cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/29919
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 actually try to pick games that are a 10 to 40 hour experience. There are very few games that I’ve ever put more time into than that. I know my attention span and I try to stick to it so I don’t get that guilty feeling.
I’m going to start doing this I think. I have enough 50+ hour long games already that I’ll never get to finishing. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t pick up AC Valhalla actually (though I did play a bit of it and wasn’t impressed, which was part of my reasoning too)
I should try that - I have the same problem.
I’ve been coming to a similar place recently as well. I really like that analogy to countries, helps to reframe and remove the guilt I feel sometimes for bouncing off titles. Being a bit of a completionist, I’m always concerned that I’ll leave a game half experienced and feel like I’ve got a dangling thread in my mind.
Similarly, I’ve been trying to read more, whether that means finishing a book or not. I’m a very slow reader, so I’m always agonizing over picking up a book because I’m not sure I can commit the months to finish it.
I hear that. I also try to at least finish the main story before moving on. Sometimes, though, I just cannot pull through and that’s ok too. Must have been a reason why I didn’t.
Books aren’t all too different from video games in that regard, I feel like. If you’re interested enough, you’ll stick to it. If you drop it half-way through, there must have been a reason too.
