Writing frequently is an art form I’ll never master. The problem is I simply forget to do it, and if I write some reminder down somewhere I forget to look at the place where I’ve written it down. Hopefully this… I dunno, ‘challenge’ will at least make for some vaguely entertaining reading and get the creativity muscle working which will have the knock on effect of getting my drawing going and hopefully I’ll have a self perpetuating sense of achievement and self worth.
I’m not optimistic about it, to be honest.
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Another year, another blank slate of potential misery/ecstasy (delete as applicable). I don’t really believe in New Years Resolutions. In my (more) belligerent days I’d have sworn a lot and gone on about if you need to change you should just do it and not wait for a new year etc etc, but now I’m (ever so slightly) less cynical I can see why a fresh slate gives people an impetus to revitalise themselves and freshen their lives up. It’s still a fucking stupid notion. Regardless, as it is a brand spanking new year I decided that I’m going to try and crush some of my Eiger North Face sized video game pile of shame into powder and not buy any more video games this year, not unless, at the very least, I have a ‘one out one in’ system.
I’ve already broken this little pledge because I pre-ordered the Bayonetta double pack on Switch a month ago. Sigh.
NIL DESPERANDUM! There are some very basic, if somewhat vague, rules I put in place for this escapade. Episode. Exercise. Whatever.
1) If it’s part of the digital pile of shame it has to be installed already. No going back through the 400+ steam games and 400+ combined PS4/Xbox One games and installing shit. If I didn’t have it installed it doesn’t warrant playing in this ‘cycle’.
2) This is not true of physical games. Some games (eg Persona 5) I just never got round to installing or even unsealing (looking at you Resident Evil VII).
3) I made an honest assessment of what I was going to play while cleaning out various digital platforms, so I uninstalled everything that I looked at and simply thought “Nah”.
4) I am accepting of the fact some games WILL get abandoned. I doubt it’s actually possible to play all of Yakuza 0, Final Fantasy XII and Persona 5 (never mind throwing Witcher III which I really want to play more than all of those) so something is definitely going to fall by the wayside.
5) It doesn’t include games that have no end. For example PUBG, Fortnite and any game I play for mindless shooting or because I can’t be arsed with any kind of plot.
Seems straight forward enough. Here’s a link to the crude spreadsheet of the garbage I’m going to play. A couple of those I’ve played before on different formats which is why they’re separate from the rest. Some games are hundreds of hours. Some are single figures. We shall see if my attention span can hold with any of them.
Video Games Are Fucking Great 