No more Xbox anymore!

 It's weird. A month or so ago I have read some studies that showed the chilling comparisons of gamers versus labanimals. The more I read, the more I discovered that over the years gaming for me went from a genuine love for electronic activity to being manipulated to keep playing something.

As you guys know, since a long time I have had trouble with my gaming. The question of why am I still doing this I couldn't answer, but I felt that what I was doing had very little to do with gaming anymore. I was merely going through the motions going from goal to goal because that's what games want you to do. Modern games, that is. I felt that something was wrong with those games, apart from them being beta-code releases for the most part. (Not that this was helpful in and on itself, of course.)

The most basic evidence of this is the Skinner-box. This is a tank in which a labrat is placed. In order for the labrat not to starve to death in that tank, a simple mechanism dispenses a food-pellet. All the labrat has to do is figure out how the mechanism works and he is rewarded with a pellet. Studies show that labrats that figure the mechanism out, kept on using the mechanism to get more pellets and some cases, labrats would eat themselves to death.

That's why in many games you get way-points fed to you: Speak to Jones. Obtain shotgun from Tamara. Go the car. And for each little step in the story-arch you get rewarded. At any rate, if you want to know about Skinner's Operant Chamber, or the Skinner Box, google the term.

How games have progressed from being something I enjoyed to something I wasn't doing voluntary (yes, not voluntary!) anymore I can illustrate with an experience from my own personal gaming life. Sims2 versus Sims3 and Sims Medieval.

You guys know how much I love the Sims2. Not only does it satisfy my borderline OCD, but in the Sims2 I have total freedom to do whatever I want. I can create lone Sim, or a couple, or a family and I place them on a plot of land. And what happens next is totally up to me. Will they prosper? My choice. Will they suffer through a life of agony and torture and die only to be ressurected for more agony and torture? Also up to me. In the Sims2 you get no reward for anything you do, because the game has no way of knowing what you want to do next, nor has it any way to anticipate or compensate for my game-behavior.

The Sims3 is a Skinner Box. Goals have been added and those goals have rewards. Work for three days in a part-time job at a bookstore and you'll get a lifelong discount on books. Find a group of rare insects and get a reward. Run 500 miles, and get a reward... It goes on and on. And it replaced quirky humor and whacky situations.

The Sims Medieval is so goal-driven that doing what you want to do, the biggest draw to the Sims, is now even punished. If you ignore the goals, you'll lose everything you've build up eventually.

And this is exactly what I hate. The feeling that my experience is orchestrated to produce a response from me, actually, the experience is put together in such a fashion that you come to believe you want the DLC for the game that's manipulating you.

It's a good thing that on my own, well before I did some reasearch, I felt that something was wrong, to the point of profound aversion to picking up the controller. So, I gave my entire Xbox-hobby away. All of it, lock, stock and barrel. And I don't even regret rhe decision, or miss my Xbox. It's more something like, good riddance!

Does that mean I've stopped playing games? No. The day that I stop playing games is the day I die. Let there be Sims!, essentially. I have a topshelve rig and would be a shame to only pay my bills with it... But at the same time, I'm going to be very critical with my game purchases. I have a pretty good idea of which studios I need to avoid and I have a very pointed interest in only two genres really: Adventures and RPG's. And finding the title that's worth playing in those two genres is like finding Waldo as it is.

Besides, you don't stop playing because you grow old, you grow old because you stop playing.