The book readers have it figured out. I listen to book podcasts and follow a lot of (I hate this word) bookstagrammers, and the turnover of a new year is the best time to do either of those things. This is because they’re all reviewing their reading goals for the year that was and the year to come. Did they finish the number of classics they’d hoped? Did they finish the bibliography of Ballard novels? And will next year be the year they really commit to #JanuaryInJapan, when all over the world people dedicate themselves to reading translated fiction from the country?
I wish we did more of the same in videogames. Our equivalent discourse gets as far as ranking the best games of the year that was, and then immediately moves on to anticipating the next year’s new releases, pre-emptively stuffing our backlogs with games we’ll rue not having had the time to play when the next year draws to a close. Couldn’t we set ourselves some more interesting constraints?
Totally. I wish I had some friends to get that experience more often. Closest I’ve been have been online discourse when playing certain games around launch, like Blue Prince, E33 and Elden Ring.
I especially love it with puzzle games like Blue Prince, where it’s less about sharing solutions and more about sharing theories and ideas. “Hey, maybe if we do X…” “Oh, that’s a neat idea - oh, wow, I bet if we used Y there it’d do Z…” type discussions. You get those neat eureka moments of shared inspiration riffing off of each other.