The Great Funk of 2011

MorriganMeh.

The piercing sound of gunfire in Black Ops doesn’t move me. The clang of steel in Dragon Age: Origins can’t wake me. Even Glados and her homicidal puzzles fail to shake me from my electronic ennui.

I’m in a gaming funk.

It happens, from time to time, usually in the summer months, when the Florida sun shines down from what seems like an inch from my head, pelting me with a heat that is as oppressive as a batarian slaver. It happened a lot in college, when I didn’t always have the money to get the games I wanted, but the miasma sets in sometimes even now.

I know the cure. I just have to find it: the right game at the right time. That perfect synergy of carefully identifying my mood and calculating what the proper game is to propell me forward and upward, to eliminate the listless that has so gripped me.

Don’t we all feel this way sometimes? When all of gaming seems so boring and cliched? When inspiration seems like something from the ancient 16-bit days, a long forgotten virtue that was once common as an arcade machine in the 1980s, but is now as rare as a forum without a fanboy?

Sequels abound and new IPs that might as well be sequels, blantant rip-offs that are carefully positioned as “homages” or spiritual sequels or whatever other buzzwords that were cooked up inside the unholy lairs of Marketing. I imagine black robes, pentagrams and circles of blood, drawn carefully and precisely to act as supernatural antennea to reach the demons of gaming, to ask for and receive the newest mantras: “Gamification. Transmedia. Motion Controls.” *shudder*

You know the feeling, I’m sure: when you can’t even stomach playing a demo for more than the title screen. When a request to play online from a friend makes you dive for the power switch. When the normally welcoming chime of a newly-earned Achievement/Trophy is met with disdain…it’s like the end of the world.

Doubts set in, sneaking in unheeded like a man with a mullet. Am I too old for gaming? Have I finally found the last princess in the last castle? Is it all downhill from here? Will I be content with the games I still own? A quick glance at my collection of games dispels that notion. Once abundant and seemingly evergreen, now withered and decayed, ravaged by trade-ins and time. Games I once loved with a fervor now cast aside, lured away by the promises something better, something newer, promises that ring false now.

Days pass. My controllers collect a fine layer of dust. My reading and movie backlog dwindle. Life goes on.

But then something happens: a memory perhaps, an urging, deep inside for one more try.

So here goes. But I don’t try. I do. And the piercing sound of gunfire on Black Ops makes my adrenaline surge. The clang of steel in Dragon Age: Origins invigorates me. Glados and her homicidal puzzles make me chuckle with renewed determination. The Great Funk of 2011 has passed. Let us game.

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Age: 34 PSN ID: Starkiller81. I've played games since before I can remember, starting with my dad's Atari and I haven't stopped yet. Keep them coming and I will keep playing them.

11 thoughts on “The Great Funk of 2011”

  1. modern warfare 1 or team fortress 2 are my fallback titles. will never get sick of them.

  2. Great article Anthony. I totally feel you on this one. I had been going through the same thing for the last few weeks until I finally snapped out of it with (oddly) Halo: Reach and some Portal 2.

  3. Yeah, definitely happens to me. This is usually when I go back to CS 1.6 with all my old gun-friends, or hook up the SNES and slap in some Super Mario All-Stars, or battle my room mate in Mario Kart.

    Playing with adult Lego (not sexy, I mean Minecraft) really helps kill that feeling too. Just go build something, suddenly it’s 2 AM and you just want to keep going!

  4. I just recently got out of a gaming funk myself. It seemed like every game on my steam list made me feel more bored than I have ever been in my life. I stopped playing stuff for a little while and started walking around town and hanging out at the park with my friends assaulting geese with the very bread we were feeding to them.

    Eventually I discovered what my gaming constants are. Doom 2 (preferably with the ZDoom sourceport for mouse aiming and smoother gameplay), Rocket Knight Adventures for the Sega Genesis (still my favorite game of all time), LSD for the Sony Play Station, and a little bit of VVVVVV. Any of these games can entertain me for long periods of time, any time I decide to play them. Luckily I got out of my gaming rut by the time Portal 2 rolled around and I got to beat that within the first two days that it came out.

    And then I started playing some Spore and the game decided to crash and dump all of my progress when I was pretty far in. Gaming funk reinitiated.

  5. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You state that your “reading and movie backlog dwindle”, like you’re ashamed of that (though I could be misreading that). And John seems to think “hanging out at the park with [his] friends” is a bad thing (although “assaulting geese” sounds a bit sketchy). Something will come around again, but until then, read a book (may I suggest Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind?) or watch new TV series from Netflix (like The Wire or Archer) or go for a hike. I know what it’s like to feel that lack of video gaming goodness, but I think the key is not over-indulging even when you can (admittedly, this will be hard to do come November, with Skyrim, ME3, and Dark Souls), and then you’ll have something left over when the slow months come.

    1. Oh man, I just finished Name of the Wind, and even though I told myself I would wait before starting Wise Man’s Fear, I immediately jumped into it. Such fantastic writing and really great characters.

      Also, I believe the Wire is one of Anthony’s new obsessions 😉

      But yeah, I definitely used the time of the gaming funk in my own life to focus on some other stuff. You’re totally right. Things all swing around eventually.

  6. [quote comment=”16273″]Oh man, I just finished Name of the Wind, and even though I told myself I would wait before starting Wise Man’s Fear, I immediately jumped into it. Such fantastic writing and really great characters.

    Also, I believe the Wire is one of Anthony’s new obsessions 😉

    But yeah, I definitely used the time of the gaming funk in my own life to focus on some other stuff. You’re totally right. Things all swing around eventually.[/quote]

    Yeah, it’s not a bad thing that I can do other things.

    And Eddy is right: The Wire is my favorite show of all time now,lol.

  7. I know how you feel about waiting Eddy. I finished the first book two years ago and had a hell of a time waiting for Wise Man’s Fear. I took it slow with that one, but now that I’m done (really sad when I finished, like I lost a friend), I know I’m gonna have wait another few years for the next book…oh well.

    And Anthony…ENJOY! I’ve watched all 5 seasons three times now, and probably gonna give it another go this summer. Incredible script and characters.

    Also, video games rule!

  8. @dp,

    I am already done with it and have to give it sometime or my fiancee will leave me since it was all I talked about for a month,lol.

  9. @dp I hang out with my friends as often as I can, but generally over here hanging out at the park is kind of what you do when you’re really, really, really bored. Like, so bored that you don’t care that you’re in the middle of a field in the middle of the night with nothing but ducks quaking for bread and some junkie laying on a bench that you really hope won’t decide to stab you. Also the assaulting geese thing is just a joke, though one of my friends did slap a goose with a slice of bread. Those geese are aggressive and tend to attack children at the park, so we justify our bread-based animal abuse as defending the childrens.

  10. [quote comment=”16290″]@dp I hang out with my friends as often as I can, but generally over here hanging out at the park is kind of what you do when you’re really, really, really bored. Like, so bored that you don’t care that you’re in the middle of a field in the middle of the night with nothing but ducks quaking for bread and some junkie laying on a bench that you really hope won’t decide to stab you. Also the assaulting geese thing is just a joke, though one of my friends did slap a goose with a slice of bread. Those geese are aggressive and tend to attack children at the park, so we justify our bread-based animal abuse as defending the childrens.[/quote]

    I figured the geese thing was a joke. I wasn’t criticizing you, just trying to make a point that, while video games are an excellent way to spend some time, other things are okay, too. Although, based on your explanation, that park does seem like a place that isn’t all that fun 🙂

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