Reacquiring your ‘gaming mojo’

After reading this, I wanted to put some thoughts down. http://ask.slashdot.org/story/10/11/25/067219/Have-I-Lost-My-Gaming-Mojo?from=rss

I can think of two ways you might lose your gaming ‘mojo’. At least these are the two I’ve experienced myself.

The first case is when I find myself getting slaughtered in x game (or genre of game), when I remember that I used to win easily… I’ve had this with first person shooters, strategy games, and specific titles. Mostly this is a multi player phenomenon, but in some cases also single player. I’ve put this ‘sudden’ degradation in ability down to an unnoticed learning curve. In these games, I got good through practising, but without noticing an increase in talent.

When I come back to them I expect to be good, get beaten, and as a result feel, well, quite bad. Sometimes I just put the game away and resign it to the past. If I care, for whatever reason, I usually go to train in a harder game to bring my skill level back up (playing, for example, red orchestra for an hour or two before, say, team fortress gives me an epic boost in kills).

The second case is when I can’t find a game I actually want to play. I have plenty of choice (really, woe is me) but I just can’t get into anything. I flit off to other things, coding, walking,e eating, but can’t play. Sometimes I just go with this, and get on with non game life – but sometimes it feels like “I don’t want to play anything any more, maybe I should even sell my pc!”. Then I get worried that an important part of ‘me’ is missing, and desperately want to get into a game. What does it take for this? Well, something good usually.

And recently I noticed something remarkable – while I’ve lost interest in strategy gaming, I picked up total annihilation the other day, and as dragged in, despite being tired, cold, and uncomfortable… While first person shooters have recently been quite good, F.E.A.R. and Red Faction captivated me in a compelling way. And I can’t tell you why. But I will try to work it out. All I can really say is, many games recently are missing elements common to these addictive classics.