Alright, this happened a couple of hours ago, so while the experience is still fresh in my mind(relatively)let's walk-through a particular event(similar to a scripted battle in an RPG where you can't win, the only option is to lose...well that's the overall feeling anyway)during my shift. I work at the illustrious Barnes & Noble Cafe(I know, It's awesome, you should be jealous)and ever since the two free-standing Starbucks establishments closed down over Christmas we've been busier than usual. Naturally at certain points of the day we have rushes of customers wanting to get something for lunch, or before they go into work at the mall, etc.
During one of our minor rushes we had a lady walk up and order a hot Grande Chai Latte(medium sized, spicy vanilla flavored tea concentrate, with steamed milk), I ring her up and she patiently waits for her drink at the end of the counter. Meanwhile, my boss is making that customer's drink, queuing up the next drink in her head, and talking to the head manager of the store about a certain employee(whom I never got to meet because she quit after a week). Now you normally wouldn't put a shot of espresso in a Chai Latte(because It's not in the recipe but you may alter the drink to your liking, Chai Latte + espresso = Dirty Chai...work terminology, sorry)but with 3 things going on at once you're bound to have a lapse in concentration every once in a while and that's fine because we're all human, we make mistakes and that is perfectly acceptable. The Chai Latte is completed, called out(accidently with a shot of espresso in it, but not mentioned), the lady picks up her drink and is on her way without incident and the day goes on.
The rush continues and I notice the "Chai" customer walk back up, and she looks upset. She looks around, skips the line and walks right up to the counter where the drinks are being placed and utters: "This is disgusting! I ordered a Chai Latte, a drink that isn't suppose to have coffee in it!" Mind you, she's just mouthing off(being self-righteous like all of our wonderful and memorable pretentious customers are)to my boss(very, VERY bad move, you just DON'T DO THAT). All streams of time at that point just froze, everything stopped and I felt my heart skip a beat or two, you could feel an immense pressure immanating from one specific focal point...the boss. It took all of my strength to remain calm and seemingly unaffected by this great force, but my gut told me to just get out of there, kind of like this:
My boss is a fair person, and she tried to deal with this person in the best manner that she could, calmly asking if we could remake that drink for her. The response was...rude, if I could describe it: "...I want a refund! You should be paying attention and not having a chit-chat session with your friend over there!" Ahhh, work...customers are just so damn chipper you know? Annoyed, and obviously angry, my boss refunds the drink and the day continues on in awkward silence.
Let me say that I haven't tasted fear like this in a good long while, from disbelief, to a false calm, panic, then the need to just run and get out of there while riding out the adrenaline rush. I have the perfect way to completely sum up and illustrate my story on this one:
Enjoy the whole thing if you'd like but to see my point just skip ahead to about 43 seconds and watch from there to the end. The best stories to this day, have come out of that cafe, sometimes work can be a pain but moments like this will be remembered till the end of days.
Lets take a trip back in time if you will, back to the early days of my generation of video games. Remember when NES and SNES games were $60-$70 a game? Yeah, they were that expensive, hard to believe right? As a kid that was a lot of money...that you didn't have. You did all of these chores and behaved yourself so that maybe over the summer you'd end up saving enough money to buy it, or have your parents pick it up for you. Remember when you played that game for months on end? You played it with friends, family or even alone just for fun. Then you would set the game down for a little while, come back to it later and still have that same sense of joy and excitement years later. Those were the days...
So why is it now, that most(and I use that term loosely)video games of today's generation seem "easy"? As mentioned in a way above, back then you could buy a game, play it for quite a while, set it down and then come back and have fun all over again as if you've never played it before. The replay value on games and the difficulty has gone near completely downhill. Today you can purchase a game for $40-60(depending on the system, basing this on a new game price)and be done with it in a matter of hours or days, and then just be done with it all, never to pick it up again.
The question remains, why? The fact that the quality of rendering graphics have definitely gone way up in scale, but as a trade off the game-play time is reduced to the point of where replay-ability is near non-existent. Today games are more about just earning some stupid number(achievements/trophies...which I suppose can be quite rewarding at times), but at the same time is kind of stupid. While it does make someone work towards a goal, the overall course of action eventually becomes all about just getting every "achievement/trophy," and it usually amounts to not having fun, because this is something that you absolutely need to have in order to validate yourself as a gamer. When does working hard to obtain something you don't care about ever sound fun? Now I understand that some gamers are "Completists" which is fine, to each their own. You don't need a panel with squares and witty text to be as such, in fact It's robotic and boring.
The reason you pick up and play a game in the first place is because you think it may be interesting/and or fun. Everything else can fall into place as you go along, it should be about the adventure and the experience that should count in the end. Imagine back to a time where your group of friends all played one game, separately of course but all at the same time. Not everyone plays in the exact same style, you'd have all of these different stories and experiences, all from the same game. The goal would be the same, but that path leading up to it would be different for each and everyone of you. Usually that would be how you end up finding all of these random secrets, and it would only drive you to further explore the game again in another play-through. It made you work hard on your own merit, and gave you a sense of great fulfillment when you obtained it.
So what happened to that magic? Does it still exist? Absolutely, however very faintly the light still burns. Video Games should be about enjoyment, if they're fun then nothing else will matter. I want to remember a character because a part of them I can see reflects on myself, I want to remember a story because It's the kind of adventure that I would want to go on, or have been though. I want to remember this game because I couldn't see myself wanting to forget this moment, feeling the way that I do right now...ever.
