Gaming Stockholm Syndrome

6:45 A.M.: Dressed for work, bright eyed and bushy tailed, I find myself sitting on my couch, xbox 360 controller in hand, tapping away at some early morning Lute Hero. My character on Fable 3 is already a level 5 lute hero, which means that he’s the best paid lute player in all of Albion. Needless to say, he gets a lot of peasant pussy.
But why am I playing Fable 3 at 6:45 instead of drinking coffee and driving to work? Why did I spend 20 minutes every morning for a month killing grunts with a rocket launcher in Firefight Matchmaking? Why in the hell did I spend countless mornings jumping around Pacific City trying to collect these damn green orbs that were scattered all over the place? The answer is: Gaming Stockholm Syndrome.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, here is some information on Stockholm Syndrome courtesy of Wikipedia : “In psychology, Stockholm Syndrome is a term used to describe a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors that appear irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, essentially mistaking a lack of abuse from their captors as an act of kindness”. Makes the gaming grind sound eerily familiar, doesn’t it?

I don’t really understand why we as gamers keep going back to the same games that abuse us day after day. I really experience no real joy when mindlessly bashing through countless shitty AI bad guys in order to “level up”. Although the reward of the level up stat is great in it of itself, why the fuck am I doing the most monotonous bullshit to get there? These are supposed to fun games. I don’t want to escape into some world that mimics real life. I go to work to do monotonous, boring shit, I don’t journey into Albion to do it all over again.

So to abusive game developers out there: make some minigames that are actually fun. I hate being game abused. I don’t want Fable 4 to turn into Farmville.