I am not a hamster!

Games just aren’t fun today. At first, I thought the problem with video games were like the problem with cars. Cars used to be built for ownership in mind so they used quality. Now cars are built for being leased which means they tend to fall apart much faster (and car companies prefer less used cars on the road).

One thing that every modern game does that classics do not is make me feel like I’m a hamster.

What is the hamster? It is a little animal, with a little brain, that knows when a food pellet is coming or not and runs round and round in a wheel going nowhere.

Playing video games feels like this in real life:

I no longer feel I am playing video games. Rather, I feel like video games are playing me. The modern game industry relies heavily on manipulation as gaming gets weaker and weaker.

“This is because you remember it differently than the past. There was manipulation just the same then. It is all nostalgia.”

Editor, can you please gag that reader? Thank you.

Let me give you some examples of video games turning into hamster balls. I like buying video games. I do not like buying hamster balls.

-Unless it was an arcade game, every console game had a clear beginning and end. Today, the beginning and end are a joke and loads of ‘challenges’ and ‘secrets’ and ‘achievements’ are put into the game. Instead of enjoying the game, we get to enjoy hamster balls.

Above: An accurate metaphor for modern gaming

-In something like a racing game, every track, car type, and upgrade used to be available except for maybe a few. Today, a racing game starts with like one track and one car, and you have to unlock everything. It’s no longer a game where the player has choices. It is a series of hamster balls where the player rolls forward to the next food pellet.

-Running out of hamster options, the Game Industry is relying on social media to provide further hamsterization of gaming. Of course, social media didn’t exist in the past. There were no ‘viral’ Internet campaigns in the 1980s.

-In many ways, early console gaming de-hamsterfied gaming. Scores which were often used in arcades were completely removed in gaming. You played for fun. Cheat codes (remember the Konami code?) were often put into the game so the player could play as he or she desired. Some shump games offered a stage select. If you wanted to be ‘done’ with a game, the game had options for you to do so. Today, it is as if every game is made with the intention that it can never be ‘fully’ completed (with all the achievements, unlockables, etc).

Aside from the arcade gaming artifacts, early gaming didn’t have the hamster balls. Now that I think of it, Wii Sports didn’t have hamster balls either (unlike Wii Sports Resort which relied more on hamster balls). The big problem with NSMB series is that Nintendo is stuffing more and more hamster balls in it and declaring the addition of the hamster balls to be a ‘good thing’. Minecraft is successful because of the lack of hamster balls (though Notch added some later on), Skyrim sold well despite social media integration which shocked the Game Industry. “There are no social media hamster balls in Skyrim? How could it have sold so well? This makes no sense! Games need their hamster balls.”

It is time for all gamers to get together and declare: “We are not hamsters!” We don’t need to run on a digital wheel going nowhere with a ‘cute character’. We don’t need to keep buying game consoles with hamster balls within the hardware (I’m looking at you, Nintendo).

Remove the hamster balls! And gaming will look more like this:

You get the idea.

More gaming means LESS HAMSTER BALLS!