PixlBit

During my free time over the last 5 days I've watched a guy play Resident Evil: Revelations 2 on Twitch. I read an article about the design of Doom. I looked at spell lists and videos for a Skyrim build I'm planning on playing. I watched the Angry Video Game Nerd play some Super Ghouls and Ghosts. I watched a discussion on a piece of 3D concept art for the upcoming Unreal Tournament game. I looked up armor and skill information for Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. I chatted about Metal Gear Solid V in a forum. Watched an Arkham Knight gameplay demo. Contemplated whether I should buy Darkest Dungeon, RE REv 2, or Wolfenstein: New Order. Wrote a list of older games I want to complete this year. Amidst all of this game related activity, the one thing I didn't do was play games for more than 1 hour.  This is a problem. A first world problem.

I don't have a backlog as most people define the term, but I do have an itinerary of older games I want to get into or replay, and some upcoming ones I have my eye on. The itinerary and the new games combined do not comprise a large number of games, relatively speaking. But the thing is, the games that are on there are long as hell. I think the shortest one is Super Mario World.  I have Monster Hunter Freedom Unite on there.  Persona 4. Saint's Row 3. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. System Shock. Three Elder Scrolls games (which I just dabble in every now and then, but still).  Super Metroid.  A couple of Rogue-likes, which could either be very short or very long. These are games I definitely want to make headway on, to at least the 75% duration mark.

Basically, I'm bad at managing time and addicted to information. I always feel like I'm running out of the former (and we all are) and there is far too much of the latter. I also have a nagging fear that something is going to happen in the future and I won't be able to get around to something, so I tend to be all over the place, never sticking with one game long enough to make the progress I want to make. My perception of time is all messed up.

But also, sometimes it's just more fun to watch someone else play a game. The games always look better when someone else plays them, because you don't have to focus on a task and can enjoy the bigger picture. Raid mode in Revelations, tumbling through Super Mario World levels, or adventuring in Skyrim always looks better when someone else is doing it. It's like "how come the action and/or visuals don't seem to look this good when I play?" I'm playing the same damn games at the same settings, but they look better from a remove, because I'm not focused on that one enemy or a point on the screen. I'm seeing the big picture when I watch someone else play, all the work that went into animation, color, lighting, level design; I'm seeing the play style of the person and how they solve problems, and it looks cool when it comes together with the animation and other audio-visual stimuli. Maybe the solution is to record footage as I play and watch it later to enjoy the aesthetics and action. That's a lot of hard drive space though.

I realize I'm prioritizing the wrong things. If I really want to make headway on the games I want to make headway on, I need to buckle down and choose to do so over passively consuming news, information, and other people's fun. More hours aren't going to be magically added to the days and weeks for me.  And this year has a number of promising, new games I have a desire to invest in.