Friends, foes, minions, overlords, and Chet, I am here to warn you of a horrible disease. I have had it for quite some time and I have been irresponsible enough to not come forward until now. The guilt has finally become too thick however, and I finally must confess.
One day I will complete this game.
I have Quinitialitis. The nerd-specific disease that only allows one to play five hours into a game before moving on. The ailment is such – with me at least – that I will start up a game with great fervor and excitement. I will have every intention to complete the game. I will be reasonable. “Of course I will not play every day,” I say to myself, “nor will I always be quite as excited, but goddamn it, now is the time to finally beat Link to the Past!”
Then, five hours in, all motivation drains away. It disappears as if it was never even there to begin with. I do not berate myself for not playing, for it is as if I never started playing the game at all.
The affliction is not as bad as it used to be. It got to a point when every single game I attempted to play was infected. Then the fever broke. I was able to play through most of Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, and Link to the Past, the three games that plagued me hardest in the past.
Still, when I was younger, it was easy for me to play through old favourites or classics that I had yet to try. I was immune to the ailment. It is definitely not that I do not enjoy the inflicted games. In fact, there seems to be no pattern to when the sickness emerges.
I've seen this about a hundred thousand times.
I could blame it on growing older and having no time. While it is true that I do not have the time for games that I did as a teenager, I am still able to make time when needed. I beat Skyward Sword and Mass Effect 3 very quickly and neither are particularly short games. I sunk a great deal of time into Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Enough time, in fact, needed to complete so many games that have fallen by the wayside to the relentless Quinitialitis.
Perhaps it is because the opening of an adventure game or an RPG can be argued to be the most exciting. The premise and world are new, the systems are fresh, and everything is easy to keep track of. Even as soon as the five hour mark, these elements can lose their edge if not tended to frequently.
Most likely, however, is the pressure I place on myself to replay my favourites. Games are not movies. This is a great distinction in many ways, but a downfall of the separation of the mediums is time needed to re-experience. My favourite movie is 109 minutes long. My favourite game is 10-60 hours long.
The longer a person is a gamer, the more games are added to his favourites and the less likely he is able to replay any of them with any frequency.
Then perhaps Quinitialitis is a natural thing. Less a disease to be feared and more a natural side effect of being a gamer.
What about you, fellow nerds? Do you suffer from this disease? If so, do you find it annoying? Natural? Bittersweet?
