Not Getting New Games

I’m not bragging, but I have acquired very few new games lately.

Part of it is bundles — I have multiple itch bundles full of interesting full-fledged games, so any time I think ‘I should get a new game’ I go check those bundles and leaf through what I have. That’s made me find some real gems like Four Horsemen, and try out games like A Short Hike that I would otherwise think of as ‘things I have to go out of my way to check.’ These big itch bundles are good for when you want a big mix of possible stuff to play around with too, as they often contain microgames and TTRPG stuff alongside things like full-plotted tactical RPGs.

I haven’t been shopping on websites. I see some bargains and I consider it, and then I don’t, because I have unplayed board games as it is. Some I’ve been waiting to play for years at this point, and sure, they’re pandemic years, but some of those games were purchased before the pandemic, and that makes it a bit more rough.

My birthday passed and I sometimes use that as a reason to buy myself stuff off my wishlists that I don’t think anyone in my family will. Then I go to do that and feel sad about it and don’t.

This year I divested of kickstarter. The purpose was to make sure that I wasn’t contributing to the NFT space, which, with the crash last month, may mean that I’ve successfully ridden out kickstarter’s pivot to blockchain as the service they were planning on using may actually be dead now. I tried to use other crowdfunding sites – and I have! – but it’s been two campaigns all year. I tried to back another, but it didn’t reach its goal, and has returned on kickstarter, which means I’m not backing it.

Sometimes I talk about how it’s important to remember your purchases don’t own you. You’re not obligated to experience your purchases, especially when they’re sold to you in a way to manipulate you into getting them, or that you purchased them when you were a different person. The Game Pile includes some games that literally can’t work any more because they were made to work on servers that shut down sometime in the past thirteen years.

Anyway, I think this is probably just a mood. I’ve been playing MMORPGs with friends, I’ve been doing more game development and just trying to wait on retail releases, not buying things out of a fear of missing out. This isn’t a good thing, it’s not a better thing – there’s no shame in buying new games even if I don’t get much out of them.

I’m thinking a lot about this because right now, all the Kingdom Hearts games are for sale on the Epic store, and if that’s what breaks my streak in the name of a hate-play, I worry about what my brain sees as acceptable.