The lost magic of gaming
not everything is a problem that needs solving
howdy friends, happy thursday!
For pretty much my entire conscious existence, I've been playing video games. They are, undoubtedly, one of the greatest inventions of the modern age.
Great games are like great movies. No matter how much they're replayed, they never get old, but nothing will ever beat experiencing the very first playthrough.
I still vividly remember my first Minecraft world, booted up in extreme anticipation after weeks of mustering the courage to ask my mom to buy a copy. I'll never forget the coziness of resting in the tunnels below my first house; the awe-striking encounters with enormous ravines; the heart-sinking terror of dying for the first time and respawning hundreds of blocks away from my base. Despite the lack of features offered by a peaceful Beta 1.8 world (with hand-breakable glass panes and a 128-block height limit and everything), I felt like I could do anything.
My childhood was an endless stream of these magical experiences. As struggles in Super Mario 64 turned into a pro Wii Tennis career and the early joys of survival Minecraft turned into long jousts with Starbound and Terraria, there was always something waiting to get me up early on Saturday mornings.
The magic of it all is lost for me now. I don't know when it happened or how, but my favorite video games gradually transitioned from The Best Thing In The World to just another one of many fun pastimes I can choose from. And more often than not, gaming gets achingly far from the top of my list.
Part of it's just me. Most of my childhood friends whom I'd grown up constantly gaming with still get online often and have a blast, and games overall have never been so accessible or popular with the rise of speedrunning, pro players to root for, or cheap but powerful computers to play on.
But part of it is the shared experience of growing up. As much as we might think/hope/wish the things that makes us happy now will still be here and make us happy for the rest of our lives, they shift just like the world around us.
Even if it's a little sad, it's a good kind of sad— it's what nostalgia is made of, after all.
In the process of writing this, I'm trying to figure out exactly why this shift happened for me. My internal monologue went something like:
“I just don't have enough time anymore.”
not a valid excuse. we can always make more time for the things we find important.
“well, maybe I just don't find it as important anymore.”
Could be true; I gotta do taxes and pay insurance claims and go to the DMV after all. Those are probably more pressing matters. But do I think video games are less fun or important than scrolling through Substack, or getting drinks with friends, or going for a long walk? Definitely not.
“I guess my values have changed, then. I've been trying a lot of new things recently; doing new things takes a lot of time and energy away from comfy things like gaming.”
Then why am I building a 3000 piece puzzle where half of it is literally solid blue sky? Like go play Hades II instead you idiot.
This went on for a while, and I couldn't find any excuse that provided any semblance of a satisfying explanation. The best thing I can come up with is, "I just don't feel like it."
Not feeling like it is a perfectly valid justification. Just because I don't feel like listening to my favorite songs from 2015 doesn't mean I think they aren't amazing, and it doesn't discount the massive amounts of enjoyment I've received from listening to them. I don't feel like eating pizza today, but I might be craving a slice tomorrow. One can dream of a day we'll boot up Silksong for the first time and feel the magic once again.
Life is not an optimization problem. The variables that matter can't be measured, and there's no overarching objective to solve for. The best moments of my life drip with intrinsic motivation: I don't need to write right now; I didn't need to play Minecraft in 2011; but I felt like it was the right thing to do, even if I can't explain why.
And I don't need to. I'm happy to leave my thoughts here, unfinished and unsolved.
🏝️extras
food for thought: Who’s Afraid of Modern Art: Vandalism, Video Games, and Fascism - Jacob Geller
When people prescribe art to a specific set of qualities, and attack everything that lays beyond those lines, we have to understand what they’re doing.
Those qualities, they just so happen to perfectly align with the dominant cultural ideology, don’t they? They’re not showing respect for the craft, they’re not trying to “uphold meaning.” They’re enforcing a hierarchy. They’re attempting to define a cultural narrative.
And above all else, they’re not. Talking. About. Art.
stalk my online reading: Sublime
stalk my offline reading: bencuan.me/bookshelf
stalk me on twitter: @bencuan_
i think that as we get older, a lot of things just become less new. every new game was once a completely new experience. but now we're too used to how things are. browsing through steam store and movies these days make me sad because a lot of these are just sequels or formulaic mashups of things that already exist. something like 30% of top movies are remakes.
maybe the real answer is that games and movies are more properly a few-times-in-a-lifetime experience and not supposed to be a constant, every day/night/weekend activity. experiencing someone else's story or imaginary world oughtta be special.