I want a good game. A game I can't wait to play, something so good I feel blessed just for having played a minute of it. A game that keeps me up at night, and steals my focus the rest of the day. A game that transcends its label and becomes an experience, a world you can almost touch out and reach, that blurs the line between real and fiction, imagination and rational. A game that doesn't end in the credits, that lives on, its characters immortalized, every scene and every battle remembered. A game where you weren't just an outsider looking in, you were part of it, your actions changing it. A game so good it's not enough to play it, something you just have to share with a person or ten. A game too big for only one playthrough, be it to explore new skills or to explore a different viewpoint of a problem presented to you.
So tell me, what would this game be to you? I ask because I'm tired. I'm tired of looking and seeing only executables and engines and programs where I'm supposed to be seeing a new galaxy, a new planet. I'm tired of being shown paper-thin depictions of new realms only to see through them immediately. I am desperate. I fear I may lose all the love I've ever had for the industry. I won't dwell on whose fault this is, I don't care if it is sloth or greed, if it is a single person's fault or an entire company's. I just want it to end, I want for a game to make me believe in what we, as artist and audience, have constructed in the past years.
Last game that made me feel like gaming could matter was Final Fantasy X. This was back in 2007. For the first time, I had to confront one of my most basic beliefs: that no one deserves to die. Certain events take place, and you reach a point in the game where you learn that Spira, a world with so much beauty, so much life, was forever condemned to fall in an eternal spiral of death, it's civilization slaughtered, their cities torn asunder by monsters. But I could stop that cycle, the masterminds of the entire scheme were in front of me. These people openly admitted to their crimes, and they showed no remorse in their actions. For the first time in my life I wondered if everyone wouldn't happier if they just... disappeared. Everyone asks themselves if it's right, if we shoulnd't fight it. And we do. We break centuries of tradition and bring the people true peace. The point is, video gaming taught me a life lesson. No, it taught many life lessons, and I couldn't even tell I was being taught anything.
People have told me forming that deep of a connection with game may only come once in a lifetime. But I dispute that. I know that there are people out there that have learned over the years, that have truly learned the difference between a line of code and the landscape it will produce, that have learned not only to see what's there, but also what has been omitted.
To conclude, I once again ask. What game has been able to draw you in to such a degree?