I knew the reprieve last season was only postponing the inevitable, but today's news still made me sad. One of the few shows I watch regularly, Dollhouse has been cancelled.Dollhouse is done. We knew this was coming—Dollhouse creator Joss Whedon recently posted on fansite Whedonesque.com that the writers were "not exactly saving all the good stuff for 14-22," but still. 'Tis sad.
The biggest frustration I have with the news is that show had so much potential for character development, plot twists and compelling story arcs, but just didn't have the time to lay the groundwork to take advantage of the potential.
You can read more about it here. (Thanks Laurie for the heads up on this!)
Strangely enough, after waiting for the better part of a year for Dragon Age to finally be released, I can barely convince myself to play it. I don't know if it's the fact that I've been busy with work or that I've been extra tired when the opportunities to play have come up, but whenever I go to fire it up, something always keeps me from doing so. Another factor could be what feels like a very heavy and depressing storyline. After playing Borderlands and some Torchlight, shifting gears into the Dragon Age universe feels, well, dreary. It's not something that's particularly invigorating to me, when I feel like I could fall asleep at the keyboard.
I did start it up long enough to complete my original choice for an origin story, and as some reviews and commentaries on the game have pointed out, there are decisions in this game that, regardless of the choice you make, leave you feeling as if you just chose between kicking a puppy or throwing a kitten against a wall. Obviously neither of these options are appealing to me, but I had to pick something, so I did. I'm sitting here rather deflated and bummed out about my choice, but that could be a side effect of being in a 7-hour meeting for work today and having no mental reserve left for serious thought or contemplation. I'm intrigued about what will happen next, but I don't feel like moving the story forward this evening. Guess I'll have to digest this game at a glacial pace. Expect to see my post about completing the game sometime in 2011. :)
So I'm only about an hour and a half into Dragon Age: Origins, for several reasons.
1. Tuesday evening (the day the game was available) saw me doing a lot of necessary housework to help my very pregnant wife. Instead of sitting down to play at 7pm or so, it turned out I was free to play around 9pm. That allowed me enough time to get my character (Raist, a human mage) to the point where he's been confronted with what (I think) is a very important decision. Since I don't do very well on not enough sleep, I decided to call it a night.
2. It was at this point I stopped playing and started thinking about how I would respond to the question. The gravity of the situation, and the apparent ramifications for both paths, seemed to be so weighty that I actually discussed them with my wife as we settled into sleep. I felt that her extensive experience with fantasy novels and the fantasy setting might lend to a different perspective on the decision. At this point, I think I've determined the path I'm going to choose, but it gives me no pleasure to make the choice.
3. While driving back from a jobsite and listening to a gaming podcast, the Borderlands conversation got me excited enough to jump back to Pandora for a while. Gaiden is now level 24 and has unlocked the New Haven area, with all of the quests and challenges to go along with it. After my latest adventure, it's clear that I need to get some Corrosive weaponry, because there are a lot of beasties with armored heads that love to charge me, and it would be nice to have something to weaken that.
4. My gaming ADD is kicking in even more, as I'm fighting the urge to buy Torchlight and load that onto my work PC. Since it can run on just about anything, it would be a great way to kill lunch hours.
All in all, it's not a bad thing, but there's some inherent guilt to not have more time invested in the game. Tonight is Friday night, so I'll try to stay up a bit later than usual to make some progress.
(If you're wondering why I feel guilty at all, it's because I like to try to keep up with the gaming community as a whole with some select releases, and it just so happens that all 3 of the game releases that I'm interested in this holiday season all fall within a 2-3 week span. There are worse problems to deal with.)
Traveling through a town for a site visit today, I passed by the following street sign:
Viscoloid Ave.
Really? Who names a street Viscoloid? Granted, it's a name that would be hard to forget, but can you imagine the poor little kids who live on that street having to fill out that name on the standardized tests. And what is a viscoloid, anyway?
TIME PASSES...
It turns out, after writing the first part of this post, I did some Internet research on viscoloid. It turns out viscoloid was a plastic used to make combs, toys and such in the early part of the 20th century, and the company that made these items was known as the Viscoloid company. Guess that answers my question. Oh well...
Currently, I'm sitting at work, trying to stay focused. There are forces against me, though. Those forces consist of the fact that I have Dragon Age: Origins preloaded on my PC at home, and it officially becomes playable at 3pm EST. The stack of drawings I need to review and edit? They hold no joy or interest for me. The e-mails I need to write? They don't hold a candle to the thought of playing a new Bioware RPG. Even the latest gaming obsession I find myself hooked on, Borderlands? It's going to have to take a backseat to DA:O, as all the cool kids are referring to it.
(Oh, and if you're wondering, I am really looking forward to the birth of our third child in a couple of weeks. It's just that thinking about, and getting excited about, video games is one way that I attempt to stay sane throughout all of the madness. Let's just say that 21-month old twins and a very pregnant and tired wife to come home to every day is not a good recipe for calm and peace. A video game that I can turn on and off as I wish, regardless of the potential gaming anxiety it may cause, gives me an illusion of control in the chaos that my life has become. I guess that's what 3 kids under the age of 2 will do for you.)
I now return you to your regularly scheduled day.
The title of this post isn't a life threatening condition, or an ailment that can be diagnosed, but simply a description of a feeling I've experienced a lot. The best way I can describe the condition is 'the buildup of intense feelings (pressure, dread, trepidation) experienced during a session of playing video games.' Trying to come up with the best way of fleshing out this idea led me to describe it using anecdotes from my own personal experience, which I'll share now.
One of the first times I truly experienced gaming anxiety was while playing through Bioshock. In this case, I think there were a multitude of factors that combined to create this particular version of gaming anxiety: the combination of the macabre setting and narrative; the mix of psychological 'terror' (i.e. hearing movements or voices somewhere, but not knowing when the owner of the voice would try to end my life) and 'jump you in your seat' scares; my relative inexperience with the FPS genre, creating real tension as I learned the controls; the fact I played the vast majority of the game at night in a poorly lit basement on a large TV with good surround sound. All of these contributed to the fact that I couldn't play this game for long stretches before my nerves would feel raw and frayed, I would be jumping at the slightest noise, from the game or within the house, and I would feel genuinely overwhelmed and shut the game off. It wouldn't be until the next day that I could start another play session, after all the perceived dread and excess adrenaline had drained away.
A second, and rather intense, case of gamer anxiety came about because of my desire to play through Half-Life 2. In particular, I vividly remember having a lot of trouble playing through the Ravenholm section of the game. The well-crafted atmosphere of the game, in addition to the enemy encounters and multiple 'jump in your seat' moments made it particularly difficult for me to deal with this part of the game. After that, I was always on the edge of my seat, waiting for the 'jump' moment in the excellent guided experience that Valve created, which added to the overall tension. Reflecting on this particular setting after completing the game, I did realize that it was one of my favorite segments, regardless of how I felt while experiencing it.
The next time I remember experiencing gaming anxiety came during my experiences with Fallout 3. In this case, the feeling of hopelessness, isolation and despair created by the good folks at Bethesda really got me thinking, with the added condition that my play sessions always occurred at night in the dimly light corner of the basement, adding to the overall ambiance of the situation. After an hour or two of adventuring, exploring old buildings and being jumped multiple times by enemies hidden around corners, all the while soaking in the atmosphere of the environment, I would have to stop playing and purge that experience with some lighter fare. Often I would need to read a book, watch something on TV or simply have a conversation with my wife, all of which needed to be about a lighter topic than what I'd been dealing with in the game. There were some nights when I wouldn't properly decompress after a game session, and those nights were often plagued by dark dreams or fitful sleep.
The latest experience I've had with gamer anxiety comes in the form of Borderlands. In this case, my lack of FPS skills combined with the game's atmosphere seem to be the biggest contributor to the intensity of the feelings I have after the game has been turned off. In fact, last night was a night where I didn't sleep that well, mostly because I didn't properly decompress after an almost 2 hour game session. That experience was the genesis for this post.
Not all games affect me in this manner. During a period in my life when I had far more free time, countless hours were spent playing round after round of golf in Tiger Woods PGA Tour '04 and '05 on the XBox and PS2. As a kid I could wile away entire days on NES games like Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Wizardry. I couldn't even begin to account for the time I spent playing the original Everquest, first in '99 - '00, and then later in '03 - '04. Nowadays, though, whenever I try to play a game with intense narrative and/or setting, or (more often) involving the first-person perspective, I succumb to the buildup of tension and anxiety and feel the need to step away for a bit and decompress.
Has anyone else experienced this? A cursory search on the internet provided no other relevant material, but if you're out there and have dealt with anything such as this, your comments, experiences, thoughts or observations are more than welcome.
After 11 or so hours of playtime, my hunter (named Gaiden, because I had a copy of the DS game Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword on my desk while thinking of a name) is now level 21 and has completed a few quests in the Dahl Headlands. He's settled into a routine of using a sniper rifle, revolver and shotgun in a 3-weapon rotation. The sniper rifle has fire-elemental power (x3), which is great for added damage on fleshy beasts and raiders. The revolver has explosive ability (also x3) and a zoom feature, which is almost as effective as the sniper rifle at range. There's nothing more fun than headshots with a Dirty Harry gun from 90 yards. The shotgun is effective for really close range combat, meaning keeping skags at bay when they charge me.
One thing this game does very well is make you keep searching for that perfect gun. Every drop from a raider, every gun chest, every undigested bit of loot from the belly of a skag could be the ONE, the weapon that makes it all worth it. I've visited areas multiple times, just to try my luck at getting a decent drop. Right now I feel pretty comfortable with the loot I have, but I'm always on the hunt for a better shield. For some reason I have a requirement for healing in my shields, which doesn't roll around all that often, so I'm hoping for some luck in a drop or a vending machine soon. It must be said that I have transfusion grenades that, if used properly, could take the place of the healing requirement, thus allowing me to use a different type of shield. Too many bad experiences with no healing leaves me hesitant to pull the trigger on that one, but we'll see.
While I'm writing this, Dragon Age: Origins is downloading in the background. Between that and Borderlands, not to mention a copy of The Witcher I haven't yet started up, my winter is shaping up with lots of RPG goodness, in several different flavors. Last year at this time, my free time was consumed in Fallout 3, and this year looks like my attention will be split. It's a good thing, though, to mix a bit of high fantasy into my gaming, as Borderlands and Fallout 3, even though the stories are very different, share a somewhat similar 'feel'. The raiders in both games are reminiscent of each other, and the settings are similar (desolate, not a huge amount of variety, run down buildings, an atmosphere of civilization's decay), although Fallout 3 is a bit grittier than Borderlands, probably due to the art style.
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