Final essay

Boredom!

Boredom is an emotion experienced when a person is left with nothing to do or when they are not interested in their surroundings. We have discovered that the first time the word boredom was used was by Charles Dickens in the novel Bleak House in 1852. But boredom has been around since the beginning of man just like all the other emotions e.g. happiness and sadness.  Boredom is also a motivator! It motivates humans to keep doing something or to discover and create new things. It is an emotion that has driven us to create games and it’s also the main reason as to why we play games. So this is why I want to look deeper into boredom.

I have previously stated that:

“Boredom is something we all experience most likely every living day of our lives, it’s what makes us twiddle our thumbs, stare into space and think about some of the most pointless and sometimes deepest thoughts. For example, how did the earth begin or why are we here? Or even I wonder if I could sneak into the bank and just pinch a few dollars. Some people see boredom as a common daily fear, people don’t want to be bored, and I believe there is even a name for someone that has a fear of being bored (thaasophobia!). It’s not just humans that get bored either; it’s just about every other animal as far as I know. Every time your cat or dog is scratching at something or chews away a piece of your nans old flowery sofa, it’s because they are bored. They have a need to be occupied or have something to do. Whether that’s chewing on a toy or playing fetch. “Playing” now there’s a word and I’m more than certain that it’s got a lot to do with boredom. But before we put too much on our plates let’s look at the one. Boredom!”

I said that most people see boredom as a fear and that no one wants to be bored but I see boredom as a motivation and not so much as a fear. Without boredom we wouldn’t make new things and in this case games as explained in the next part of my previous post.

“Boredom has also helped to create just about every game there is, ranging from your kiss chases in primary school to the Olympics. One day someone was bored and said I wonder how fast someone can run? Or I wonder how high someone can jump? So they made the Olympic GAMES!”

A little bit of history for you, the very first game ever recorded was a game called Senet which was made in Egypt and dated back to around 3100BC. Now, imagine how boring it must have been back then without modern things such as Twitter, Instagram or even an XBOX. Nowadays it’s almost impossible to stay bored as we have access to many different entertainment systems and games to keep us on the go. We have so many games we could just download for free and play instantly. I think this has resulted in a lot more lazy and unproductive people. This theory of mine has not been proven but is very logical. Nowadays there is media all around us such as games and TV so it is easier to procrastinate about doing work or to invent new things. Back in 3100BC all there really was to do was play senet and other games like hide and seek but obviously I can’t say for sure this is all there was. As there wasn’t much to do back then the only other option was to fulfil your boredom by doing work, building a community or a school, helping out with food supplies and experiment with objects and elements to get to the age we are at now. It actually blows my mind how far we humans have come in life. I’m sitting here looking out my window and looking at the building that has been made and the small tiny details that have been put in place for the smallest purposes, It just makes me think that’s a lot of effort for just a building.

So we have found out that because of boredom we created games. But then what? Now that we have games surely we aren’t bored anymore? Well, apparently not, I still find myself bored and left without things to do. So what do we do now? I guess we can just keep creating more and more games. Which is pretty much what we are doing. But game developers have also found that instead of making more games, which costs more money, time and effort to come up with new ideas, the game developers just make DLC! This way they could just release more game modes or weapons and challenges to stop the player from getting bored. This will save the developers money and the customer, as it won’t cost them as much too just download a new expansion pack.

The fact that gamers get bored with current games challenges the developers to create new and more existing games. A great example is the “Nazi zombies” from world at war. It turns out that when they finished the game “Call of Duty World at War” there was still some space left on the disk for more content. They were just going to release that game as it is but then one man in his spare time created this new zombie survival mode and showed it to his director and it was approved to be implemented into the game. This mode started off with your character not even having a name or an objective to achieve other than to survive. Later on, after this game was released, the game mode became very popular and was even the main reason for why some people bought the game. The developers saw the demand for more content and started adding a hidden story and all sorts of new guns, Easter eggs and enemies. They also added more objects for the player to stop them from getting bored of the game.

So just from that example you can see that just because of boredom something great was created and turned into a big money selling and eye grabbing idea! Boredom has helped the games industry evolve in so many ways and strive for success! It is the backbone of the games industry.