As you age, you’ll likely notice a shift in your gaming habits. Depending on how responsible of an adult you are, you might find yourself scaling back on video games in favor of professional, financial, and social obligations. As a games journalist for over two years, I myself have faced the same problems of every aging gamer. How do I fit gaming in my schedule when I have a full-time job in addition to my freelance work, and how am I going to make time to visit my friends and family? At first, I thought the answer was obvious; I needed to cut out my favorite genre, which is notorious for being a timesink: the RPG.
Instead, I decided to focus on spreading out my limited time and income on smaller, cheaper, and independently-developed games, giving me a nice niche’ to cover. And for a while I was able to lose myself in unique, albeit short, experiences that I couldn’t get from a AAA developer, such as Thomas Was Alone , Lisa The Painful RPG , and Neverending Nightmares . I traded potential conversations about mainstream games with my friends in exchange for exposing myself to lots of smaller games, and I reveled in it. Lately, however, I’ve been missing the RPG fiercely,
Even though my situation is slightly different, I imagine that many other responsible adults struggle with fitting RPGs in their lives, and in some cases, they might wish they could use the remainder of their youth playing 70+ hour games. Such is not the case with all adults, such as my older brother, who has chosen to allocate his gaming hours on just one popular title: World of Warcraft . At first, I couldn’t understand how he could waste his time on just one game; however, after reading reviews and watching let’s plays on The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt , which houses a ton of content for a just a single-player game, I can see where he’s coming from–the last expansion for World of Warcraft came out in 2014, after all.
The Witcher III is filled with selling points that make me terrified yet excited to sink my time into. Players have reported that it’s capable of providing up to 200 hours of entertainment, complete with a possible 36 ways in which they can affect the conclusion. Others have claimed that the story is well written, and the writers have apparently handled mature themes, such as sexuality, admirably. Even members of my favorite gaming podcast, The Jimquisition, claim to have finished the game and are now starting over to get the complete experience.
Meanwhile, I’m playing the same single player campaign of Lisa the Painful RPG for the fourth time in a row, and I’ve purchased too many indie games on Steam from a sale that I’ll never get around to starting or finishing. Am I doing something wrong? Not necessarily. As with the wasteland known as my backlog, there are plenty of RPGs I’ve started and then put down, feeling as if I’ve wasted $60 (no, Final Fantasy XIII , I refuse to wait 20 hours to get to the “good” part). But I also see the logistical reason behind purchasing such a lengthy game. Rather than purchasing more games at a frequent rate yet lower cost, you’re investing in a world, complete with lore and crafted with love. The initial cost is high, but you can always wait for the price to drop, and even then it might be worth investing for the amount of entertainment you’re likely to receive.
The risk then, of course, is getting sucked in. I don’t think this is a bad thing, and in the case of The Witcher 3 , that may be what I’m looking for. People joke at how easy it is to lose track of time while playing the game and that they could have done something more productive, but if you’ve fulfilled all of your obligations, then why not lose a few hours (or more) to an RPG?
And so, for the first time in a while, I’ve decided to download an RPG. The Witcher 3 seems like a good place to start.