Every gamer who has been playing one or more games for at least a year or two has had a gaming slump. You know, a time period where you’re finally burned out with the game you love and it seems that conveniently at that time no other good games are out. Boredom takes over your life in front of the monitor. You boot up your game only to find yourself mindlessly doing nothing or closing the program within five minutes. In other words, you’ve hit an all time low in your gaming career. Or did you?

I think gaming slumps are the best thing that could happen to a gamer. What’s the first thing you do after entering the slump? You try to look for a new game to compensate for the degree of fun you had with the original game. The results are that 90% of the games you end up trying will fail to capture your interest for more than a day or two. This is because you’re still longing for that original game you played. There’s that nostalgia that lingers about “them good old days.” So as you go through the list of currently popular games (mostly games you’ve heard about via word of mouth or via recommendations) you label them one by one as “sucks.”

Then something odd happens. You stumble across a random site one day and it is about a game you’ve never heard of before. None of your friends have heard of it either. One or two have, but they don’t know what it’s about. The propaganda about the game is convincing enough that you should give it a spin. Why not, you have nothing to lose, right?

Then something magnificent happens. You install the game. You start playing it. Then it hits you. That is by far one of the most amazing games you’ve ever played. How can people not know about this game, it’s so damn awesome! Upon finishing it you are left feining for more. You Google the game title, search for any additional info on it: Is there a sequel? What about a prequel? Is there another one in the works? And as you dig through that info you stumble upon an interesting fact: that game is a cult classic with a small following. It was nominated for numerous awards, and even won a few. But aside from the small group of people who played it and fell in love with it, its title and achievements remain unknown to the rest of the gaming world.

That’s the beauty of gaming slumps. We feel that all hope is lost, that all games out there suck, that we’re overcome by boredom and force ourselves in front of the screen hoping that our dwindling desire to play that original game will come back. However, accidentally and coincidentally the gaming slump leads us to discover the hidden gems of the gaming industry. We discover games we never knew existed, games that never achieved much popularity but have made their mark on the community and captured the hearts of so many gamers. It is games like Dreamfall, Grim Fandango, Perfect Dark, Road Rash, Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, and Armada 2 that we discover and realize that although they are not new, they slipped under the radar of the gaming community almost undiscovered, but gave players some of the best adventures of their lives. We all find a different gem in our slumps. It may not even be a game that is all that great, but as long as it gives us a lasting impression and influences who we are and what we play, it will help us get out of our slump and realize how much more potential and charisma games are capable of.