Recently, I’ve heard a lot of talk in my personal life and through gaming commentary that there’s very little magic in games anymore. We’ve seen what games can be, and any further games in the future are simply iterations or will never have the impact of the classics.
Games don’t feel special anymore.
I can see why this crops up, especially as we age and the medium matures. And to some extent, I agree with people. I get very bored of repeated small, iterative experiences. It’s a big part of why I rarely stick with one franchise, genre, or a single live-service game. Though props to you if you can get excited over a new Pokemon being added to the 30th game. Though, I guess to some extent, The First Soldier characters showing up in Final Fantasy VII remake games are my equivalent to that.
For myself, this is an easily solvable problem: Never stick with one type of experience. I love games for girls, military shooters, doujin games, JRPGs, family games, exergames, old-school PlayStation games, and Nintendo games. And because of that, I can quickly move from place to place without feeling too stagnant. I prioritize experiences that will feel fresh to me. It’s a big part of why I need a selling point for most games I play. Because it does something that feels like a distinct experience.
Occasionally, those things I love do burn out for me. I’m probably done with Zelda, and I think I may have seen the last flames of my love for Battle Royales. But then I started exploring new places by getting more involved with checking out more modern live games and retro gambling games.
After Street Fighter VI, I’ve also been re-assessing my relationship with fighting games, which has helped me a lot in better appreciating that genre. While I’m making progress and haven’t had them quite click with me yet, looking at fighters again has been more exciting because what I’m looking for in them has changed.
I think it’s always important to look at the things in life you don’t understand or know little about and be curious rather than just ignoring or belittling them. I think because of that, games continue to remain exciting to me as I keep exploring old and new trends in the industry. They teach me something new or surprise me in new ways.
Unfortunately, the problem is that I think it’s an awful approach as a content creator. While everyone finds their path toward success, consistently targeting a specific audience, in my opinion, is a significant factor in whether you succeed. Someone in the mood for retro Japanese PC imports wants to visit a channel and get that content or at least something close to it. They don’t want to suddenly have a video about what makes Final Fantasy XIII-2’s gambling DLC interesting dumped at them or learn how Happy Dance Collection converts the Japanese arcade dress-up card genre to a home console.
In my opinion, it just doesn’t work. Yet I keep trying to do it. I think because I want people to learn new things about games. I don’t want you to think that Retro games are somehow exceptional experiences that never can be recreated, that certain developers outshine the many other people out there trying their best to make games, whether they’re working on Armored Core or Barbie. Games, as a whole, are fascinating and art worth appreciating no matter the package they come in. Even that mobile game that looks like a money-grubbing gatcha game is valid and can teach you something.
But I have no idea how to communicate that as a creator between multiple videos. How do you continue to sell that message in a way that makes sense as you change topics? That’s been the struggle. I wish I could let people know when they come to my channel; they should have those ideas in mind. Instead, I think I just become “the PC-FX guy who only sometimes does PC-FX content,” “the Monolith Soft guy who only sometimes does Monolith Soft content,” or “the Wii guy who only sometimes does Wii content.”
I think that’s a big part of why I like shoving a lot of games in one video whenever I can. But trying to create a consistent message across genres, platforms, developers, eras, and many other things is hard. Though I think Babylon’s Fall video I did at least tries to do this.
If you have any thoughts, or maybe some other creators you think have successfully done this, I’d be happy to hear them since this has been a decade’s struggle of mine. Obviously, there’s more to “success” than views. However, most of my life is based on communication. My hobbies and my professional work. I think effectively communicating that message between all my videos is something I’ve wanted to do but continue to fail to do. People continue to ask me why I do things, play certain games, and give consideration to different genres. And I think every time I’m asked that, I feel like I’ve failed in making my point.
But I can say in my own life, it’s been a massive benefit for me to look at games this way. It means I rarely run out of exciting titles to look at, even if it takes me a decade to get to them. I would be really surprised if I ever gave up the hobby.
