What I learned from the 106 games I played this year

Polygon’s Editor’s Letter is a column from Editor-in-Chief Chris Plante that displays on the online game and leisure industries, their communities, and Polygon itself. New editions seem within the first week of every month.

Certainly one of my extra neurotic habits is sustaining a spreadsheet that tracks my media food regimen. Each film, TV present, comedian, sports activities match, Japanese examine session, podcast, and naturally online game will get clocked in 15-minute increments. Every day. three hundred and sixty five days a yr.

Time monitoring permits me to investigate the place and the way I prioritize my time. This yr, for instance, I performed loads of video video games — 106, to be exact.

Scanning the spreadsheet, gaming demanded extra of my time than some other media — by far. This was intentional. I needed to maintain up with video video games in a yr of infinite new releases. So why does it really feel like I missed out?

For this month’s Editor’s Letter, I’ll share my takeaways from a yr of ingesting immediately from the hose. And I’ll hopefully make sense of my lingering FOMO alongside the best way.

A few of what follows will learn just like the delirious blather of somebody paid to, on some stage, play video video games for a dwelling. However I hope most of my response is relatable. As a result of with companies like Recreation Move, an abundance of high-quality free-to-play video games, and gross sales seemingly each different week, the problem for most individuals isn’t entry to video games, however deciding what to play.

Or, to place it one other approach: Everybody’s a recreation critic now.

The price of loving new video games? Lacking previous ones

I’ve written elsewhere about gaming’s present period of abundance, during which every week a dump truck unloads dozens of latest releases, burying the earlier week’s haul within the course of. Regardless of the Sisyphean nature of this endeavor, I’ve tried my damndest to maintain up and have spent a lot of the yr scrounging by the ever-growing heap.

Of the 106 video games I performed in 2024, 95 have been launched between January and immediately. The price of that call is apparent whenever you flip the numbers. In 2024 I performed solely 11 “previous” video games. Like anyone else, I’ve a backlog that mocks me each time I open Steam. I’d like to play extra of these video games sometime, however making time to play previous video games means lacking out on new releases, which in flip grows my backlog.

One individual can’t see your complete image, however a neighborhood can

A decade in the past, taking part in 95 new video games in a yr meant I’d have performed each essential launch, each mildly attention-grabbing experiment, and nonetheless made room for a number of actual stinkers. In the present day, it’s potential I didn’t play your favourite recreation of the yr.

Listed here are a number of the video games I didn’t play in 2024 that I sincerely needed to attempt however for no matter motive didn’t make the time for: Impasse, Passable, Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance, Warhammer 40,000: Area Marine 2, Sand Land, Planet Coaster 2, Core Keeper, Smite 2, Chained Collectively, The Outlast Trials, and Persona 3 Reload.

And what of dwelling video games like Fortnite and Closing Fantasy 14? No approach. These are the kinds of video games that, if I performed them, would devour each second of my recreation time. And so, of the highest 10 most-played video games on Steam, in 2024, I solely performed one.

You is likely to be aghast. How might the individual working Polygon skip a number of the most essential video games on the earth? I argue that my expertise is a transparent justification for Polygon’s existence. Even somebody paid, partly, to have an obsessive understanding of online game tradition can’t play all the things.

For the typical individual, a mixture of web sites, movies, streams, and podcasts will fill within the gaps. So even when I haven’t performed your favourite video games, I’ve most likely learn, watched, or heard one thing about them.

Individuals who solely play a number of well-liked video games are the norm — for good motive

Actually, I’m exhausted simply wanting on the record of video games I performed, which I’ve included within the feedback. Making an attempt to maintain up with the sport du jour (extra like du jouer, am I proper?) is dear, time-consuming, and sometimes calls for jettisoning one recreation I’m having fun with to make room for an additional. As I method the end line of my annual marathon, I’ve a renewed appreciation (jealousy?) for individuals who decide out of taking part in the brand new cool factor, as an alternative committing to 1, two, or three video games that devour the majority of their time.

As I wrote in a earlier Editor’s Letter:

In response to a report from Newzoo, in 2023 gamers spent 77% of their playtime on video games three years or older. A lot of the time gamers spent on new video games went to annualized franchises, like Name of Obligation, Madden, and EA FC. A paltry 8% of general playtime in 2023 went to new video games not tied to massive, yearly IP.

I think these stats held true in 2024. Committing to established, significantly free-to-play dwelling video games prices far lower than a subscription service, not to mention new video games every week. These video games present fixed updates to maintain rewarding the time funding. Their acquainted loop requires much less of their gamers’ brains, liberating up these gamers’ psychological load to be social with mates on Discord whereas they play.

Should you play video games as a social exercise or a stress aid valve, a number of acquainted video games is likely to be all you want.

Video video games will probably be no matter you need them to be

Even with all the things I’ve written in thoughts, I wouldn’t have gone about 2024 otherwise.

Hell, as comfortable as I’m to have a slowish December, I’m already wanting ahead to January, when Steam releases will inevitably ramp again up and my free time will probably be reclaimed by indie video games I’d by no means heard about till the second they seem below New & Noteworthy.

As a result of, in case you’ll afford me some seasonal saccharine sincerity, that is what childhood me hoped video games would change into.

The number of video games launched this yr is unmatched in comparison with the medium’s contemporaries, like movie and tv. This yr, you might play 1000’s of hours of a number of the greatest role-playing video games ever made. Or maybe you refined your style in roguelikes like a sommelier honing their palate. You could possibly have flown an ideal re-creation of a industrial jet from Hong Kong to New York, raced within the Monaco Grand Prix, or received MVP on the Tremendous Bowl.

In 2024, I performed a remake of a recreation from the Eighties, a pastiche of a recreation from the Nineties, and a deconstruction of the shooters of the early 2020s. One recreation turned my Home windows OS right into a bullet hell. One other gave a squirrel a gun. Video games questioned the basics of democracy, the unexamined grief of a pandemic, and the abject pleasure of stealing a buying cart and gunning down a hill.

Even when I didn’t have this job, I’d nonetheless have this gaming food regimen. As a result of I discover the best pleasure within the prospects. How lucky we’re to expertise video video games at this second when there’s one thing for everybody. Whether or not that’s having fun with one recreation all yr or 100. And 6. And counting.

I wrote earlier that I hoped to present y’all with a common takeaway. And right here it’s. What I discovered from taking part in an absurd quantity of video video games over the past 12 months:

Whether or not it’s video video games or some other interest, it’s tempting to look again at how we spent a yr and contemplate all the things we might have executed as an alternative. To dwell on the hole between our ambitions and our accomplishments. Don’t dwell on what you missed; develop from what you skilled.

As a result of if there’s one factor I’ve discovered from monitoring my life in a spreadsheet, it’s that there’s by no means sufficient time.