Is the Anticipation Killing Me... Or is it Improving the Experience?
I have returned yet again faithful followers to pose to you a question: Does anticipation actually make the experience of something better, or does anicipation create so much hype about something that by the time whatever thing was anticipated is procured, it becomes dull because it was not able to live up to the hype of the anticipation? *phew*
Let me put it in simpler terms. Does anticipation make something better the longer that we wait for it, or does the anticipation make something seem so awesome that nothing can compare to it so that by the time we get it, that something seems pretty crappy compared to our expectations of it.
For example, let's take a look at one of the greatest comics ever created: Calvin and Hobbes. Keep in mind that there a few missing daily panels, but they were cut out to bring succinctness to this post. What's displayed in the comic genious below is the exact latter situation described above. Calvin sees what looks to be like an awesome beanie hat (which he later fantasizes about flying through the air with) but when it finally arrives, it's not all cracked up to what it was portrayed as. Take a look:
Poor Calvin. His imagination ran away with him and made his expectations way too high.
The other side of this coin is when anticipation actually makes the experience that much better. An anecdote from my life will serve as an example this time. I have always been a big Nintendo fanboy, so when it was announced that there would be an entirely new entry in the Super Smash Brothers series on the Nintendo Wii, I immediately went out and bought a Wii (not the smartest reason why, but it still was an awesome game). In the coming months between the announcement of the game and the release of the game, I frequented, no "haunted" is a better word, a website that contained daily updates about the game: http://www.smashbros.com/en_us/.
Each day a new feature of the game would be revealed. Be it new characters, stages, or even new items, I checked the site religiously and gobbled up any and all information that I could get my hands on. The game was originally slated to come out December 2007, but a series of delays set it back to March 2008. By that time I was just dripping in the facts about the game. I knew how to unlock each character and level, and was drooling at the thought of the new single player campaign.
March 8th. I had preorderd Super Smash Brothers Brawl at least 10 months in advance and March 8th found me driving to the GameStop I had preordered the game at. My buddy Matt came with me and we slowly inched our way into the GameStop as midnight came closer and closer. By the time I got to the front and bought the game, I was practically glowing with excitement.
Matt and I raced back to my house (sometimes breaking some speed laws) and popped Smash Bros. Brawl in my Wii. Immediately that sense of anticipation washed over me and I began to finally realize that this game was everything and more that I had hoped for. I managed to beat the single player campaign within the first 48 hours of owning the game, and had unlocked every character in the next 36 hours. The gameplay was smooth, the levels were gorgeous, and the character models were incredible. It was everything that I had waited for.
Anticipation can often make the thing waited for that much better, but as shown in the Calvin and Hobbes comics, it can often raise expectations too high. So is anticipation a good thing? Maybe, maybe not. All I can say distinctly is that it exists because of our human nature. So learn to embrace it well.
Calvin and Hobbes was written by Bill Watterson.
Let me put it in simpler terms. Does anticipation make something better the longer that we wait for it, or does the anticipation make something seem so awesome that nothing can compare to it so that by the time we get it, that something seems pretty crappy compared to our expectations of it.
For example, let's take a look at one of the greatest comics ever created: Calvin and Hobbes. Keep in mind that there a few missing daily panels, but they were cut out to bring succinctness to this post. What's displayed in the comic genious below is the exact latter situation described above. Calvin sees what looks to be like an awesome beanie hat (which he later fantasizes about flying through the air with) but when it finally arrives, it's not all cracked up to what it was portrayed as. Take a look:
The other side of this coin is when anticipation actually makes the experience that much better. An anecdote from my life will serve as an example this time. I have always been a big Nintendo fanboy, so when it was announced that there would be an entirely new entry in the Super Smash Brothers series on the Nintendo Wii, I immediately went out and bought a Wii (not the smartest reason why, but it still was an awesome game). In the coming months between the announcement of the game and the release of the game, I frequented, no "haunted" is a better word, a website that contained daily updates about the game: http://www.smashbros.com/en_us/.
Each day a new feature of the game would be revealed. Be it new characters, stages, or even new items, I checked the site religiously and gobbled up any and all information that I could get my hands on. The game was originally slated to come out December 2007, but a series of delays set it back to March 2008. By that time I was just dripping in the facts about the game. I knew how to unlock each character and level, and was drooling at the thought of the new single player campaign.
March 8th. I had preorderd Super Smash Brothers Brawl at least 10 months in advance and March 8th found me driving to the GameStop I had preordered the game at. My buddy Matt came with me and we slowly inched our way into the GameStop as midnight came closer and closer. By the time I got to the front and bought the game, I was practically glowing with excitement.
Matt and I raced back to my house (sometimes breaking some speed laws) and popped Smash Bros. Brawl in my Wii. Immediately that sense of anticipation washed over me and I began to finally realize that this game was everything and more that I had hoped for. I managed to beat the single player campaign within the first 48 hours of owning the game, and had unlocked every character in the next 36 hours. The gameplay was smooth, the levels were gorgeous, and the character models were incredible. It was everything that I had waited for.
Anticipation can often make the thing waited for that much better, but as shown in the Calvin and Hobbes comics, it can often raise expectations too high. So is anticipation a good thing? Maybe, maybe not. All I can say distinctly is that it exists because of our human nature. So learn to embrace it well.
Calvin and Hobbes was written by Bill Watterson.
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