Posts Tagged ‘disposability’
The Increasing Disposability of Gaming
We are in that time of year which traditionally gives gamers a break. A break from the seemingly endless stream of high-profile, triple-A titles from the industry’s biggest publishers. Many use this time to catch up on their backlogs, like our friends over at SideQuesting. Others, whom I can only guess are younger gamers with a lot of free time on their hands, don’t really know what to play during this slow period. Maybe they use this time to get even better at [insert popular FPS here]?
It has given me a chance to take a step back and reflect on my habits as a gamer and how they relate to the industry as a whole. Video games have become increasingly disposable as entertainment. As soon as you finish one title (or more often than not, before you even get a chance to really dig into the game you just purchased), there are ten more waiting on the shelves vying for your hard earned cash.
Media coverage is all around us as citizens of the internet. The big gaming blogs generally can’t linger on any one title because they work in a medium that is only rewarded when things are kept fresh on their home page. That isn’t a dig at what they do, it is just the nature of the beast. Core gamers are more than happy to jump from game to game every week. I find this odd considering the cost of new games has been in the $35 to $60 range this entire console generation, and those price points are driven even higher with special editions.








