www.Tobold.com
Tobold@GMail.com
A blog with my thoughts regarding games I am playing and other stuff in life. Please read my Terms of Service
RSS Feed
Thursday, September 17, 2026
Not interested in the far future
After retirement, I built a house and moved. So now I live just 1 hour’s drive away from the location of the world’s largest video games event and trade fair, Gamescom. I didn’t go last month, I never went, and I’m not planning to go in the future. Gamescom feels irrelevant to me, because of its time horizon. And I am writing this because I felt that even stronger about Blizzcon, where they announced a Starcraft shooter game for 2030. What do I care about a game to be released in 2030? I don’t even care about the games announced at Gamescom, and many of those will be released in 2027 or 2028.
I am probably not alone in the feeling that I can’t keep up with video games anymore. Steam now releases over 20,000 games per year. The fraction of those games that I am even remotely aware of is tiny. There are a handful of triple-A games that are so huge that you can’t possibly miss them, and there is a lot of trash. But there are also a lot of mid-sized games that are quite good, and not all of them manage to make headlines. So sometimes I become aware of a game only months after release.
That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For example I played Valheim in 2021. This month Valheim version 1.0 was released. Today is the release date of Endless Legend 2, a game I played nearly a year ago. On the one hand I am sure that the release versions of these games are more polished and complete than the early access versions I played. On the other hand, in a situation where I can’t even keep up with new releases, how would I find the time to play these games again. For me these games are done and dusted, I already played them until I ran out of fun. I couldn’t even manage to find the motivation to play Civilization VII again, after the huge changes.
Civilization VII I bought. Endless Legend 2 I played on Game Pass, and I don’t currently have a subscription for that. Financial tip of the week: Don’t let all of your subscriptions run all of the year, but occasionally drop some, and then maybe resubscribe later. Anyway, if I now wanted to play Endless Legend 2 again, I would need to check whether that game was still on Game Pass, and then pay for that subscription again. I probably won’t do that, given my mixed impression of the game.
So as I can’t keep up with new releases, and even less with new versions of older games, I am really not interested in the games being released a year, two years, or more from now. In a market in which video game projects are often cancelled, developers layed off, and studios closed, I can’t hold my breath for a game that might not even make it over the finish line. Blizzard cancelled two Starcraft shooter games before, so even if I were interested in that type of game, I can’t be sure it would be worth waiting for.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:54 AM Permanent Link
Comments:
<< Home
Newer› ‹Older
I was always happy to wait for release. I'm mildly looking forward to Elder Scrolls 6 and Civ8, but not holding my breath. [Though who knows, AI may make them pop out a lot faster than we expect.]
Being aware something is coming and "waiting for it" are two entirely different things. I'm happy to know certain games may be coming in three or four years. I'd rather know than not know. But I'm not "waiting" for them.
As for finding time to play or replay games, it's a choice, isn't it? We all get the same number of hours in our days. Even billionaires can't buy more. How we use them is up to us and for those of us lucky enough to be retired from active work, using a lot of those hours to play video games is certainly an option. If you don't think you have the time to do that, it almost certainly means you don't want to to do it, which is fine. It's still a choice, though.
As for finding time to play or replay games, it's a choice, isn't it? We all get the same number of hours in our days. Even billionaires can't buy more. How we use them is up to us and for those of us lucky enough to be retired from active work, using a lot of those hours to play video games is certainly an option. If you don't think you have the time to do that, it almost certainly means you don't want to to do it, which is fine. It's still a choice, though.
I have no interest in attending a BlizCon but this year was more interesting than past years exactly because of what it revealed for what is happening in the near term. WoW Forever going in to beta now and release in just a few month so I need to decide now if want to play. No more expansions for Diablo 4. First Diablo game I never bought.
Post a Comment
# posted by 
: 19/9/26 01:56
: 19/9/26 01:56<< Home
