I have a bit of a tradition where I make New Years resolutions around gaming every year. It's very stupid and I rarely keep them but why stop now?
This year I am going to keep them pretty simple.
1) Focus less on video games.
Games are probably always going to be my major hobby and consume a fair amount of my time and energy, but I'd like to continue scaling that back in 2024. I just want to focus more on enjoying the time I have with games and less on keeping up with the discourse or feeling I "have" to play things. This is certainly something that happened towards the end of 2023, where I was able to put more energy towards more productive things and I want to keep that momentum.
2) Stop caring about achievements/trophies at all.
I have never been a true achievement hunter but I like to maintain certain streaks of getting an achievement every day or hunting down specific cheevos even if I'm no longer enjoying a game. That's stupid and I want to stop. I do still like achievement and trophies because of how they create a record of when you played a game, and there's nothing wrong with chasing a platinum trophy if it's a rewarding experience (I had a good time finishing off the plat for The Pathless and using a plat to direct what I was doing made sense there) but trophies or achievements for their own sake? Dumb.
3) Play only games I am genuinely enjoying and excited to play
The time that I do spend on games should be spent on games that I'm actually enjoying and want to play. Too often last year I found myself playing stuff just to play it. I'm not saying that every game has to be 10/10, nor that games won't have boring or annoying spots, but I played too many games just to play them last year. I should have bailed on games like Planet of Lana and Trinity Trigger way before the end but I didn't. There is one exception to this:
4) Keep playing games on the treadmill
This goes along with resolution 1. Focusing on my physical health is important and to the extent that games can help motivate that, it's a good use of time and games.
5) Only buy games that I want to play immediately or if the deal is truly exceptional
I rarely regret buying games at 95% off, or if it's something I'm going to dive into right away, but I have come to regret a lot of those 50-75% off purchases. FOMO is real and I like having a big library, but I have bought so many games I never played over the years that it's ridiculous, and some of them I'm almost certainly never going to get around to (looking at you, Vita and 3DS libraries, even though they're still accessible.) Over the last couple months I've been better at focusing on buying stuff that I'm going to play immediately and I want to keep that up. Unless it's like a 99 cent copy of Mirror's Edge Catalyst, because how can you go wrong?
6) Write more interesting blogs
Another perennial for me but man did I write some very tame stuff last year. There's nothing wrong with sharing impressions or whining but I am capable of better. At this point on this site blogs are primarily written for myself and a few people who stop by to read, so there's no reason not to experiment and push myself.
Feel free to post your own resolutions below if you feel like it!
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