As many others here, I have accumulated a bit of a “backlog” over the years, consisting of games that were cheap to pick up on sale, games that I have/had general interest in, or new game releases. Whenever a new game came out, I felt kind of urged to play the new game, drop everything else, and quite often end up not picking up the “abandoned” games again.
Sometime last year, when money was a bit tight, I just started playing games I already had instead of worrying about keeping up with new game releases, and it’s been really liberating. I finished Mass Effect 1-3 over a combined ~100h, I platinumed Sekiro, Bloodborne, and started Dark Souls and Elden Ring, I found my love for Frostpunk and have been blasting that for the past months. I’m just having a great time overall.
I think a good help in that regard was a comment I read on the rexxit equivalent of this community where they proposed to see games as countries and giving them a shot is like coming there to visit: visiting a country is cool, but you don’t have stay there indefinitely to have a good time; it’s always fine to leave the country and go visit another, and not seeing everything the country has to offer does not worsen your experience there.
I don’t stress about picking something back up again after having a good time with it and looking for something else to play. I don’t stress about new releases (too much - Diablo 4 is currently pretty difficult to stay away from for me lol) because the game won’t vanish magically if I check it out a week later, several months later, a year later. I just play whatever I feel like playing and whenever I feel like playing it. If I end up deleting something off the console - that’s fine. There’s always something else to play.
Not really sure what my point is, really, but felt inclined to get the ball rolling in this community. I like the idea of being a patient gamer a lot, and it’s helped me enjoy games a lot more than I used to, so I wanted to contribute too and be a more active part of the “movement”.
Thanks to everyone who’s part of the community and who’s been promoting good vibes!
I have zero stress about new releases, all the hype is lost on me.
I find that I keep returning to games because they are fun, engaging, or simply because they allow me to abstract the reality away. That is why I keep returning to Torchlight, Portal, Half-Life, Doom, Soma, Valley and so many others. They are old, the graphics are dated, but they feel like home.
I’ve bought Skyrim 10 years after the original release. I guess it will be a while until I buy Diablo 4 :-)
Do you watch any gaming-related media, like YouTube or Twitch? It’s quite an accomplishment to not get sucked into the hype of a new release - it used to be for me, anyway. Recent bad game releases have made me a little more sceptical.
Comfort games are the best. You just always know you’ll enjoy them - no matter what. And again, it doesn’t feel bad at all to drop them on a whim if you’ve had your fill.
I was glued to the screen for the whole “E3 but not-E3” week we just had. Watched all the events and some analysis videos of all the trailers we saw. Still have no desire to ever spend more than $15 on a video game.
I feel that!
I tend to follow indie studios or individual developers, so I ignore most of the hype.
I agree with you regarding comfort games. If I’d pay 60€+ for a AAA game, I’d be unconsciously forcing myself to like it even if it was crap.
Same, new releases seem much more focused on being slot machines instead of actual games fun to play.