Anticipation

For most of my life, my gaming hobby was tied up in two distinct arenas of excitement. The first (and most obvious) is the fun and thrill of great games and seeing them come to life before me. Escaping into experiences that interact with and react to my control and decisions, testing skill, gaining mastery, and fully experiencing the brilliance of a developer’s vision finally brought to life, and then sharing that thrill with others – a shared language we all have around the games we love and the moments that affected us.

Alongside the joy that comes with seeing a completed project and finally playing it sits a second arena: the anticipation of what’s coming next, a potent experience in its own right. I remember playing the earliest Mario games and then seeing glimpses of what Super Mario World would be like on the SNES – riding a dinosaur, visiting new worlds, and acquiring that flying feather. After losing dozens of hours in the early Final Fantasy games, I recall the first screenshot in an early Game Informer that showed a glimpse of Final Fantasy VII, and its “realistic” graphics. After fighting through legendary campaigns as Master Chief, I longed to play through and finish the fight in Halo 3 with a four-person co-op team at my side.