Anthem (PS4, 2019)
When I bought my PS4 in 2017 it was around a year before I started playing it regularly. I still had some PS3 games to finish. Through 2018 and probably a year or two prior to that I had slowly amassed a decent collection of games for when the time to switch finally came. PlayStation Plus games made up a large amount, but I checked the sales regularly and picked up things that looked interesting. For that first year or so I was mainly finishing games on PS3, I think I only really played Gran Turismo Sport and Rocket League on the PS4 before making the full switch over to the new generation.
I felt like I was making up for lost time with Rocket League in particular. I played the original version, Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, on PS3 and adored it, even if it felt like I was the only person who knew it existed. If you've never played it, imagine Rocket League with constant screen tearing, horrible collision physics, 20fps and actual good quality bots which you can only play with in pre-specified modes. I've played Rocket League regularly since then, alongside everything else I've played. Its nature makes it easy to dip in and out of for a few games at a time, and while I improved a lot over a period of what you can probably count as years I never really felt like I committed a significant amount of time to it.
In saying this, a lot of the time when I was playing I would feel guilt that I wasn't playing something else from the backlog. I was playing something that effectively wasn't achieving or finishing or completing anything. I played a match and it was largely inconsequential outside of the five or so minutes I spent on it.
One of the downsides to the free games I had access to through PS Plus from 2012 to about 2016 was that there were too many of them. I felt overwhelmed by an obligation to play all of them. There were times where this worked out and I played something I loved but would otherwise never have heard of or considered, and that's great. But as anyone with a self-declared backlog will tell you, the sense of having more video games to play than time to play them in isn't enjoyable.
I don't think there was a specific point where I made the conscious decision to change the way I approached things then, but I did and it was unquestionably a good thing. I don't need to play all of these. I ditched some things I had spent years assuming I would get around to. I even didn't bother redeeming free PS Plus games for PS4 because I thought that I would change the way I played games and the amount of time I spent on them and I might achieve something worthwhile and fulfilling with life outside of my room and my TV and sorry I'm rambling a bit here. The point is, I went from having a PS3 backlog, to realising I didn't need to have a PS3 backlog, to giving myself a PS4 backlog.
I had a PS4 backlog and what was I doing? Putting on Rocket League almost out of habit, absentmindedly spending an hour or so here or there when I could be doing other things. Did I enjoy playing Rocket League? Yes. Am I still playing it nearly seven years later? Yes, but my timing is shot and I think the collective level of skill has increased because my ranks have gone down but my opponents are better than they've ever been. Why, then did I so often feel like I should have been spending that time elsewhere? It almost didn't feel real. It was like I felt guilty for playing one game at the expense of several dozen others. Not anxiety, not anything else, actual literal guilt that I was choosing how to spend my time on things I enjoyed and things I wanted to do.
According to PSNProfiles there are 405 games on my profile, dating back to November 2008 when trophies were first introduced. There are 177 PS3 games, 190 PS4 games and 38 "multiplatform" games which can be played on multiple systems. There are a few discrepancies with these numbers. Some are PS Plus games I played a long time ago for a few minutes, unlocking one trophy then never touching again. These are mostly PS3 games. Oh let's not talk about the time I redownloaded LittleBigPlanet 2 because I'd done that, or the time I bought a PlayStation Eye camera to get the platinum in Burnout Paradise. Some of those games are also ones on my system I've technically not started yet.
In addition to the 190 PS4 games there the spreadsheet I keep with all the games I have and their time/difficulty estimates currently has around 130 games on it, although I've not updated it since January. I also think if I were to go through that right now you could count out at least half of it, so don't look at that as another 130 games that I 'intend' to get around to.
Whichever way you look at this, I play a lot of games. And even in the time I do, a lot of the time I'm still thinking of what I can play next. Very often I never do. In the past month I've been certain that I'm going to start the Crash Bandicoot trilogy, or download Metro Exodus, or try Vanquish again on PS4. I've wanted to play Days Gone for years. What's the deal with Subnautica? In reality I think my next game is going to be none of these things, because there's still stuff on my profile I need to clean up first. I want to get the Trackmania platinum before my subscription runs out at the end of May. I've been trying not have multiple games on the go at once and to go back and clean up things I've got bored/frustrated with in the past and finish them. I've been getting better with it. I suppose I'm not really free of that, even if I try my best to convince myself I am, or even if I actually do make progress and bring the numbers down to the levels I'd like them to be, while actually enjoying what I'm playing.
Over the past months I've had videos in my youtube recommendations I've not watched with titles like Why Isn't Gaming Fun Anymore? and How To Beat Your Backlog and, really, I think it's a very strange mindset to have for what is effectively a hobby. Is it healthy to effectively stockpile things you tell yourself you want for the future, without making any actual plans to get around to them? Is it sustainable, when there are endless sales and services which offer access to a set group of games at a given time? Is it necessary, even? I don't think it's a healthy thing to wilfully overwhelm yourself like this, or at least to feel as if you're overwhelming yourself. Looking at the amount of games I've played and finished since that PS3 to PS4 switch, by any measure it's a lot of time spent and a lot of games finished. I've played more PS4 games in a smaller space of time than I spent with the PS3. Yet looking at the numbers, to me there's still a lot of things I want to do.
I don't consider myself a completionist, but if I were to talk about video games with someone in real life and tell them how I play games and how many games I play they'd say I am. They'd say I'm nuts as well. Yet I know there are people who play a lot more than I do, and play just as many substantial games within that rather than purely the sort of number padding ezpz nonsense that's so prevalent now. I don't know what I'm writing about any more here, but what is the point? What's the point in playing and fully(-ish) completing games if there's a feeling that there's just as much still to come when I'm done? Will I ever be done?
In January this year I paid £1.59 for Anthem. Anthem is one of the most contentious video games in history, with a protracted development which was ruined by its publisher half-heartedly (or completely ignorantly) trying to get into a market they and the developer they used were completely unsuited for. I spent around 60 hours with it. It was a load of boring shite. Avoid.
