Thursday, April 01, 2010

 

A Bold Statement

April 1st is, perhaps, a bad day to be making any sort of bold statements about personal plans, but let's face it. Nobody reads this blog but me, and I know when I'm lying, so there's no point trying to be deceitful.

I'm not going to buy more video games.

I've said this sort of thing in the past with the understanding that I would eventually go back on it. The exercise was never meant to be a permanent statement of policy so much as an exercise in self-improvement. But right here and right now, I have a strange sort of feeling that it's going to stick.

I'm just not interested in new games. And when I do get interested in them, I regret spending the money and I rarely get a satisfying experience. I don't blame this on game designers -- it's my own fault for playing video games constantly at every opportunity for well over twenty years.

I think the last straw was the announcement of the 3DS just days before the DSi XL was to go on sale in America. I was actually getting all set to succumb to the inevitable and buy the next piece of electronics that Nintendo decided to put out to go along with my every single other thing they've ever put out, but at that moment... well, it gave me pause for thought. Why do I keep buying into the incremental changes? What do I need all of this crap for? When my new games lose their novelty, don't I just end up going back to the same games I bought ten years ago?

There have been so many games that looked interesting in the weeks leading up to their release, or that I've heard good things about from other people, but for one reason or another I decide to put off buying them. Six months later, when I find the game on sale, used, or thrown in a discount bin, I can't even remember why I wanted it in the first place. It's like... I've gone this long without it. Why do I need it now?

So many game series that I've loved in the past have grown and evolved into things that I no longer have any real interest in pursuing. I can appreciate what Nintendo's done with the Touch Generations series on both the DS and Wii, but how much of that do I need? And who has the time or patience necessary to get into these more involved games anymore? I thought Monster Hunter 3 sounded cool, and I even put in a preorder on Amazon, until it occurred to me that I have precious little free time anymore to begin with, so why in the hell would I waste it trying to level up this imaginary warrior fighting imaginary monsters?

I will make an exception for a new Ace Attorney game, but that almost feels like something different. It's more of a video book than a game, and I'm helplessly addicted to the soap opera storyline they've got. I'll allow myself to stay in touch with that.

But everything else? It's really time for me to grow up, take a step back, and realize that there's not a lot going on in this industry that I need to be paying attention to. And in the meantime, there's a lot of other stuff I could be doing. For example, playing games I already own that are in many ways just as good as anything that I'm searching down previews of.

Does this mean the end of Electric Dilintia? I suspect not, but time will tell. Electric Dilintia comes and goes as it's needed. I'm sure it'll be around.

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