Burnout & Content, My Thoughts and Feelings (Destiny)

by Earendil, Monday, March 23, 2015, 17:39 (3781 days ago)

I find it interesting that around here the term for getting tired of Destiny is "Burnout". I'll come back to that thought.

I've been gaming for some number of years now. That number of years is larger than the number of years that a lot of Destiny players have been on earth. I'd never have called myself a hardcore gamer though, and there are significant gaps in my experience with a few omg-you-haven't-played-that games. Still, over all the years across all the genre of all the games I've played, one thing stays pretty consistent, and that is my reason for ceasing to play a game. That reason? There isn't one. I stop playing games without realizing it. I wake up one morning and realize I haven't played a game for a period of time. This is often because a knew game or phase in my life has pushed it out, the joy I find in the new activity is greater, so I actively choose what is more fun, and passively choose to stop playing the game.

People talk about Halo as having huge replay value. Maybe it did for some, but not for me. I played it through once for the story, and once for beating it on Legendary, and then I stopped. I played multiplayer until it was passively phased out by something else, which really wasn't all that long compared to a lot of games. For example, I played Myth: SB for 3-4 years, compared to a Halo game which I was long done with before its sequel came out.

This is true for me in a lot of areas. I used to play ping-pong daily when in college, until one day I realized it had been weeks since I played. Did I hate ping pong? No, I just chose other things.

Back to Burnout. This term is usually applied to something that you used to be engaged in, and now no longer feel engaged in or mentally able to handle, YET there is a desire to stay engaged in, and for which you are still doing. Often this is applied to work, but you can burnout on a particular song, activity, or Destiny. Usually if you ask someone that is burned out on something if the thing in question is bad, they will say no. This is like putting your favorite song on repeat until you are sick of it. Is the song bad? Do you have a new and more negative understanding of the song? Probably not, but you are burned out.

Destiny, it would seem, is causing burnout precisely because it is good, and it is enjoyable. The problem is that, like a favorite song, you can't play the same content over and over and expect to not burn out on it. In fact the problem is that the fun level exceeds the content quantity. We still love playing Destiny for the playing of Destiny, but we're burning ourselves out on content. This does not mean that you are done with Destiny or the song, it just means that you're human, and need to set the content down for a bit. Moderation.

On the subject of Moderation, burnout tends to happen at different rates in different people. Some people can't stand to hear a song twice in a row, other people (particularly little sisters it always seems) can listen to a song 100 times in a row and be just fine. When it comes to strikes, I'm like your little sister. I'm still not tired of them.

Destiny is one of the first games I've actually burned out on. Most games slowly cease to be enjoyable before I'm burned out on content. The newest Dragon age will be like that. Long before I've exhausted the content, I won't find the game enjoyable enough to keep playing. Myth I was never given the opportunity to burn out on due to life changes. Perhaps the only other games I've burned out on are DOTA2 and Civilization. Yet ask me what my top 10 games are and those two will rank high.

I think that burnout is a highly applicable term for what many of us have or are starting to deal with. I don't presume to think that the topic of burnout applies to everyone that plays, or everyone that puts Destiny down. Some of you may have been using the term to mean "sick and tired of this trash", and that's an okay opinion to have. Others haven't used the term, and have instead articulated other reasons for putting Destiny down.

But for those that identify with burnout, I'd like to ask us to recognize it as such. Destiny hasn't become bad or terrible to play. It is absolutely possible to burn out on something you actually love. But don't conflate burnout with hatred for a thing. Put it down for a bit (despite it being fun) and try something else. Give it time or wait for new content. Don't put Destiny on repeat until you're sick.

Final thought: I acknowledge that the other way to look at this is not that Bungie created a game that is more fun than there is content, but instead didn't provide enough content for how fun the game is. Other fun games delivered more content, preventing burnout as fast, or in most cases ever. My thought with that is that those games simply weren't all that fun to play once you had played for a little bit. Other games are a second tier band. Destiny on the other hand is the equivalent of your favorite band releasing a single, and making you wait for the entire Album. It sure would be better if we had the entire Album, but that shouldn't cause us to hate the single that was released because we burned ourselves out.