If you can't beat them, get rid of them.

12 Jul 06

It's weird. I have more information about games today. I have access to more reviews. I can avoid surprise stinkers. I even have a pretty good feel for finding hidden gems. The problem these days is that I don't have as much time to game. I have a toddler. We are expecting another baby in the late fall. I wouldn't trade parenting for anything. I just recognize that my gaming time is paralleling what happened to my golfing time. I don't golf any more. I don't think I'll get to that point in gaming, but it will be a while before gaming time goes back up.

That realization made me look at my backlog. It's huge. Admittedly clearance sales had bulged it somewhat. GoGamer madness had played a hand. Mostly it was lack of time. Some of it was lack of energy. I love strategy games, but they're not fun if you're too frazzled to focus. I looked at the changing console generations. I looked at my dwindling storage space. I looked at the games that had survived previous generational shifts. I knew I had too many games.

I took the hard pill and decided to get rid of some. I put a bunch of games out there on some of the gaming forums I visit. I'm selling a bunch. It goes completely against my hoarding instinct. I already have twinges of regret. It's the right thing though. I have a lot of M rated games that just aren't suitable to be played in front of kids. I have others that will just be outdated by the time my kids will be ready for them. Then there are some that deserve better than just sitting on a shelf collecting dust.

I think part of what makes it hard is that I'm finally giving up on some of those games. I'm admitting I'll never finish them. I suppose that feels a bit like failure. However, I like to think I've experienced more great games rather than maximized the play time of each game. I mean games like Rome: Total War and Civilization IV (neither is on the sales block) could last me years. That doesn't mean I should miss out on games like Paraworld, Sword of the Stars or Okami.

Hmm. This is rambling a bit. I must be out of practice. Don't worry. I'll try to get back in the swing of things.

Jason