play it for months, perhaps years. We may wait a couple of months for a new piece of computer equipment, or a new electronic gizmo we've been reading about in the press releases. But rarely do we allow ourselves to be sucked into a product as much so as a game. Traditional consumer product manufacturers would kill to get the amount of devotion from their user base that game companies get from their fans. Clearly, there is something that we see in a game that we don't see in the newest chipset or graphics card. Ask anyone the main reason why they seem to be anticipating the next new thing, and more likely than not, the answer will always boil down to the same basic answer.

It sounds fun.

One thing that games do have over other products however, is that each game is either original, or has some new twist that hasn't been done yet. The games that get the most hype and anticipation fall into this category. More often than not, it doesn't pan out and what ends up as something "cool" ends up a "gimmick", leaving disappointed fans in its wake. And yet, even though we've all been burned before, we still come back for more, hoping that this new game will fulfill our expectations. It is the thrill of something new, something different, an escape from the mechanics that have become overused in today's current games that brings us back. In the end, we all want something different, and when a game promises to break the mold and deliver something that is truly groundbreaking, it will pique the interest of many people, and the process of hype and anticipation will have begun.

And that's reason one why we find a game fun. A television set will always be a television set. A graphics card, no matter how much you change the transistor set up or processing power, will always have the same purpose. Games however, posses that flexibility, that elasticity to stretch the boundaries of what we expect. Gamers thrive on doing different things, and therefore become a perfect audience for medium that is ever changing. Games we played twenty years ago are radically different from games we play today, and the same will be true again twenty years from now. And so we wait, for that next great thing, that one game that will fill our hours, because we know that even though we risk being disappointed, that we also have the chance to be part of something that changed the rules, which broke down the boundaries and gave us that thrill of doing something that we haven't done before. We hope that it will be fun.