The Apocalypse: Whether it be Zombie, or Nuclear. Whether it comes from some kind of massive natural disaster or a cosmic cataclysm such as our sun exploding or sending a massive solar flare to wipe out our precious technology. Whether it's brought about by man's own hubris or something we cannot foresee, it is a popular topic. In games like the Fallout franchise we see the current hot topic: the lives of the survivors of this catastrophe.
Survival is in.
New games, both multiplayer and single, drop the player (or players) into a world with often limited resources and these naked avatars are left to start collecting and crafting. There are subtle nuances here and there. Multiplayer games allow people to ally themselves with others to make something greater than the sum of its parts. Conversely: you could become a violent raider, pillaging and seizing everything from people who did all the hard work for you. There could be zombies. There could be monsters. There could be dinosaurs, or wild animals, or sever weather or radiation.
All I know is that these video games have shown me that, if I survive the event itself, I won't last too long after that. I don't know if it's just me, but I don't have the mind for these games. I'm not asking for minimaps with clearly defined paths or waypoints shining brightly on a compass, but being dropped into this unforgiving environment with no direction leaves me confused.
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. This old adage is true, but I seem to use my first step to bash my shin into a piece of furniture or I take that single step right off a cliff.
Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of the crafting and exploration elements in a lot of games. I can waste countless hours exploring planets in Mass Effect 2, gathering resources and charting whole solar systems. I was constantly crafting my weapons and armor in Skyrim. But when I'm unceremoniously dropped into a total sandbox I just spin around in circles, unable to figure out what I'm doing.
I understand the appeal, the satisfaction of crafting something new, the thrill of discovering new resources. I just cannot share in these things. So, I wish you good luck after the apocalypse. The next time you see that skeleton propped up in a booth in the old diner (you know, the one that settlers reopened going so far as to restore power and repair all of the appliances, but they left the desiccated corpses where they were for over a hundred years) just think: I read that guy's blog before he starved to death sitting here waiting for a server that would never come.