Today was a heady day, you guys. Geocities is dead at age 15 - thousands of Japanese Seizure Robots and smiley-face mouse trails suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. But upon this funeral, another omen lurks in the distance - a storm cloud that affects every single one of us, should its prophet (well, underpaid blogger) prove his work to be a portent.

The numbers for the Dave-&-Busters-worthy-all-ages-no-learning-curve entertainment games (a certain D’BWAANLCE, if you will) tell a pretty clear story to the games industry right now - an industry which, like all others, is racing to replace vets with pictures frames on their desks for kids who can sleep for 30-minute intervals under their desk. And the games have to follow suit -hot game has always begat hot clone, but we’re hitting a full on paradigm shift of gameplay style - shooters, RPGs, racing games, platformers - the royal family thus far - are getting their carbs cut to compete with the light and fluffy appeal of rhythm games, party games, and - somehow - number-one-seller-of-the-year-fitness-simulator (Any human being on the planet one year ago: HAHAHA RU SHITTIN ME??!ROFL!!1) Wii Fit.

So when Mr. Jager supposes that this transition will mean the end of an era of 17-year-olds kneeling on their basement floor crying into each other’s sexless arms as a 1 followed by two zeros and a “%” glows on their screen in some corner of a player data box (and maybe a little shiny medal or something else insulting) - should we believe him? More importantly, if we do, should we mourn it?

I for one have probably never completed 100% of a game since the days of SNES - and even then, I’m not sure it did anything besides make me wonder what the fuck kind of reward chemicals my brain was deciding this deserved, since it was about as entertaining as collating mailings for my state senator (you found easter egg “Larry Christmas” who lives down the block from your first girlfriend! A New Record!”). Was it simply because it was there, and we were already enjoying ourselves, that we accepted it? Was it a measurement of our big ol’ e-peen that we would follow an ASCII-art-laden GameFAQ written by someone named Objectivist_DraGOON69 and dodging 200 lightning bolts to raise 9 generations of chocobos that would let you race to win a gauntlet that would let you use four different materia per turn against an opponent that would still take 30 minutes to defeat? Is “Achievement Unlocked” the apex of gaming? (Actually, that was kind of hilarious, but I bet SOMEONE will try to get them all, and I weep for them).

Replay value comes in many forms, and currently hardcore games rely on a series of aggressively meticulous, time-consuming, boredom-verging tasks that are the only challenge left for people in the age of the FAQ. While it’s great for amateur cryptologists and obsessive-compulsive folk, I just want to fucking get my victory music. (Alternately, if someone were to make a game where the secret worlds and hidden items were not subject to the difficulty inflation of FAQs, (AKA, Super Mario World?) and just told people to knock it the fuck off with the spoily-spoiling of the hunt for secrets, we might not be in this dilemma). But for now, light gaming is on the rise. While the sun sets on the skull-gathering empire, there is plenty of time for the world of meticulous gaming to define itself in all sorts of niche ways for its new niche audience. In the meantime, I’m gonna enjoy the gradual return of my frayed sanity.