I have a problem. I love to accumulate games on Steam, but I'm terrible at actually getting around to playing them. The fact that a site like Backloggery exists tells me that I'm not alone, but that's cold comfort.
The root of the issue is World of Warcraft. I played it for around 7 years, and it did some annoying things to my brain. By dangling imaginary carrots in front of me, day after day, it convinced me that I was always working towards some nebulous long term goal. The trouble was, it made me look at other games as a waste of time. Sure, I could play Bioshock for 10 hours, but what would I have to show for it at the end? Part of the process of quitting WoW was understanding these tricks it had played on me. Now it's time to start undoing the damage.
I've already indulged my need to procrastinate, by carefully organising my Steam library into categories. Staring at that monstrous, insurmountable list of games was utterly paralysing, so anything that I could do to chip away at it seemed like making a start. There are some games that I won't be playing as part of writing this blog, but in a way they are also the goal. I have open ended sand box games like Civ 5 and Banished, and pure arcade experiences like Geometry Wars and Space Giraffe, and I can't play them without feeling guilt about all the untouched, self-contained, story-based games in my library.
So here's the plan: I'm going to play a game for at least an hour a day. I'm going to do my best to see each game through to the end, but I'm not going to force myself to finish something that I hate. Every day, I'll write about what I've been playing. As the blog title suggests, I'll be mainly focusing on my Steam library. However, I also have a small number of games waiting to be played on PS3, Vita, and 3DS. I imagine I'll be leaving those until the end, with the exception of Demon's Souls which I'll be playing before Dark Souls.
Enough procrastination, enough putting things off. I'm two episodes into the first season of Telltale's The Walking Dead, and that's going to be the first game I finish. Its episodic structure made it too easy to put down, but I've loved the story so far and can't wait to see how it ends.
Backloggery sig
