Playing to a Schedule
It is not with a small amount of bemusement that I consider those seemingly able to set themselves — and follow through on — a somewhat regimented gaming schedule. The schedule can take on a number of different forms with varying degrees of strictness. Some might do MMO Mondays for example. Even with that degree of flexibility though I’m more of an Action Any Day or RPG Random Day kind of guy.
Others still take a step further and set specific games to specific days or even specific times of day.
This is something I kind of get in the context of streaming. Being able to tell your audience in advance what’s on the menu is probably a good thing. But speaking as someone who often doesn’t know himself one moment to the next where fancy may fly this just sounds like another reason I would never be a streamer.
And yet… the idea still holds some weird sort of appeal.
Some of my personal favourite writing here has been when I’ve done little more than relate stories of playing a game. Doing simple stuff like improving quality of life for my character in Asheron’s Call. Or recounting some low-level experiences in ESO.
That is something I kinda want to do more of. And really, the whole playing to a schedule part? Not necessary to make this work. Heck- I certainly wasn’t at the time of those example posts. However, I also ran through those in a blaze until I had (at least in some cases) burnt myself out on them. My thinking is that perhaps if I set aside part of my Saturday game time to play something in particular and then a bit of Sunday to write it up I might be able to better sustain the effort.
Only certain types of games are going to work for this format, I think. For example — I can’t do anything this way that I’m absolutely burning to play. I’ll want to play those sorts of games every available moment.
But possibly games that have been on my backlog for a long time and occasionally tickle up against my memory banks as something I ‘really should get to at some point’ might make good candidates.
Dark Souls Remastered comes to mind. Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin. Dark Souls III with the Cinders mod. … Yeah Dark Souls has definitely been on the mind again.
Maybe non-primary MMOs would be good for this too. Humble Choice will no doubt keep adding to the pile too. So I’m not likely to ever be short for options, to say the least.
While the goal would be to play these games to completion (MMOs notwithstanding) overriding this whole endeavour would need to be Krikket’s ‘Play to Satisfaction’ concept. A concept I wrote about adapting for myself here but the short of it being to grant yourself the permission to play a title only so long as it is enjoyable to do so – no more, no less. That might mean dropping a game before its done or it might mean continuing to delay the start of other games while you 100% the one you’re loving.
I think with that concept firmly in mind I might be able to avoid the issues I’ve had with scheduling specific games in the past. The issue of beginning to… ‘resent’ is probably too strong a word, nor is ‘regret’ quite right… But certainly viewing the scheduled game time through a lens of opportunity cost and not being free to play what I want. Honestly? This is an issue even with raiding in WoW which for the most part I love, even if I don’t often write about it these days. It’s an issue I can generally hold at bay with WoW at least until we complete the tier of content we’re currently on.
Only raiding two days a week for Shadowlands (down from three) has definitely helped too — and we’re still making pretty good progress through heroic Castle Nathria. :)
Anywho!
At this stage all this is just an idea. I still think it absolutely insane to schedule gaming to the nth degree. (Read: I am super jealous of those able to be so organised!) So just an idea… Albeit one I’ll probably start to experiment with soon. :)
