I made a deliberate choice to slow my pace for 2017. It was my hope that by being less single-minded about playing video games, I'd have more time to focus on my other hobbies. And to some degree, it worked. I read a few books this year. I did some Exalted homebrew stuff that was fairly well received. I wrote about 40% of a tabletop rpg. But to be totally honest, most of my extra time was spent goofing off and watching youtube videos.
Nonetheless, I accomplished three significant blog goals this year. I finished all the games on my original list. I finally polished off the last of that Star Wars bundle. And I got down to 24 games remaining before the end of the year (though this achievement was almost immediately undone by a couple of gifts and rash purchases on my part).
My goal for 2018 is to get down to 0 remaining games. My secondary goal is to do so by June 21st. That will be the four year anniversary of the blog, and a nice place to wrap things up.
Which raises the question - why do I want to stop doing the blog? Truthfully, I don't want to stop, I just want to finish . . . if that makes any sense. I started this thing with a clear goal in mind and for much of its history, that goal has gotten farther and farther away. The idea that I could actually reach it has filled me with a kind of desperate focus - it resembles hope, but it's probably a little too furious for that.
I've started fantasizing about what life will be like when I no longer have a Steam backlog. I could go back to playing games like a normal human being. If I enjoyed a game, I could play it for as long as I wanted, even if that was hundreds of hours. And if I didn't enjoy a game, or if I enjoyed it, but only took 8 hours to get through the whole thing, I could stop.
And yet, I will miss doing this. I like collecting my thoughts about the games I play. Some moreso than others, admittedly. But overall, this blog has been a source of pride and satisfaction for me. So I don't want to think of my June 21st deadline as me committing to a retirement. Rather, I've been thinking of it as an opportunity to try something new.
The most obvious direction would be to only buy games I intended to play, and then play them right after I bought them (I know - a shocking suggestion in this day and age). It would mean the blog would stay alive in diminished form - a new game every month or two, more or less forever.
Alternately, I've been toying with the idea of keeping my challenge list open indefinitely. As much as I'm loathe to admit it, I was actually amused by being forced to play Ride to Hell: Retribution or Ship Simulator Extremes. I don't necessarily want you all to take this as an invitation to drown me in 1-star games, but know that, taken sparingly, I may grumble about having to play them, but it's a good- natured grumbling.
The final idea I've had is the most radical, and I'm hesitant to bring it up because it's a huge commitment, but it's also possible that I may change gears after the blog is finished and start tackling my tabletop rpg collection. I've been collecting rpg books for 20 years, and I have about 300 volumes. I've already read about 90% of them, but it might be kind of fun to go through my whole collection and systematically review each and every book. That might be too great a change, though.
It's still too early to lay any concrete plans, though I will make this promise - any game I purchase or receive before June 21st, 2018, I will play and blog about, even if it takes me another 5 years. I'm hoping it won't come to that, of course, but that's what I signed on for, and I intend to see it through.
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