Perspective Change

per·spec·tive

–noun

Perspective–The state of one’s ideas, the facts known to one, etc., in having a meaningful interrelationship

Perspectives and opinions are fickle attributes, they change just as much or more than seasons. An abundance of variable factors can affect them: age, knowledge, environments,. Even other people’s perspective can influence your own.

Do you remember playing an amazing game when you were much younger? The graphics were the best you’ve ever seen, the story was great, the character development was immaculate. Everything was just perfect to you at that point in time. Say that an unspecified amount of years passed, and you still remember the game as it was without that memory being tainted. The game is going to be the same as you remembered, but you going to engage it in a completely different way, because you are now different. Now time has passed, how you experience the game is going to be completely different than when the game was first experienced–this is where several factors will come into play:

AGE:

Now that you are older, you have matured physically and mentally. Experienced more in life; different things, than you would have when you were younger. Games are going to look and feel different than you were younger. There are things that you will catch, like: jokes, double- entendres , issues that you weren’t able to perceive before.

You are probably on a different walk of life than you were when you first experienced the game — you might now be a parent, and you now know how much you can love your own child. This could help you relate to a character in the game that is also a parent, and their soul purpose in the game is to get back the child who was taken away from them.

This can either enrich or deter your later experience to the game.

TECHNOLOGY:

It is now 2014, we can say that video games came a long way from what they were ten years ago. Technology is ever changing , as time goes on we are introduced to: new graphics engines, video game consoles, media discs, HDTV’s, and etc.

The game you once loved has now become obscure to you. Of course the graphics were the cutting edge back then, wooing you with polygons that were sharp enough to cut a finger off; now made obsolete and repulsive by today’s standard for graphics . There are multiple engines out there, not everyone are using the same thing like back in the old days. Even though the Unreal Engine is now trending within the video game industry, there can still be a variety of results depending on how studio is utilizing it, we didn’t have that back in the NES days. Technology has come such a far way that the graphics in a game can be rendered obsolete within a week or month, because it is inevitable that another game that uses a different engine has a different studio, releases and looks better than anything that has came before it. So imagine going back to a game more than 5 years back. This most definitely takes away from how the game now looks to you.

CCONTINUATIONS:

Publishers like to get everything out of their game these days, to milk as much money as they can from the intellectual property that was previously well received. In order to do that, the publisher will sometimes bring their consumers back to the game’s universe, by making a sequel or prequel in the form of: movies, graphic novels, novels, other games, or animations. Doing this adds details and events to the game’s lore, in some cases, it completely changes it. A good example of a game that went through all of this is Final Fantasy VII. You can’t go back to Final Fantasy VII like you did the first time you played it without overlapping it with the sequels and prequels. It’s going to be a completely different world from when the game was originally played. I don’t perceive Cloud (main character of Final Fantasy VII) the same way as I once did — his motivations have changed, his connections to other characters have changed, he has changed; all because I decided to play the prequel and watch the movie continuation for the game.

This could either add or deter from the experience.

In conclusion, it’s inevitable to experience some sort of perspective change. As humans, we are always evolving and learning. Your perspective on a game will change depending on what you’ve been exposed to and how long it has been since you have played the game.