The Fall of Browser Games

Online gaming sites can provide temporary enjoyment. Kongregate, NotDoppler, Armor Games, that sort of thing. I used to play these a lot. I would wake up in the morning on weekends and go through those endless lists of games, trying out the ones that looked interesting. Occasionally, I would find one and play it for the entire day. I’ve had some good times playing these stupid little flash games.

But around the middle of freshman year, I started to enter the world of ‘real’ computer games, the ones that you install on your computer, rather than temporarily connecting to through a browser. The first of these I was introduced to long before freshman year, Kerbal Space Program. It was, and still is, a fun game, but it takes a lot of time for a productive session, one that leaves me feeling like it was time well spent. The beginning of a turning point came when Noah Johnson introduced me to Planetside 2. Here was a game that I could play any time I wanted to, for any length of time I wanted to, and was developed by a branch of a huge company by people who were paid to work on the game, instead of just being one person’s hobby.

It wasn’t until over a year later, when I had been playing these ‘real’ computer games for some time that I started to realize that the browser games were just trash. There were a few good ones, but in general, they just weren’t good enough to match anything from the computer gaming industry. I started to realize that whenever I played browser games, I just felt disappointed, since now my expectations for a game are much higher. Browser games are massive time-sinks, and don’t bring as much satisfaction as a ‘real’ game does in the same amount of time. It was around this time, about a year ago, that I started deciding that it was time to let go of this relic from my childhood. If I wanted to put off working, I had more fun ways to do that. I haven’t bothered with these browser games since.

So I’ve been wasting my time more productively, playing games that I can really enjoy for hours on end and still feel like I haven’t completely wasted my time. At the end of the day, sometimes I think to myself, “What did I do with my day?” It’s these moments that I hate. I usually go on to agonize about what I could have done differently, what things I could have done that would have given me joy. But it’s a rare experience with these ‘real’ games. Yes, there are times when I just don’t play well, or don’t get anything done towards long-term goals, sometimes the session just isn’t fun. On these days, sometimes I regret playing that game that day. It happens. But the frequency of these bad days is way lower with these games than with a day used up playing the browser games. I’m still not to the point where I completely prioritize school work over relaxation, but at least I’m having fun instead of just ending the day disappointed.


So, I'm at 532 words for this, so I think I should expand it some.  Where do you think I could do that?  Anything unclear, poorly worded, or any weird jumps in focus?

New Class

This marks the switch from a blog about 20th century novels to nonfiction writing.