I Want To Spend A Lot More Time Playing Video Games

I’m sure there have been large swathes of my life where my parents really wished I spent less of my time playing video games. In retrospect, I do wish I had spent less of my life on a computer and more of it outside, but still, I have a lot of fond memories of grinding away at Dota or TF2, exploring the fascinating worlds of Baldur’s Gate or Disco Elysium, or trying to solve the mind-bending puzzles offered up by Portal or The Talos Principle. But now I spend none of my time whatsoever playing them, and actually that really makes me sad. There are things I want to play, I find gaming relaxing, and the older I get, the more I think that video games can be compelling works of art rather than addictive time-and-money sinks.

I really want to play Sable. It looks beautiful, moving, and perhaps most importantly, Japanese Breakfast did the soundtrack. I want to finish Planescape Torment so I can feel like I finally understand its place in gaming history, and how it influenced so many of the games that I love. I want to play Back 4 Blood when it’s out, to see if it’s anywhere near as cathartic as the Left 4 Dead games it clearly owes so much to. And I haven’t had time for months, but now, I am hoping with these races out the way, I can continue to remove obligations and stressors from my life until I can get to a point where I’ll finally have time to sit down and play something, anything. I think I’m going to make it my goal for October; play 10 hours of something on Steam, even if it’s just logging 10 more hours in Counterstrike.