Games I’m No Longer Playing

Yes, I know it would make more sense to blog about games I am playing, but … well, I’ve lazy.

These are both games I got hot and heavy into for several weeks before suddenly going cold turkey. I’ll explain that in a minute.

Roller Coaster Tycoon was meant to take over the builder itch from SimCity. As the name implies, and as memory may serve, it’s basically a Sim game around amusement park construction. Build it and the Sims will come, giving you money to build still more interesting rides. Build something the game suggests (a shop, a food joint, a ride, or a roller coaster), and you get bonus resources.

This can be a lot of fun, and it did keep me playing for quite a while, slowly expanding my theme park (Zany World!), building roller coasters (designing some of them myself), etc. It was all fun …

… until it wasn’t. Some things can be built with money that the Sims bring in. Other things — increasingly, the things that the game wants you to build next to be rewarded — require a special resource that only comes available when you level, when you achieve one of those requested buildings, or in small increments each day … or when you pay them cash money.

In other words, I hit the effective limits of the Free-to-Play model. To build the next thing would take me several days, and then a week, and then a week or two. Unless I wanted to pay them cash money. (Actually, Google Play Store money, but you get the idea.)

So I quite. Plans for redesigning parts of the park abandoned. Suggestion I open a second location never followed up on. I closed and locked the gates, like Willy Wonka, and never went back. Lots of fun, until suddenly it wasn’t.

The other game I’ve been playing a lot of — until I wasn’t — was Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. In this game you are hanging out at a cantina, playing video game gladatorial combat with famous figures from the Galaxy — Rebels, Empire, Bounty Hunters, Scoundrels, Ewoks, Jawas, Droids, First Order, Republic, Separatist. You build the figures into teams of five, and then set them in combat against others. In some games you battle Light side vs Dark. In others you choose certain types (“This raid requires Clones!). In still others, you can mix and match for your optimal team.

The battles are turn-based, the characters (several dozen of them, most named characters from the various cartoons, movies, etc.) having multiple attacks and intrinsic powers, often with synergies with similar characters (e.g., when Admiral Akbar is the leader, he adds to the speed of Rebel allies). There are buffs, debuffs, all that kind of jazz. It’s good stuff. There’s a parallel space battle challenge that’s not quite as much fun, but still interesting.

I got up to Lvl 70 or so (out of 85), and had a lead stable of pretty powerful characters: Akbar (leader), Leia (blaster), Boba Fett (blaster, debuffer), an Imperial Guard (tank), and Luminara Unduli (healer, attacker). Other great characters included Lando Calrissian (massive AoE), Capt. Phasma (attack buff), and Darth Vader (Force crushes, lightsaber hijinx). And many more — I ran a less-focused advancement than some did.

It was a lot of fun, some great action, some good quality-of-life features, and I put a lot of hours into it (and more than most, being currently unemployed). Until, this week …

… I stopped.

As I had gotten to a level where the grind to advance characters further — to get the shards to advance the characters one way, to get the gear to advance them another way — hit that tipping point of going from reasonable fun to get characters further advanced to being … not. Where it stopped being fun and became work.

And, of course, I was doing this 95% free-to-play. The game provides plenty, plenty of opportunities to spend cash money to buy credits, to buy additional characters, to buy stuff to advance characters. I had some Google Play credit to apply for minor strategic purchases, but it was pretty trivial vs. the concerted F2P effort.

And I hit that wall that so many F2P games have, where the fun turns into work, into “what a body is obliged to do,” as Tom Sawyer put it. And, so I’ve walked away.

Mind you, this is purely at the discretion of game publishers in both cases. They have offered a game for free, and I’ve gotten a lot of pleasure for free. And I can’t tell people they shouldn’t play them — I had a lot of fun with both. But both (like earlier Sim City experience), get to a point where playing for free, or for even small targeted purposes, stops being enough fun to warrant the effort. Because, after all, it is a game. When it stops being fun … stop playing.