Game Triage

I’m with Liore and Belghast. Hype cycles are whooshing right over my head. And I don’t know what to blog about. So I go silent for a couple days, which sometimes turns into weeks.

Here’s the main problem:

Too many games. Not enough time.

I suppose one personal habit of mine that has already gotten entrenched is a deep resistance to buying most games on launch day. Or indeed, during the hype cycle when most people are talking about it.

The habit started when I skipped a year or two when I was schooling overseas, or unemployed and conserving money, and ever since then, I’ve been busy playing catch-up.

I don’t regret a thing.

I’m part of the long tail, I get my games cheaper, I still get a very similar experience for most things that ain’t reliant on launch day crowds, and I wasn’t much of a must-do-the-same-thing-as-my-friends-at-the-same-time person to begin with.

It’s a rare game that I buy full price – I must really love it – and often I see it going for much cheaper later, and it rubs in the lesson that I paid a premium for experiencing it at a critical time.

Hell, I have ‘old’ games I want to play again, and I don’t know when I’ll get around to them.

I haven’t quite crossed 1.5 years in Stardew Valley yet, I don’t think. One week I was playing it, and then I wasn’t.

I kinda want to play Don’t Starve again. I bought the latest tropical island DLC thing sight unseen and -haven’t- got around to even seeing any of its content.

I listened to Peter Hollens sing Skyrim and suddenly I want to start another game from scratch, for reals this time, a full second playthrough, and maybe play a different combat style and oh, actually try the DLC? Did I ever buy it when it went on Steam sale? I can’t remember.

Who am I kidding?

Path of Exile lies fallow once more, because Minecraft shoved it aside last week.

I raid now, in GW2, two weeknights of five. Three left.

I took up a real world art class Sunday morning, cos it grew increasingly obvious to me that I needed some form of tangible creative expression. Fills a spiritual, meditative hole. But it does mean that half a weekend is gone where gaming is concerned.

Half of a Saturday is on standby for work or real-life pursuits (eg. family outings) or game community ’emergencies’ (I’m gonna want to play WvW resets if the game mode ever takes off again; the raid group may need to assemble.)

3 weeknights. 1 weekend. (Minus the hour per day finishing GW2 dailies, cos that’s non-negotiable.)

I sit around with a to-do / bucket list, and I have to admit that the most pressing priority for the use of said 3 + 1 isn’t a game, old or new.

I have many epub books and digital magazines left completely unread. I picked up a Netflix subscription when it went global this year (and thus, available in my country.)

There’s also around two decades of accumulated clutter I’ve been trying to divest myself of, and it mostly means taking the time to digitize the stuff I can’t bear to throw away without saving it somehow.

I got started on the project early this year, set an ideal completion date of July, promptly got sidetrekked for two months with GW2 raiding, and really ought to get back to it now that things have stabilized to a place of relative contentment in Tyria… before the Living Story picks up and completely derails the best laid plans.

Between that, Minecraft, the blog and GW2, I am spread completely thin. (And it’s not like the blog is getting that much attention these days either.)

I suspect I’m not the only one with similar issues.

Interesting times we live in now, where our attention and focus has become such a commodity.