Filling The Void

[Helikaon]

First off, this may be of some length. There won't be a TL;DR, this is as much a therapeutic exercise for me as it is a topic of discussion for you. If you don't wish to read what I have to say, Don't. But if you do, I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Imagine it:

You've been playing this awesome game for a few weeks or so, when you should have been doing something more important. Man, you love this game! It's telling a fantastic story, and you really care about the characters, the universe, and the history.

No matter how much you enjoy it, you know that, eventually, every story has to conclude. That's ok though, it's been a great journey, and you want to know how it all wraps up.


And then it's over.






So what do you do now? Maybe you catch up with that thing you were putting off before. Yeah, that's probably a good idea. When that's done you start up that other game you like.

But no... it's not the same. You know you love this other game, you've played it before and loved this one too... but you just can't get into it like you used to. Well maybe it's just because you've played it a couple of time already? So try something new?

Nope. Can't get into that either.

You realise that you're still stuck with that first universe. You could go through it again... but it wouldn't be the same, and you want to move on. So what do you do now?


According to the "You're never the only one" rule, I know that some of you will have felt the same as this. Sure it's a very minor problem, and we all know that we're lucky to be able to say that this is the kind of thing that plays on our minds. On the other hand, we can't help how we feel about certain things.

For me, this whole thing has been about a series of games in particular, but the title is irrelevant. Maybe you've felt something similar with a film, TV show, or book. I know that in the past I've had this same feeling when I've finished reading a great book.

Now, I don't mind if nobody replies to this, or even if they read it. But if you did make it this far, thank you again for bearing with my ramblings. If you want, feel free to share some of your experiences of this odd attachment to fiction, and maybe how you filled the void afterwards.

Helikaon

 

[Full]

I know that feel, man. You know you played a good game when you get that bitter-sweet feeling after finishing it.

It's also why I see video games more like serialized TV or comics than I see them as movies, because most games just seem inherently set up for the possibility of more. You have to spend actual time in these worlds that the potential for more stories within them become readily apparent.

 

[tippy2k2]

For whatever reason, I have never had this kind of an issue. There are epic books like The Dark Tower and The Wheel of Time and epic games like Mass Effect that really gut-punched me in the roller coaster that was just experience by myself but for whatever reason, I've always been able to jump right into the next epic right away (reading The Sword of Truth right now!).

It's not that I don't care (some serious...uh....allergies during Mass Effect 3) but I've never had trouble picking up the next shiny and going to town on it.

 

[Frezzato]

I know exactly what you mean. I'm no psychiatrist, but what has been researched about video games points towards the fact that your brain is rewarding you with dopamine--especially if it's a new experience. That's why the same game doesn't elicit the same feelings the second time around. I believe this is mainly why kids who play the latest Halo will be excited versus "long-timers" like myself that think the best Halo was the first one (campaign). I'm always asking around, both on boards and in real life, what people think of things if they experienced a sequel before the original. Another good example would be kids who saw Star Wars Episodes 1-3 before 4-6.

Personally, I feel let down if a game world is persistent, that is, if everything pretty much carries on without truly acknowledging what you did, i.e. save the world, etc. In my mind, everything has to have a beginning, middle, and an end, like all good stories must. Instead of doing a poor job of continuing a world after you've changed it, I much rather prefer that developers allow you to carry your winnings over to a new game, with the option to continue at a higher difficulty.

Ultimately, I find that sequels, even ones made by the same developer as the original, tend to not measure up. I think it's because internally, employees have either moved on to other positions or left the company. It's usually at that point that I move on to similar games made by competing developers because chances are they took an idea and either improved it or altered it entirely (as in Saints Row 3 versus GTA IV). And then that game in turn changes for the worst, leaving me to find other games, and the cycle continues.

 

[Tactical Pause]

Yes, I've experienced this, and quite recently too. For me it was the fairly well-known 'post Bioshock: Infinite melancholy' that put me out of commission in the gaming world for weeks. I'd never really gotten anything like it before, but I was simply unable to commit at all to any other games for about a month after completing BI.

I did finally cure myself by replaying the game, after which point the melancholy simply melted away over the course of 48 or so hours.

It was certainly a curious feeling while I had it though, almost as if nothing really mattered. (That probably came out wrong, but it's hard to describe unless you've felt it.)

 

[The_Scrivener]

Almost all of my favorite games did this to me. FF7, FF8, Earthbound, Red Dead, Bioshock Infinite, Persona 3 and 4. The list goes on and on. It's the price of emotional attachment. It is a microcosm of the profound joy of a complete life realized.

It's a good thing.

 

[Headsprouter]

When I finished Bioshock: Infinite...don't hate me for this...I wished it had multiplayer so I could enjoy the gameplay more without replaying the same old scenarios.

I even went through a grief period where I actually felt as if I'd lost something. I also may have felt disappointed that parts of the game had fallen a bit flat.

I like Bethesda games because you don't have to feel that about them, seeing as they have massive replay values and the situations, battles and encounters are often random.

I might play The Last of Us after the exams. I'll probably feel the same way as I did with Infinite given the good things I've been hearing about it.

 

[Zhukov]

Oh yeah, that feeling, I know what you mean.

Things that have made me feel like that:

- The Walking Dead (the Telltale game)
- Mass Effect (In particular, the end of the Citadel DLC.)
- Animorphs (Shut up.)
- Everworld (anyone else read those?)
- Bioshock Infinite
- Cloud Atlas (the book)
- WALL-E (Yes, seriously.)
- Xena: Warrior Princess (I said shut up.)
- Harry Potter (the books, not the movies)

It only ever happens with things that are definitively over and done with. So, for example, I don't get it with Half Life or Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire because those things are incomplete and ongoing (hopefully).

As for what you do afterwards... whatever you normally do? The feeling goes away in a couple of days. Go clean the bathroom or something. That always needs doing.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Yeah this happens to me a fair bit. Usually I just try out a variety of random games until I can once again find something that clicks. Though because of that habit I have a very large backlog of games that I've started and will probably never finish.

 

[DeltaEdge]

Yeah, I know this feeling quite well. Used to always feel it when I finished watching an anime that I really liked, especially if it was older. I remember feeling like a big part of my life was gone after finishing Ranma 1/2, which was strange, considering that I didn't adore it, but I had become accustomed to it.

I guess somewhere along the line, more recently, I feel like I was able to identify what the source of that feeling was, and learned how to cope with it properly instead of letting it consume me. For me, part of it was easily becoming much too attached to what I enjoyed, and becoming emotionally attached to the series in a way that went beyond just watching something for entertainment, and instead went into helping to fill a void of loneliness. Basically, to summize, things didn't really go that well for me socially in High School for a multitude of reasons, and even when I did make friends, I had become somewhat disillusioned by the media I consumed into expecting unrealistic fulfillment from casual relationships, which made me feel like shit, and I also felt like I needed a romantic partner in order to be happy.

Thankfully, somewhere in my first semester in college, by happening upon some choice videos by chance, I reckognized 2 things:
1. I don't need a romantic partner to be happy, and should be able to be happy on my own before even bothering trying to find a partner so they don't end up as my emotional crutch.

2. Things really aren't as sweet as I remember them or fantasize them to be.

The second one was really important because it helped to dull that intense feeling of nostalgia/desire I had for things that were out of my reach, and helped me to stop projecting those rose-tinted feelings onto pretty much any relationship that wasn't readily available to me. That helped me to keep myself from becoming to emotionally attached to things like anime I adored or the concept of a romantic relationship that had been spawned in my head pretty much due to all the unintentional self-brainwashing. After I managed to realize that none of these things I desired so much were as great a my rose-tinted glasses led me to believe they were, I was able to get over them and keep those feelings in tact. I still occasionally indulge the feelings when I feel it appropriate, but I don't let them have free reign over my well being like they used to, and it has allowed me to enjoy whatever sort of media I might watch, without becoming horribly depressed when it ends.

Also, knowing that in a few years I will have forgotten most of the contents of said media is quite a good feeling, as it enables me to fully re-enjoy series that I miss. A lot of people may want to experience something for the first time again, but trust me, after a few years, you'll probably get plenty of enjoyment out of re-watching/playing a game/series because you forget a lot of the details.

Sorry about the wall of text/dump, I just felt that as this was how I felt for a long time, it would be nice to share my experience with someone else, and hope it helps a little bit if you're anything like I was.