There are too many games to play them all.
This is more of a post about games I won't beat just because I wanted an outlet for my thoughts and it was too big for discord. It also gives me a nice place to come back to, to maybe revise in the future.
Back in ye old days, I had a certain pride of being someone who pretty much tried every game worth trying. A feat that was much more possible in the 00's and prior.
Like with other media; tv shows, anime, music, movies, youtube videos. There are just so many more games now. Within my friend group, we often cite anime, simply because it's somewhat unique in the sense that while there is so much more of it being produced, ~4x as much, but there aren't 4x the studios, and some of them have barely grown. So the quality suffers as they pump so many more of them out in the same amount of time. Other forms of media don't suffer as much in that regard, but have their own problems, such as being subject to to shifts in how people consume media, giant corporations whims, or slaves to the algorithms.
Video games just weren't as mainstream 20+ years ago, and now that they are at the forefront of entertainment media, the tools to make them have expanded to the point they can be produced at every level. There are dozens of video games being released every single day. Maybe not a dozen on Switch, maybe not a dozen on PS5. But across all platforms, if you are including ultra independent works, shovelware, and mobile games, we are just saturated with video game releases. Games released on Steam alone hit above a dozen on slow day, daily.
As someone who used to be very online in my younger years, almost always having some sort of opinion about every game, I've continued trying to keep up with as many games as I possibly can. Putting more focus these past few years into actually finishing the games I play, I finally have to come to terms with the fact I can't play everything. It's at the point where, even if I came upon infinite money, could quit my job, quit all other hobbies, devote every moment of my life to playing video games, I can't even play everything I have interest in playing.
My Steam wishlist has nearly 1000 games on it, and I already own over well over 1000 games on Steam, if not closer to 2k. Steam is far from the only platform I own games on, on PC.
My Switch wishlist seemingly randomly prevented me from adding games to it at 391 games. It didn't let me add that 392nd game. Seems like a arbitrary point, but that's fine. I thoughtfully considered how much I needed to add that 392nd game, and turns out I didn't. I just wanted to add it so I didn't forget it. It's a game I have the vaguest interest in because it has cute sprite art, and I MIGHT play it if it goes on sale for at least 50% off and has great reviews. That said, I knew there were going to be other games I want to add to my wishlist soon, and so begun a mass exodus.
I went through and spent time watching trailers for games, reading reviews, and considering what the odds I would play a game even if I purchased it, for hundreds of games. In the end, I reduced my Switch wishlist to 269. It would have been lower... if I didn't add 4 games in the process. Maybe I didn't entirely learn my lesson, but I made a step forward. A lot of these games seem like they might be great games. I just had to consider, will I ever prioritize them over everything else in my never ending infinite backlog?
No, I don't think I will.
There are a few reasons my wishlist is still quite so high, obviously I like games a lot and there are still many titles I'm interested in, but I also have a refusal to remove shoot 'em ups that I don't already own on another platform from it. I wouldn't be surprised if over 100 of those titles are shmups alone. I love my shmups, and the Switch has a hell of a library in that regard, brand new ones, rereleases, and tons of previously arcade-exlusives, but because I already have so many options for shmups, I almost exclusively buy them on sale, when I know I'm going to play them soon.
Another category that takes up a couple dozen of those wishlist items is music game dlc. Music games are an extremely monetized genre, usually coming with a few dozen tracks and then releasing songs via track or pack incrementally for years to come making it very easy to spend hundreds of dollars on a single game if you're not careful. So a lot of these tracks or track packs sit in my wishlist waiting for a day when they're both on sale and I'm in the mood to play said music game.
That said, I still have that fear of missing out on certain titles, fear of forgetting they exist, fear that maybe I made the wrong choice in removing them from my wishlist. So I logged every game I removed from my wishlist I was worried about potentially forgetting. I didn't include games I already down that would have been a repurchase or an updated rerelease, or direct sequels to games that would be easily remembered, or games that are just too mainstream to forget.
Maybe I also logged them so I could present it, and if anyone feels like I made a bad move, can say, "hey, I saw X on your list, actually you should really play this." Maybe I'm saying all this just to justify this backup wishlist. Eh... baby steps. (but seriously let me know if you think I'm dropping a banger)
.jpg)
