The Expense of Research

For my target audience, these are all things you already know. But I feel like whining anyway. I lately have had my curiosity piqued by City of Heroes. This game was on my MMORPGs to watch list from three and a half years ago. There were times when I doubted that it would successfully claw its way from the dank depths of incomplete MMORPG oblivion. But lo! Here it is, a complete game, on the market and inhabited by costumed crusaders for justice. My cynical thoughts on City of Heroes basically summed up to: "Well, the super-hero schtick looks fun, but it doesn't seem like they have enough going for it to sustain anyone's attention". And indeed, most of my friends who have played it agree with this dark opionion. But then, I read this on Game Girl Advance and it gave me pause...perhaps there's more under the hood than at first appears. Maybe I should check it out and see for myself. Here's where I actually come to my point for the evening: the expense of studying games sucks. Let's say I am a movie scholar (though I know we don't like comparing games and movies when we don't have to, but bear with me). Here I am, film scholar. Someone recommends a film that I should definitely see. I go to my local video store (or even better, Netflix) pick up the film and spend an evening watching it with popcorn at hand. Ok, so I'm sure there are some movies that are obscure and tricky to find. But by and large, I can rent much of my material and go through it in a few hours. Hell, if I really like it or want to examine something, I can just rewind it and watch it again, fast-forwarding to the part I want to see. Now instead I have decided to study games. I can rent some, true, but most places have completely terrible selections. And I can't rent games for the PC. And a new game pretty much costs $50 a pop. PLUS I have to own the correct platfrom, and continually upgrade my PC so it can run the newer games. Many games also take hours and hours and hours to play through. I can't fast-forward to the ending to see how it ends, or to a specific level to see the neat gameplay mechanic that is only used in that level. If I want to show a specific part to a colleague, I had better have the right save points on my memory card. Getting ahold of older games can be hard, and there is the ambiguous legality involved with "abandonware". And woe if what I want to study is MMORPGs! Not only do they have a monthly fee, but many of them take intense dedication to get to a level where the game starts to get interesting. I have so many games on my "to play" list that it is at times overwhelming. Each of these games, I know, will take 20 - 100 hours to complete. I can "get the gist" of the game by playing for much less time, but narrative based games beg to be played all the way through in order to completely understand their uniqueness. What's a game researcher to do? Oh well. At least I'm not an archaeologist.