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 today is 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.

From Stranger to Family in Less Than 1 Day

While there are people who want access to a specific game, there are also those who want access to it all. So, apparently, I was just some random Steam-add not worthy of any note for a long time until one day, this person just happens to finally click on my profile and notices my game collection and probably thought... Well, well, wouldn't it be nice?

What is family?

Getting Punked by Cyberpunk 2077

I first played Cyberpunk 2077 on my Personal Computer at the time of its launch back in 2020. Apparently, I have never gotten past the prologue in my 3-4 previous play attempts ever since then. I finally did though recently as I plan to maximize my time with the game. I like that terminology now when it comes to participating in the activity of playing a video game: "maximize" my time with a game. Not "finish" a game but maximizing it. If you have been gaming as extensive amount of video games as I have, "finishing" a game is a complicated concept. I know a lot of people think these days that checking off all "task unlockers" - achievements, trophies, call them what you may - is the tell when a game has been "completed", even though these things usually ask you to do the most menial, meaningless things while playing those games. Even after say, you have completed all the contents of a game, it doesn't mean that a game is "finished". The shmup genre is an example of this. Narrative heavy games can be replayable too, given some time. While some games are replayable or they offer options to continue playing them, they sometimes feel like they overstay their welcome. Fallout 4 is an example of this: After I completed the main storyline in that game, I have yet to attend to all of the remaining quests available plus the game's downloadable contents. I have lost interest after a certain point, yet I feel like I need to further maximize my time with the game. My video games, to me, are not mere things to be "finished". They are there to provide me with the content I want on demand. When the time is right and the mood blossoms, I may indulge and thus maximize my time spent with them.

Oh no... It's Keanoooo!