Steam Calendar Keeping Things Current

There are too many important things happening in the world these days, you wonder how a gamer could keep up with all the new titles coming out that are relevant to that person. I mean, I certainly struggle with that these days since gaming, as much as it is a beloved hobby, is not necessarily existential in nature when it comes to overall importance... perhaps, so sometimes it gets pushed to the back burner. Well, I know that this feature has been out for a while I believe, but I have been noticing that these days, I am getting more and more reliant on using the "Personal Calendar" section of Steam to keep me afloat in a sea of never-ending game releases, at least on the PC gaming front.

I tried maxing the game count to 500 and that spiked my anxiety level so 100 is more than enough.

Talking to Myself #1

Gaming Collection: Of Value and Access

If you ever wondered when a gaming collection would be considered "expansive" or perhaps even "complete", the answer to that is probably "never". I suppose I can use my own Game Library as a case in point. I have a lot of games. Perhaps too many games? Perhaps not enough because I have seen others with a lot more than me, either exclusively on Steam or across platforms. Sometimes I look around the room and thought that I had a nice little Game Room with plenty of physical gaming punch, but it would take mere seconds looking on YouTube to find others who have an ungodly collection that make mine look like a baby's playpen compared to a sprawling university compound. Video gaming is still an active industry and there are plenty of games, indies or otherwise, coming out left and right and if you are that deep into the hobby as I am, sometimes it feels like there's hardly any room to breathe. So, it takes some level of self-control to manage my library growth at a steady rate.

Culdcept The First that just came out was a rare day 1 purchase for me.

The Game Room, Living Room, and Garage

My guy, Selxes in Manitoba - in case you don't know by now, made a strange request in early April: He asked me if I could set up a couple of my older consoles in the living room so that he could play some video games there. The living room, as you have probably concluded from this interaction, is Selxes' domain. Sure, it's our shared space during mealtime, date nights, and movie viewing, but outside of those things, I find no reason to be there due to his choice of... cable offerings? So, to have something from the video gaming realm intrude upon his personal space is rather significant. Sure, he has played some video games with me, but he has very little interest in the medium. It was a genuine request however, because he said he wanted to "stimulate" his mind a little more. I agreed and installed my PlayStation 4 there, alongside the Nintendo Wii. He was really excited that I also volunteered the Wii because he said that he has enjoyed bowling on that console in the past. As you may have expected however, he hasn't touched them yet outside of a little demo I did for him when I completed setting those consoles up late last month.

I got a little bit of separation anxiety from this.

Taking a Break from Archiving Gameplay

The quiet of gaming without the camera observing me. It was a strange feeling, but a welcomed one. I have been spending more time on physical tabletop gaming than video games lately, and as with the latter, I used to record every single session of gameplay to be uploaded to my YouTube channel. The thing about recording a tabletop session is that I found myself talking a lot more because unlike how video gaming is a visual medium that can clearly explains itself, I always had to make sense of what I was doing with the components on the table, all the time. It was rather exhausting, but fun. Definitely exhausting though. And playthroughs that would probably take shorter time to complete turned into marathon power sessions. So, when I switched up from playing Origin Story by Stonemeier Games to another game of theirs, Vantage, I wanted to know how it would feel like playing the game off camera.

Inspired by Breath of the Wild but certainly doesn't play the same.