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Ekim's Gamer View: Who's Game is It? Michel "Ekim" Veilleux Let's tackle a delicate issue. All games are bought, mostly off of store shelves, some online and through delivery. The player that forked out his money to buy this game he saw on the store shelf or in an online catalogue considers this box to be his own, and no one else's. Whatever is inside the box, whatever the game contains, it is now his. But to what extent is this game truly his? My own, my Precious! Of course, what we buy is ours, there's no question about it. But a game is something a little more complex. Someone, often times a group of people, labored over it, had a Vision of what it was supposed to be. Whether those people came close to realizing that Vision or not is irrelevant. The end result is still a reflection of their work and Vision. As players we play a game that was conceived by someone else. If we like it we come to defend its critics as if it was our own. If we hate it we blame the developer for making us waste our time - and money - and sometimes we go to great lengths to try and dissuade others from buying it. Some of us write reviews of those games, pointing out the faults, and the qualities. Some of us try to tell the developer what they should have done to make the game better. Now, all that is fine. But once in a while there are some games that finally come out that were so anticipated that we forget the fact that we're playing someone else's game. Mark my words: the day SWG will come out someone somewhere is going to write this long post on some message board to let the developers know how much they have screwed up his game, how they could or even should have made everything different, how they should give him his money back because that was not the game he envisioned. This person will have bought the game in its original box, he will have paid it with his own hard earned money. But does that give him the right to think that the Vision of the game was his, or even inappropriate?The Vision ™ We all envision games differently. It goes the same for movies. When watching the second LotR movie in theaters, I can tell you that there are quite a few things I would have made differently if I had been in Peter Jackson's shoes. I paid for my movie ticket, and when the movie will come out on DVD I will certainly buy it, but it still doesn't make the movie's, or the book's Vision mine. I can disagree with it, criticize it, but I can't claim it to be mine and I can't blame anyone for having a different Vision of something. Why would it be different for games? To be honest I have a Vision of what an MMORPG set in the Star Wars universe should be. I have quite a clear Vision of what an MMORPG set in Tolkien's universe should be too. But unfortunately I am not making these games, am I? So why worry about it? Why not try and enjoy someone else's Vision and give it a chance even if it's different from mine, because it's almost certain that it will be different. Some of us seem to think that as soon as a game is not built according to our own Vision it is bad and not worth giving it a chance. When you buy a game, when you subscribe to it, you buy the right to play a game, and to receive support when something is not going well with it. You could also argue that a subscription also buys you the right to expect regular updates and content additions. But not necessarily a change of Vision.Conflicting Visions Don't get me wrong, everyone has a right to find a particular Vision unappealing. But then you always have the option of not paying a subscription, or stop playing the game. You could even try to get a reimbursement on the basis of not being satisfied. Those things are all legitimate. But no one should claim a game is bad based on the fact that the way it was built is not how he would have built it. Visions are subjective. They are never universal. They are subject to the different tastes and backgrounds of every player on the planet. As far as I know, no two players are alike, and no one likes exactly the same things. Hence, no developer will ever make a game that caters to all gamers alike. With that in mind, no one should buy a game expecting it to be as he envisioned it. Doing that is like heading straight towards a wall at 100mph without any possibility of turning. |
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