Something that usually only pensioners and absent minded gardeners do is now creeping into my life in the most astonishing places – pottering.  Or in other words, ‘faffing around’.  Games like Sims 2 are meant for this type of thing as you spend time deciding which of the twenty almost identical stripy tops to pick for your Sim or where to place that luxury toilet, as are games like Little Big Planet or anything which requires a touch of creativity.  It is when this meandering permeates into other games that it becomes  a little more interesting and the harbinger of this I believe is the Sandbox mode.  Even when the game is done, so often now, gamers have a sandbox mode where we can sprawl out and play with ourselves to our heart’s content. Feel free to indulge in a Sid James chuckle, but it’s true.

As creators of game worlds conjure more and more depth, it is almost tragic to ‘finish’ a game and have to leave it all behind with so much still unexplored or favourite haunts abandoned.  Now however, we have been given the keys to the kingdom by these generous geniuses and their lavish and lovingly created worlds are laid out for our eternal enjoyment.  People have completed GTA4 and still potter around the city, visiting comedy clubs, watching bad TV and occasionally hunting scabby pigeons.  In Rockstar’s less hyped but wonderful Bully, you are granted the endless summer to wedgie, egg, and torment your classmates while acquiring tattoos, racing, sampling carnival rides and setting off the fire alarm while time stretches infinitely on, ever patient while you gambol and play.

Perhaps one of the greatest of these games is Bethesda’s stunning Oblivion.  As fellow Ready-Upper Laura recently wrote, it’s beautifully rich land is a wonderful place to be and more and more, I find myself shirking my duties to the folk of Cyrodiil and simply pottering.  I spend hours in my homes in Skingrad, Bruma, and Cheydinhall, arranging magical armour and weapons into display cases, turning and flipping them awkwardly until they sit just so, arranging the Helm of the Deep Delver on top of a cabinet, sorting my drawers into weapons, potions, and miscellaneous accrued crap and visiting Fort Nikel to cause a scrap between the marauders and bandits.  Like Bully and others, the game is ideal for just casually amusing yourself.  When recently asked by my incredulous partner why I hadn’t yet completed the main quest, my embarrassed answer was that I had been busy pottering.  I spend hours doing nothing but wandering around, making potions, visiting the occasional favourite cave, emptying boxes in the Imperial Market district and selling the bits for one or two gold like the hard, impoverished early days of my game just for nostalgia’s sake…faff, faff, faff, but somehow, it is strangely calming. 

Perhaps I have misjudged these retired, be-cardiganed oddities with their geranium offcuts and their ornament tweaking…after all, whether they are doing it through a compulsion or a desire, they seem to enjoy it and to be honest, it is rather soothing.  Perhaps, like me, they start their weekend with the best of intentions to do this and that…like I start my game with the intention of closing an Oblivion gate or visiting that shrine, or making an effort to press on with Grand Theft Auto 4’s missions, but somehow things just drift as I ‘just go and do this’ and that’s it…I’m doomed to an afternoon of blissful nothingness, sinking into that world like I would a squishy sofa.

I suppose it is no bad thing and a testament to the worlds that developers create for us that we want to idle time away in their embrace – with so much time effort and creative spark going into games these days it seems only right or even respectful to slow down sometimes and just savour what is there, to exist in the worlds they create without a headlong rush to finish the story and toss it aside.  Sometimes it is good to dawdle and after a day’s pottering, as my Wood Elf archer stands on a bluff and looks out over the Ayleid wonder of the Imperial city or Jimmy Hopkins is dragged back to the dorm by the fifth stink bombed prefect that day, I thank the creative minds that allowed it to be, that made pottering and game dawdling acceptable.