The Perils of “Joining the Conversation”
Over the last year I’ve purchased a number of Xbox 360 games, but very few of them within the month they come out. Why bother? The price curve on 360 games is much more evenly declining than most console’s releases, so it’s easy to choose to buy in anywhere from 60-20 USD (new) within the first year of most games’ release. My friends don’t generally play online multiplayer games, since we all have differing schedules and only like a handful of shooters, the most prevalent multiplayer genre.
My roommate has a PS3, and he recently just started the first Uncharted game. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of mentioning that my roommate was playing it on the Twitter account I use as a sort of gaming journal (omg follow me) a few weeks ago. Since Uncharted 2 just came out, there is a bit of a hype around the games as being a sort of flagship franchise for Sony’s console. This was the result:
Which is honest to god real and is a lot of why I don’t feel any pressure in playing and discussing the “triple A” releases during their first month of release nowadays.
It’s neat that I can mention something on Twitter and a complete stranger can find it and engage me in conversation. If it’s something brand new, I’ve found it’s more likely that it’ll be this kind of baseless (I was talking about Uncharted 1, and it wasn’t a negative comment, just a reflection on how quickly the graphics have aged), incendiary screaming. If I make a comment about Metroid Zero Mission (which I played through again last week), people who find and engage me on Twitter or forums seem to be more open to even-handed criticism and thoughtful discussion.
So it’s to “SuperPolach” that I dedicate this post. In 2010, I am going to make an effort to buy even fewer new games and work on clearing my backlog. By the end of the year I’ll be entering all my games into backloggery and then for at least the next twelve months I’m going to work on playing games that I have been meaning to play for a long time. I don’t foresee too many Twitter mentions telling me “SHADOW HEARTS: FROM THE NEW WORLD IS A MASTERPIECE AND IF YOU THINK IT’S TOO HARD YOU’RE A FAT STUPID BABY OF QUESTIONABLE HERITAGE”.
By the way, SuperPolach? We finished Uncharted 1. It was pretty crappy.
—Casey
