I also think it's the MAME effect. Anything free is not valued as much as something you have to pay for. It's a lot different experience when you're paying for something and have limited time, versus something more or less free and having unlimited time.
The Mame Effect! Great term!
I have definitely noticed a huge change in my gameplay habits once it became obvious that I could play pretty much any game I wanted at any time. Eventually you get to where you don't want to play anything, or you just dabble a bit here and there, without really settling in.
I have talked to my friends about the same thing with music. If you had to buy your own CDs and were limited to 1 or 2 a week (or month in some cases), you had to choose very carefully. If you ended up with a bad CD, you might listen to multiple times anyway in the hopes that it would somehow grow on you--and sometimes it worked! On the other hand, if you bought a CD because of that "one song" on the radio, you might listen to it a few dozen times and then get bored with it. My point is that the music that was an acquired taste turned out to be far superior, even if it didn't grab you at first listen. When I first heard them, I hated The Cure, The Smiths, Johnny Cash, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, etc. After "forcing myself" to listen to their albums, though, I began to like them and then even to love them. On the other hand, I bought Smashmouth and The Offspring after hearing their hits on the radio, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get into the rest of their stuff. Those CDs ended up lost somewhere.
But now, in the age of P2P and itunes, a lot of this is going away. Why listen to anything that doesn't catch you right away? There's also no need to listen to an entire album, since you can just pick and choose what songs you want. Now, you don't even have a whole song to catch you, since most sites like iTunes only let you hear 10-15 seconds of a song before making the all-important choice. So, a band has to make sure that their songs can grab you in that amount of time. No long build ups, etc. I think music will suffer for that.
And also -- if you have 3 days worth of music on your hard drive, what are you going to listen to? Time becomes the factor, not money. Now it's a matter of - well, I have an hour...And guess what gets played -- either stuff you are already familiar with, or some of those songs that "grab ya" right away and don't require the patient and sometimes tedious discovery process.
I'm sure you see the same thing happening with your game collections...! Sometimes it's better to have only a few games and lots of time rather than the other way around.
I also think it's the MAME effect. Anything free is not valued as much as something you have to pay for. It's a lot different experience when you're paying for something and have limited time, versus something more or less free and having unlimited time.
The Mame Effect! Great term!
I have definitely noticed a huge change in my gameplay habits once it became obvious that I could play pretty much any game I wanted at any time. Eventually you get to where you don't want to play anything, or you just dabble a bit here and there, without really settling in.
I have talked to my friends about the same thing with music. If you had to buy your own CDs and were limited to 1 or 2 a week (or month in some cases), you had to choose very carefully. If you ended up with a bad CD, you might listen to multiple times anyway in the hopes that it would somehow grow on you--and sometimes it worked! On the other hand, if you bought a CD because of that "one song" on the radio, you might listen to it a few dozen times and then get bored with it. My point is that the music that was an acquired taste turned out to be far superior, even if it didn't grab you at first listen. When I first heard them, I hated The Cure, The Smiths, Johnny Cash, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, etc. After "forcing myself" to listen to their albums, though, I began to like them and then even to love them. On the other hand, I bought Smashmouth and The Offspring after hearing their hits on the radio, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get into the rest of their stuff. Those CDs ended up lost somewhere.
But now, in the age of P2P and itunes, a lot of this is going away. Why listen to anything that doesn't catch you right away? There's also no need to listen to an entire album, since you can just pick and choose what songs you want. Now, you don't even have a whole song to catch you, since most sites like iTunes only let you hear 10-15 seconds of a song before making the all-important choice. So, a band has to make sure that their songs can grab you in that amount of time. No long build ups, etc. I think music will suffer for that.
And also -- if you have 3 days worth of music on your hard drive, what are you going to listen to? Time becomes the factor, not money. Now it's a matter of - well, I have an hour...And guess what gets played -- either stuff you are already familiar with, or some of those songs that "grab ya" right away and don't require the patient and sometimes tedious discovery process.
I'm sure you see the same thing happening with your game collections...! Sometimes it's better to have only a few games and lots of time rather than the other way around.
Matt Barton, Managing Editor
Location: St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA
Email: matt@armchairarcade.com