While I’ve had an affinity for video games my entire life, I wouldn’t really call myself a gamer these days. I spent much of my young life parked in front of a tiny cathode-ray tube television, my face glued to the screen while Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong moved around behind the glass. As time progressed, things began to change. For one, the gaming industry changed; I was raised on platformers, but the genre went through a serious drought in the late 2000s and 2010s. For another, the amount of time I had for playing them dwindled as further demands from life slowly whittled down the hours that I would have previously allocated for gaming.
Things have improved quite a bit lately, and that has prompted me to pick up my controller again. For one, platformers and action/adventure games have started to come back into fashion. And for another, I’ve slowly clawed back some time to play since my health is improving and I’m no longer filling every spare moment with trying to stay alive.
I’m lucky that I am able to play almost all of the games I love on my laptop. I have an AMD-powered Framework, and nearly everything I have attempted to play has worked quite well on it. The sort of indie/platformer/adventure/puzzle-adjacent games that I enjoy all seem to run splendidly on it, much as they did on the SteamDeck I owned prior to this laptop. And even some of the AAA titles (things like Spider-man and Red Dead Redemption II) work well with lower resolutions and technologies like FSR upscaling everything.
That’s not to mention all my lifelong favorites, which play fabulously thanks to various emulators. At this point, almost every game I’ve ever loved runs on my laptop, and I can carry them all around with me wherever I go.
I have made a realization, though, when it comes to how I personally enjoy games. While I know many people want games to last many, many hours and provide as much entertainment value as possible, I’m the exact opposite: I really love a short game. Games that take just a few hours, or even games that average 6-8 hours of playtime, are perfect for me. They keep me entertained and hold my attention the entire time, but they never overstay their welcome. I don’t get bored of them, and don’t have time to get frustrated or bogged down. And best of all, by sticking to a shorter runtime, I am able to experience a wider variety of games and gain exposure to more genres and franchises than I might otherwise.
I would much rather play something like “What Remains of Edith Finch”, “Thank Goodness You’re Here”, “Celeste”, or “Firewatch” than “Red Dead Redemption II” or the new Indiana Jones game, which take dozens of hours to complete in a normal playthrough.
The truth is that my attention span isn’t what it used to be, and neither is the pocket of free time in my day-to-day life. I’d rather jump into a game, have a pleasant time, enjoy a novel experience (and incredible art), and then bow out before it gets stale. I’m thankful that there are so many great games out there that suit this preference, and that they’re all a Steam install away.