Why Xbox Game Pass Might Be a Mistake

if you're a fan of gaming you know we had a special Year many outlets have claimed that 2023 will go down in history as one of the best years for game releases maybe ever and looking at this year's Game of the Year contenders it is difficult to argue with those statements but something has just not been adding up for me despite all the evidence I can't help this feeling that I should have enjoyed 20 23 more than I did I played some amazing games but strangely the amount of satisfaction I experienced didn't seem to correlate with the quality of those titles so my first thought was a depressing one I guess I'm too old for that sort of nonsense anymore maybe my capacity to enjoy video games is diminishing but as I started to peel back the layers of this conundrum it became clear that it was wasn't who I'd become that was the problem the problem it turns out was much harder to recognize it's something that slowly crept in and has taken over the gaming landscape it's something that every gamer needs to be aware of the first stop in my investigation was childhood it was early December of 2004 I was in fourth grade and my winter break was just around the corner as a kid this was easily my favorite time of year but I did have a job to do every year I'd spend an evening drafting my Christmas list which after my weird bug phase was almost exclusively video games and electronics my Christmas list was important for two reasons critically it was my only way of communicating my needs to the higher Powers this is what I want parents as most Gamers know should not be trusted to purchase any game or gaming peripheral uned the other reason and this is a point point we'll be coming back to is that my list represented a commitment Santa Claus played it pretty straight with me if I wasn't getting Cole I could expect about 45 shirts from Kohl's and a couple new games if I was lucky but these games would have to last me almost half the year until my birthday came around so I kind of needed to pick some winners i k could only handle so many six out of 10 before eventually he gives up and decides there is no better game than RuneScape so I would study my copies of Game Informer browse the shelves of GameStop and I would also try really hard to remember what my friend's older brothers had been playing because they were the coolest people on the planet at that time but as soon as I printed my list and sealed the envelope that was that my die would be cast Christmas Eve at that age was pretty torturous I would lie in bed for hours counting sheep well into the thousands just too excited to sleep I actually learned that Oxford studied this technique in 2001 and it it does not work the people who counted sheep actually took longer to fall asleep than the control group who were just laying there probably thinking about embarrassing they said 15 years ago I shouldn't have said that man so thanks Mom I guess you weren't hip with the Oxford studies back then Christmas morning would reveal my destiny to come there was no better feeling than finding a couple of those neatly wrapped thin rectangles under the tree in the moments of anticipation before tearing off the paper my mental state would begin to shift from excitement to almost a quiet resolve it's because I knew whatever these games were 6 out of 10 or 10 out of 10 we were bound to each other for the next 5 months and they would be getting my full attention this cycle of Christmas and birthday games seemed to be calibrated just right for me and setting aside plain Nostalgia I think there may have been something meaningful about this style of consumption but what was it and is it possible that it could help explain why I feel like I may have been a happier more satisfied gamer back then before we can answer that I think we have to look at where we've gone since 2004 I grew up during the era of Blockbuster but before Blockbuster before VHS tapes and DVDs there were just movie theaters they only played a handful of different films at a time so if you wanted to see a movie you just had to go pick from what was playing at your theater and if you happen to be the youngest in a family of five you didn't get to pick sh but imagine that jump from having six films to pick from at a time to suddenly hundreds that you could take home with you how does the brain adjust to that jump well well back in 2004 that same year I was working on my Christmas list there was a psychologist named Barry Schwarz and he published an important book his book describes a theory of human behavior which he called the Paradox of choice the easiest way to explain this theory is to describe the main experiment that he cited in the book so I'll give a quick recap there was a group of researchers who set up a sample table at a gourmet grocery store and on that table they offered customers a selection of various jams to taste if customers tasted any of the jams they'd be given a coupon for a doll off their purchase of jam so on the first day the researchers laid out six different varieties of jam some folks wandered over took a taste maybe made a purchase on the second day they quadrupled the spread setting out a borderline suspicious 24 varieties of jam so what happened well despite the larger assortment attracting all the buzz it was actually the smaller assortment that reeled in more purchases so the study concluded that while people may be initially attracted to a greater number of choices having too many options can lead to decision paralysis and may involve additional consequences like escalation of expectations diminish satisfaction and even regret all right so back to my question why do I feel like I may have enjoyed games less this year despite the abundance of amazing titles to choose from I think the Paradox of choice explains some of it but not most of it it's definitely true that we live in times of crazy variety when it comes to the games we have access to steam alone has something like 50,000 games in its catalog which is a good bit more than you'd find in any Blockbuster store and the feeling many of us get when we boot up steam only to realize 40 minutes later that we've just been wishlisting games and not actually playing anything in our library that is a testament to the inertia of decision paralysis the reality is there are so many games that I want to play and I probably won't be able to play all of them the thought does generate a little bit of stress but is that problem so different from when I was 10 years old debating whether I should put Pokémon Emerald on my Christmas list even though I already own Ruby for as long as I've been playing games I think the Paradox of choice has always been a factor its intensity has probably grown definitely grown in the last decade But ultimately I'm not convinced that the quantity of games on the market is the True Heart of my struggle in late 2020 I bought an Xbox series X I had had stuck with Team Green through the previous console generation and the series X Hardware at the time was looking pretty solid what was not looking solid were the day one launch titles Halo was MIA we still know basically nothing about Fable and even the new IP teased by Xbox things like avow we later learned hadn't even gone into the oven yet there were basically no Next Generation titles to play on my next Generation console and I was feeling a bit deflated so I decided to cheer myself up by joining Game Pass Xbox game pass is insane to this day it is still the best deal in gaming hands down I think I waited so long to get it because I just couldn't fathom all these titles being available for less than $20 a month surely there was some fine print gimmick about how many games you could have on your machine at once that I must have missed but no when I started exploring the the catalog I was kind of Blown Away I remember finding a list of Game Pass titles on Reddit in a Google sheet which probably still exists browsing through the top rated entries in that list was actually how I ended up playing some phenomenal games like near aom in Dragon Quest 11 and I really do have to give Game Pass credit for that for me the best part about the service is that it lowers the barrier to entry for trying a game I don't want to say never would have played near aoma if it wasn't on Game Pass but truthfully it was not on my radar until then the freedom to demo any game in the catalog and then feel zero guilt for putting it down at any point that is something I had just never experienced before and it was liberating for a while I want to come back to a word I used at the beginning of the video commitment in Western cultures commitment is often associated with marriage or legal contracts so legal contracts it is an emotionally charged word though you feel a slight sense of Burden as it comes off the tongue but commitment while often difficult has the potential to grow into something special into a sense of satisfaction imagine you just started a jigsaw puzzle there are a thousand tiny pieces scattered on the table in front of you for the first few minutes you're probably thinking all right great it's getting late time to get you to bed it could feel daunting maybe impossible but then you fit one piece with another and you do it again and again and at some point you've made enough progress that you start to Crave the feeling of fitting that last puzzle piece into its perfectly cut spot for Christmas that year when Santa brought me Paper Mario the Thousand-Year Door he was drafting my contract with that game so to speak did I occasionally Daydream of games my friends had yeah of course but for the next few months when I hunkered down on a Friday night ready to plug in I was excited to explore everything that game had to offer doing otherwise would have meant that I needed to find something else to occupy my time it would have meant not playing video games now imagine if I had just meandered around rogueport for the first couple hours of Paper Mario not really finding any hidden items or passages the writing just not clicking yet imagine I was playing this title on a Game Pass equivalent the chances that I would have simply moved on to something else never to pick that game up again are tragically high and those are the stakes of this all you can eat gamble it took me 3 years to understand that games consumed in this format that can't immediately sink their teeth into me risk being cast aside there will always be another game to steal my attention if I let it when I reflect on some of the games that have brought me the deepest levels of satisfaction over the years Monster Hunter world and Rise stardew Valley The Witcher 3 these are games that I stuck with they're games I learned to love not necessarily the ones that offered immediate gratification in fact I very nearly passed up the entire Monster Hunter franchise those first few hours of world getting acquainted with the tricky controls and the locked combat animations I mean it almost had me thinking maybe this one isn't for me and that thought terrifies me my single most anticipated game right now is the Monster Hunter World sequel to be clear there is no shortage of incredible small small games games that don't ask for such a commitment from players to deliver a great experience as a recent example I played cocoon on Game Pass and I thought it was brilliant perfectly paced and so clever I really appreciate the value that these kinds of games bring to the table and you may prefer these tighter experiences smaller games are inherently less affected by what I'm describing here because they're not asking for as large of a commitment from players it's core to their definition the issue really sits with the big boys to complicate things further there is a second Hazard with gaming subscriptions earlier this year I decided to finally try Persona 5 Royal on Game Pass I had a decent window before tears of the Kingdom so it seemed like a good time to jump in on paper this is kind of a hard game to sell to someone like me who has no history with Atlas titles it's part high school life Sim part turn-based anime RPG just not something most casual gamers would pick up and get hooked on this is exactly the type of risky game to start on a subscription service but thank God did I get hooked Persona has this unmistakable vibe to it something unique I think it comes down to the atmosphere and the music the fuing music the Persona 5 OST showed up big in my Spotify rap this year pretty sure three out of my five top played songs were from it I was truly enjoying my time with that game but I just didn't do the math right before I blinked it was already May 12th and as much fun as I was having I really wanted to experience tears of the Kingdom with the rest of the world so I put it down fully intent on picking it back up again but yeah in case you forgot this was 2020 3 so there was very little time to pick anything back up again after Zelda I rolled right into Starfield it's hard to say exactly when I realized I was wasting my time with that game but it was not soon enough by the time I came to Forza Motorsport was right around the corner and I do appreciate a good racing game this one wasn't exactly what I hoped for but the simulation and the feel of the racing is excellent so after a dozen or so hours with that one it was finally time to come back I grown quite nostalgic of my teenage Companions and I was in the mood for some batting cage practice so I booted up my console and launched Persona 5 but nothing happened I tried again nothing on the third try a message popped up which kindly let me know that I do not own Persona 5 that could only mean one thing it was no longer available on Game Pass so even in this rare circumstance where I started a fat RPG put it down and intended to come back to it I couldn't I missed my window thinking back on my fumble with Persona 5 Royal one takeaway is clear this was almost totally my fault I mean part of the deal with Game Pass is that games are not on there forever for non-ir party games it seems like 12 months on the service is pretty typical I will say there is definitely room to improve the ux for expiring games starting with basic notifications like hey we see you've played this game just a heads up it's about to go from free to $60 my other gripe is that I have to go research a title on the internet to approximate how much time I may have to play the game before it disappears and in some cases I might get interested in a game only to find out it's already been in the catalog for 10 months and then I have to go through this whole internal crisis over whether I should pass on it or roll the dice and just be [ __ ] stressed the whole time not knowing if I'll be able to finish it I think it's unlikely that Phil and team do anything to address the latter complaint given that they probably need to maintain some level of opacity with how these contracts are structured but aside from those somewhat minor issues it really came down to my own time management my decisions that separated me from the Phantom thieves to be perfectly clear this video is not meant to criticize what is on offer here I'll say it again I think Game Pass is incredible the size of the catalog the reasonable price point and even the Cadence of new content being added to the service with the day one releases and consistent quality third party titles it's all excellent what I am questioning is whether it's the best choice for every gamer as you can probably tell I'm left with pretty mixed emotions in some ways I still feel confused about my behavior and relationship with this style of consumption part of me knows that without game pass the Persona franchise may have never had a chance to land with me it is a simple fact that my tastes have been expanded thanks to Game Pass and that is not insignificant the other part of me however wonders what it would have been like if I never signed up at all if all the games I played over the past 3 years had to be owned and yes I'm using the very loose 2023 definition of ownership ultimately I do think think there is some element of possession that serves to strengthen the union the commitment between me and my games and Game Pass or other subscription Services seem to override that mechanic which harms the potential for that deep satisfaction I crave if you're listening to this and it's not making any sense I get that you probably don't suffer from this admittedly strange aversion to free games but I do suspect there may be some others who feel the way I do for now I can't say I have any immediate plans to cancel my subscription but making this video has convinced me I need to rethink how I approach Game Pass instead of Vie it as the all you can eat buffet I want to imagine something closer to a potluck with friends at a buffet I feel very little remorse for loading up my plate with more food than I can finish but if I'm at a potluck and do the same that's a bit UNC it's wasteful and I should have been more thoughtful the gaming equivalent of that example was me downloading Farming Simulator like 3 days after I started Super Mario Wonder so one simple rule of thumb that I plan to test out in 2024 is to limit myself from starting a brand new game unless what I'm currently playing is actively not bringing me joy I'm no masochist I'm not going to dig my heels in if my time feels wasted on a game but if I'm having fun with it I want to limit those wandering eyes this is going to take discipline to adhere to I know that I can't even call it an elegant solution to my problem but maybe if I do this and I start to see the positive effects then maybe I can start to permanently rewire my behavior and if I'm lucky I can start to enjoy my games like I did back in 2004 simpler [Music] times

Channel: Mark Maxwell

Views: 20,969

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Id: fmRaC6_oRUE

Length: 21min 17sec (1277 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 28 2024