Instead of discovering a new world to run amok in, I’ve discovered the relatively boring joys of statistics. Instead of building some levels, I’ve built a stack of books, notebooks and paper the size of my desktop. Studying and sleeping have dominated my life.
It’s been a busy few weeks for me. Whether I’m cramming for my first college exams or entertaining my family who visited this past weekend to see the Roots ‘N’ Blues ‘N’ BBQ Festival, trying to find time to play video games has become something of a chore to schedule. I’ve come to realize that playing games is a lot more time consuming than, say, listening to music or watching TV.
Rarely do I ever ask myself if I’m in the mood to listen to music or watch TV; those just happen naturally. Whenever I’m in my dorm room, I will usually turn on music or the TV instantly. However, I almost always have to decide to play games. I don’t casually turn on my PS3 or Xbox without thinking about it first.
This was never a problem for me before getting off the plane at the St. Louis airport. In high school, I would always have an outrageous amount of time on the weekends or even after school, if I wasn’t slaving away for my yearbook. Now that college has arrived and I can firmly say that I’ve settled in, my free time has all but vanished.
But with what small time I’ve had to play games, I’ve realized that the best type of game for a college student is one that can be played in short bursts.
At least for now, gone are the days where I could sit in front of a screen for five hours and play a single game. My schedule has dialed down to more of a: “You somehow managed to have 30 minutes of free time, so use it wisely.”
This is where my PlayStation Vita has wasted most of my time, but in a good way.
The Vita, Sony’s newish handheld, brings console-like game play to the handheld market. With this shift to handheld, games have started to adopt a more pickup and play mentality. Where once developers wanted people to play their game nonstop, I’ve noticed a trend of developers letting gamers complete small chunks at a time, especially for games on a handheld console like a Vita.
Take, for instance, the Vita game “Gravity Rush.” The game splits its story into multiple chapters, some of which don’t take more than about 15 minutes to complete. This is perfect for my current situation. I still get to experience a story, something that I absolute enjoy, without falling into a gigantic time-suck.
Splitting up a game’s story into multiple chapters isn’t a revolutionary thing. Games do it all the time. But, “Gravity Rush” is able to make the chapters weighty without being lengthy. I feel like I accomplished something of value in each of the chapters in a small amount of time.
What’s even better about the Vita is that gaming doesn’t need to be confined to my dorm room like it might have been. In fact, most of my small amounts of free time are during the hour between some of my classes. In an instant I can have a game loaded up on my Vita without trekking all the way to Schurz Hall.
With so many things being thrown at everyone’s face for attention, games need to learn to adapt to the increasingly busy lives of its players. If that happens, maybe even more people will learn to enjoy picking up a controller or handheld to experience a story, which I think would be the greatest thing to happen.
For gamers-on-the-go like myself, there simply need to be more games that give the ability to continue enjoying our hobby without it getting in the way of life’s more important things, such as sleep or, even better yet, studying.
