Blog Features

Games Played 2020 Edition

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This was one hell of a weird year, I think for pretty much everyone involved. Traditionally on the last day of the year (or as close as I can actually manage to it) I have had this tradition since 2015 of attempting to talk about the games that I played during the last year. I am not entirely certain why I started doing this thing, but if you have been around for awhile you will recognize this sort of post. I do this thing where I keep track of what games I played during what months of the year. I think in part this has been my way of keeping track of when exactly I played something now that tools that I used to use such as Raptr no longer really exist, or at least I am not really using them.

The challenge as well is that so many games are spread out across so many different platforms. I consume content from Steam, GOG, Epic Games, PlayStation Network, Nintendo Online or Xbox Game Pass. So instead of relying on a single source of information… I started keeping track of things in spreadsheet form and then collecting what games I actually touched during a given month based on what I had been talking about on my blog and what games I was taking screenshots of from my massive archive of past screenshots. The end is a compiled list of games that I chart in spreadsheet form… which is by no means as complete as tracking hours (which would be impossible) but does give me an idea of what my year looked like.

The Top 10 of 2020

Top 10 Most Played Games of 2020

The rules of this experiment are pretty straight forward. If I play a game in a given month I fill in a box and then tabulate the number of filled in boxes giving me the number of months in a given year I actually played a specific game. There are always going to be a number of “Forever Games” that eat up a lot of my time, but throughout the year I ended up spending at least some time in seventy different games. Here is the list of games that I played the most months during the year of 2020.

  • Diablo 3 – PC and Switch – Played all 12 Months
  • Destiny 2 – PC – Played 10 Months
  • World of Warcraft – PC – Played 9 Months
  • Ghost of Tsushima – PS4/PS5 – Played 6 Months
  • Final Fantasy XIV – PC – Played 5 Months
  • Phantasy Star Online – PC/Xbox One – Played 5 Months
  • Genshin Impact – PC/Android – Played 4 Months
  • Hades – PC/Switch – Played 4 Months
  • New World – PC – Played 3 Months
  • The Division 2 – PC – Played 3 Months
Comparing Top 10 from 2019 to 2020

Another thing that I find interesting is comparing my top ten list from the previous year. First up it is zero shock that I am still playing a lot of Diablo 3. This game is comfort food for me and especially with the option of playing it on the Switch I spend a lot of time just tinkering around in it between seasons. My ultimate wish is still that I can just play my PC characters on the switch. Completely gone is Dragalia Lost and honestly… I have yet to replace it with a Mobile Phone game. Also gone is MTG Arena which I weirdly just sort of stopped playing out of the blue. Destiny 2 I probably played less, but I poked at it pretty often and World of Warcraft came back with the pandemic and my need to play something that I could ultimately shut my mind off while playing.

I played significantly less Final Fantasy XIV and for whatever reason I am finding it harder and harder to attach to that game. WoW Classic, Bloodstained, ESO, Anthem and Pokemon Go all ranked high in 2019 but are all completely absent. Replacing them would be Genshin Impact and PSO2 which I spent quite a bit of dedicated time playing… but have sort of petered out in both cases. Hades is another bedtime gaming experience that I continue to poke at… and while I spent a lot of months playing Ghost of Tsushima I never really was able to play for a very long time due to my lack of stamina when playing with a controller. Division 2 and New World both surprised me because I did not realize I had played for as many months as I ultimately did.

The Top 15 Of All Time

Top Games by Month Since Beginning Tracking

Another thing that I like doing is keeping track of the total number of months I have spent playing a game since starting this. I have data reaching back to 2012 and that gives me an eight year view of my gaming habits and trends. Since that image above is way too small to reasonably read, going to once again break it out into a text list.

  • World of Warcraft – 69 Total Months
  • Destiny / Destiny 2 – 65 Total Months
  • Final Fantasy XIV – 60 Total Months
  • Diablo 3 – 53 Total Months
  • Elder Scrolls Online – 45 Total Months
  • Rift – 39 Total Months
  • Pokemon Go – 25 Total Months
  • MTG Arena – 21 Total Months
  • Dragalia Lost – 16 Total Months
  • Monster Hunter World – 16 Total Months
  • Guild Wars 2 – 15 Total Months
  • Division 1 and 2 – 15 Total Months
  • Minecraft – 14 Total Months
  • ArcheAge – 13 Total Months
  • Fallout 4 – 13 Total Months
  • Wildstar – 13 Total Months

As you can see from the list… this is mostly consumed by what I earlier referred to as “Forever Games” There are a good number of MMORPG/Live Service as well as some evergreen games like Fallout 4 and Minecraft. Diablo 3 and Elder Scrolls Online swapped spots in the list, which makes sense because I did not really spend much time in ESO this past year. Given my continued disinterest in FFXIV, Diablo may be able to lap that game by this time next year. Rift continues to hold solid even though I am not playing it because that 39 month seems like a hard plateau to cross with new games. Weirdly from that point down all of the games remained the same… because they are not games I was actively playing nor has anything else had the staying power to really compete with them.

Longest Streaks

While working on this post, I had a random conversation with my friend Tam about this process and that I was going through pulling together this post. To this he posed the interesting question of which game has the longest streak of unbroken months. I didn’t have an answer to this at all, which lead me to quickly compile a list of the longest streak for all of the games on the above list. It was around this time that I realized that if I did a longest streaks list… I would end up with a completely different top 15. Several of those games are played in short bursts over a large period of time which add up to a big number in the end. The end result is a bit surprising.

  • Destiny – 33 Months in a Row
  • Diablo 3 – 28 Months in a Row
  • MTG Arena – 23 Months in a Row
  • Pokemon Go – 23 Months in a Row
  • Rift – 22 Months in a Row
  • World of Warcraft – 21 Months in a Row
  • Elder Scrolls Online – 20 Months in a Row
  • Final Fantasy XIV – 20 Months in a Row
  • Dragalia Lost – 16 Months in a Row
  • Monster Hunter World – 15 Months in a Row
  • World of Warcraft: Classic – 7 Months in a Row
  • Anthem – 6 Months in a Row
  • ArcheAge – 6 Months in a Row
  • Bloodstained Ritual of the Night – 6 Months in a Row
  • Ghost of Tsushima – 6 Months in a Row

Other Interesting Data

In 2018 I played 70 unique games, which fell to only 48 in 2019. However with 2020 I returned to 70 games which means I seemed to be extremely restless as it comes to gaming. In 2019 I played 19 games that I considered to be “singletons”, or games that I only played for a single month and then walked away from usually meaning I bounced. During 2020 I played 44 of these Singletons so I wound up bouncing around quite a bit. I would like to play more single player narrative adventures, because I seem to really enjoy them when I allow myself to play them. However I still find myself being drawn back into the usual titles that I find familiar and comforting, which was something that I needed quite a bit during this year of Pandemic.

If you are curious about past gaming trends since starting this experiment, you can find my posts going back to 2015.

If you are terribly curious, you can even check out my raw list of data that I share freely. I am not exactly sure why I started this tradition, but I do find it interesting to reflect back each year on the past years games and the trends that occurred.

Regularly Playing: October 2020 Edition

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Good Morning Folks! For anyone who has tuned in more recently during the “Genshin Boom” as I am calling it, there is this thing that I like to do semi-monthly where I review the games I have been playing and talk about them a bit. This also serves as a reminder for me to update the regularly playing widget in the sidebar of this blog. Even more than this it is also a time for me to finally admit that a romance with a game is over and send it off on its way, while also talking about the new things that excite me. I actually legitimately did one of these in September so maybe this is the beginning of it actually returning to being something I do each month.

Essentially I like to divide the games up into a few categories:

  • To Those Remaining – The games that I am still actively playing or at least expect to be playing within the month.
  • To The New and Returning – The games that I am either dusting off and revisiting or are brand new experiences that I am enjoying.
  • To Those Departing – The games that I am finally removing from the list for one reason or another.
  • Ships Passing in the Night – Games that I don’t expect to regularly play but I spent some time with over the month and enjoyed enough to talk about.

To Those Remaining

Diablo 3 – PC and Switch

I am a sucker for this game. I am not playing an awful lot of it right now because we are in the doldrums between finishing one season and starting a new one. However the next season is right around the corner and it should be a very interesting one. During the season the Kanai’s Cube is expanding to four slots with the fourth being completely open to what you want to stick in it. I am assuming that most builds are going to go with some sort of double weapon buffs, but it should be super interesting. Given how packed that November is going to likely be gaming wise, it probably means I will be Demon Huntering it up given that tends to be the fastest route forward.

Ghosts of Tsushima – PS4 / PS5

I am one of the lucky few that managed to snag a PlayStation 5 preorder, or at least hope that I was successful. I am not playing this game a lot, largely because I am waiting for the improved visuals of playing it through a PS5… but I am occasionally popping it open and wandering feudal japan from time to time. Glorious game and I look forward to focusing on some more at the tail end of this year.

Hades – PC and Switch

This game is now officially out and you should probably be playing it. I’ve shifted things up a bit and I am now playing a lot more of this on the Switch from bed than I am on the PC. I am looking forward to cross save being implemented because while I am not super progress on either platform I would love to just have one that I am focused on period. This is a really great game and I am constantly in awe of how well Supergiant makes games.

New World – PC

I am not actively playing this game but lord I wish I was. I keep hearing rumors about new phases of testing starting up soon, and I am down for this. I had a blast in August and September playing the last extended phase of testing, and the phase prior to that one. I am super on board with this game whenever it actually launches and I would love for if the next phase included a friend code… or if they just rolled into Open Beta soon. I cannot fully conceptualize why I enjoyed this game so much, but I am wanting to get in and share it with some friends. I have this sneaking suspicion that the AggroChat group will be drawn towards Team purple, even though I myself tend to gravitate towards Green. I will make the sacrifice of course for them however, but it is definitely an experience where you want everyone on the same team.

Retro Games – Retro Freak Console, PC, and Switch

I started this last time as a general catch all category for poking around with emulation and my Retro Freak console. I’m not really dug in deeply into any games other than maybe the current play through of Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest that I have going on the switch. I also picked up a mega pack of Sega Genesis games recently when it was on sale for the Switch and I’ve been playing quite a bit of classic Streets of Rage 2. I’ve yet to really go spelunking into the closet, but given that I am going to have to rearrange my set up to make room for the PlayStation 5… I have a feeling that I might be doing this sooner rather than later. I need to devote a weekend to organizing and hooking up my office for playing this sort of nonsense. I still want to dig out the NeoGeo CD and see if I can get it running on HDMI.

World of Warcraft – Retail / Beta

Shadowlands has been delayed, but we should have the pre-patch event starting next Tuesday. I am hoping to spend some time this weekend maybe finishing leveling my rogue, but other projects have stolen my attention. Additionally we should have the beginning of the Halloween event soon, and you can damned well bet I am going to be spending each day running it on each of my available characters because I really want that damned mount finally. I mean it is highly likely that I won’t get it… but I am going to at least make a good effort this year given that I actually am enjoying the game still. November is likely going to be heavy shadowlands time for me so this absolutely retains its spot.

To The New and Returning

Genshin Impact – PC / Android

If you have been reading this blog at all this month and the tail end of the last month you will know that I am completely obsessed with Genshin Impact. This is being called “Breath of the Waifu” by many a person online, but I am not even sure if that covers it. I am absolutely not playing it for the Waifu or Husbando, but instead because it is this insanely good action RPG that sort of came from out of nowhere. It is this expert blending of Breath of the Wild, Trials of Mana, Modern Dragon Quest games, Open World Exploration and the addictive as hell Gacha mechanics of Dragalia Lost. I am still shocked at just how damned good this game is for as free as it legitimately is. Sure I have spent money on the game but I also didn’t feel like I had to. If you are not playing this you should be, and probably on the PC/Mobile since they cross save and the PS4 is locked to only that platform. That said there is cross play between all of the platforms regardless, I just like the freedom of being able to farm materials from bed on my phone or tablet and also play primarily on my PC.

To Those Departing

Avengers – PC

Oh Avengers… its not me… its you. I feel like this game probably needed another year to mature and develop enough interesting combat to really be the sort of game that it was trying to be. This is the Anthem of 2020, a game with a lot of promise but also a game that felt pointless after awhile as I chased rewards that didn’t really matter. The difference being that the moment to moment gameplay was so much more enjoyable in Anthem. Avengers needs significant tweaks in its combat system to make it feel more enjoyable in the moment to moment gameplay. I leveled and farmed up a full set of yellow gear for Captain America, leveled up Thor, and then realized while I was leveling Ms Marvel that I didn’t exactly know why I was doing it and logged out never to log in again.

I rarely do two pictures for a single game, but here we are breaking that rule. This is a snipping from Steam DB for the Avengers game, and notice that its peak concurrency was at launch… and only ever hit just over 31,000 players. The few times I attempted to match up with other players, the queues were too long and I eventually gave up and went back to soloing content. The storyline for this game was great and I made me fall in love with the character of Ms Marvel, and since then I have been pouring through her comics through Marvel Unlimited and having a grand ole time. The game however just becomes repetitive when you realize there are six maps in the entire game and everything is carved out as chunks of those as they send you on the same handful of mission types with semi-randomized objectives. Maybe I will revisit in a year or so and see if the game has improved.

Final Fantasy XIV – PC

I still don’t know why this game and I struggle to get along. There is so much about it that I adore, but at the same time I feel absolutely no desire to actually log in and play it. I left it on the list last time, but to be honest I don’t think I logged in at all during September. With everything on the horizon game wise with the launch of the PS5 and World of Warcraft Shadowlands… I don’t expect to probably play it for the rest of this calendar year. At some point I will return and gobble up a few patches worth of story content, but I am already behind in that department. I love Lalabel, and I will come back to visit him at some point in the future but for now we are admitting to ourselves that the game just isn’t going to be played in the near future.

Ships Passing in the Night

The Division 2 – PC

I gotta admit I teetered back and forth between putting this on the new and returning list. I had a really fun week/weekend hanging out and playing this game and I could see myself returning to it on a more permanent basis. That said… there is just so damned much stuff on my radar right now so I am going to put it in this category for the moment. If it becomes more… then it can trickle upwards on the list. The game has either massively improved since its launch, or I never really gave it enough of a chance because I became enthralled with Anthem. Either case… I am compelled to spend some more time here at some point.

Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff – PC

This charming game is an Early Access title that Tam stumbled onto and I have poked my head into a few times. Not really actively playing it, but it is something I am definitely going to be watching. They are doing active development on it and I am hoping some rounds of combat balance are in the works. if you want more detail you can check out my write up from a few weeks back.

Summary

There really wasn’t a ton of movement, but that is usually the case when I actually manage to do these on a monthly basis. Looming on the horizon is the launch of the PlayStation 5, World of Warcraft Shadowlands, and Cyberpunk 2077 which are all going to steal some of my time. Past hat I am really not sure what the tail end of this year is going to lead to. Time is moving so damned fast in part because every day is effectively the same as I rarely leave the house. I can’t believe we area already knee deep in October when mentally it still feels like it is maybe April. 2020 is going to go down in history as the “Lost Year” I think for me, and while I have stayed busy… it all just sorta flows together.

What are you “regularly playing”? Drop me a line below.

Regularly Playing: September 2020 Edition

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Hey Folks! There is a thing that I occasionally do on my blog where I run down what I have been playing lately. There are games that I spend time in that don’t necessarily make it to the level of writing about. Regularly Playing has always served as a time for me to update the good ole sidebar of the blog and talk about the things that I am spending time exploring. It is also a time for me to push aside the games that for whatever reason I am just not that into right now. You have a lot of games that make their way back into the rotation, so when I say goodbye it is very rarely forever.

In theory this is a thing that I intend to do every month… but we are living in this time where it still feels like it SHOULD by all rights be March. I think this is going to go down in history as the “Lost Year” because it feels like we are all still very much on pause waiting for things to improve. I expect a significant amount of shake up given that it has been a little over two months since my last update.

To Those Remaining

Diablo III – PC and Switch

Oh Diablo, my sweet Diablo… I can’t ever seem to quit you. This game probably spends the most time on this list, especially now that it exists in switch form. While I am finished with the current PC season, I do still fairly regularly pop it open from bed on the switch and chip away at the achievements there. What can I say that I have not already said a dozen times. I just hope I like Diablo IV even half as much as I love Diablo III.

Final Fantasy XIV – PC

Oh precious baby, you are hanging by a thread. I’ve been back a bit of late for the Yo-Kai watch event, but even that has mostly just been something to do while watching something on television. I know there is a whole new story arc that I need to play through since the 5.3 patch has landed finally. I will do that at some point but I am just not overly excited about Final Fantasy XIV right now. I wish I was because it truly is a wonderful game, but I am not sure what changed in me that struggles to latch onto the MMORPG gameplay experience for very long. I find myself being a strict soloist in the MMO space right now, and as a result I never quite fully buy into the good aspects of the culture and the gameplay offerings. I wish I could get over my fear of doing content with other human beings that I seem to have developed.

World of Warcraft – Retail and Beta – PC

I am not what you would call actively playing this game, but every so often I decide to poke my head in and work on leveling some of my alts. During this lull in the expansion I have leveled one of everything horde side by the Shaman, Priest and Rogue. I’ve been most recently working on the Shaman who is in Pandaria and I believe a few levels away from 100? This is often times the character that I play while we are podcasting, or if I am watching some show because World of Warcraft requires a bare minimum of interactivity to play it on the level I am playing it. I still get a stupid amount of enjoyment from its simple mechanics and my ability to just turn my brain off and rely entirely upon muscle memory.

To The New and Returning

Avengers – PC

I super did not expect to be playing this game right now. I had a lot of issues early on with it, but it turns out that I was more or less bit in the butt by my own shenanigans. There are still some minor issues of mouse and camera not exactly working in the way that I would prefer but it is extremely playable and the story is really solid. In fact I think at this point I am mostly playing because the story is extremely enjoyable. The game hits a deep uncanny valley at times because I think they are trying to shoot halfway between the more traditional comic appearance of the characters and that of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’ve gotten used to it however and once I did the story being told has become pure joy.

Ghosts of Tsushima – PS4

I have been on a bit of a single player narrative game kick of late, and I have been playing a significant amount of Ghosts of Tsushima. I’ve not made it past the first part of the game, because I keep roaming around and killing baddies. I am more or less following the Samurai path where I present a challenge and then proceed to whittle down the rest of the masses after taking out their strongest. I love this game a lot, and the only thing that would have made it better is if I were playing on the PC with a Mouse and Keyboard. I’ve been a bit distracted the last week or so, but I am hoping over the extended weekend that I can return to this and keep moving forward.

Hades – PC

I am not entirely certain that this game has ever made the list, but I have had it in my arsenal for awhile now. I have a deep love for the types of games that Supergiant creates. Even when I don’t mechanically enjoy the game like was the case with Pyre, I really appreciate the story that is being told. Hades is effectively a blend of Diablo and a Rogue Lite game and involves escaping from the underworld, and powering yourself along the way to make that possible. It is a game or repetition because you are absolutely going to die over and over and over in your journey, each time starting back at the start and each time carrying some progress along with you. This has been in early access but we are starting to near an official launch, so I have been playing it again in anticipation. Really solid game.

New World – PC

I’ve not participated in two test events of New World and I am super happy to finally be able to start talking about it. The last long preview event that is wrapping up I believe today had no NDA and as a result I have been able to openly discuss it on the blog. As it stands I am so ready for this game to launch and to start being able to play it in earnest. I am hoping the next event is an Open Beta so that folks who did not pre-order can give it a shot and see if it works for them. This is definitely the type of game that I am going to want to find an active company to play in, and that does not mean that I am sold on the notion of leading one. I’m good at recruiting people, but I don’t seem to be good at keeping people engaged… myself included. So more than likely I will be looking for a company to join that would be open to any friends that I have who are also interested.

Retro Games – Retro Freak Console, PC, and Switch

This is going to be a bit of a generic heading because I have been poking around in a lot of “retro games”. The thing is… I find it weird calling these game retro, because they are from my childhood. It is moments like this that I remember just how damned old I am at this point. Whatever you want to call them I have been back on a kick of trying to get my closet full of older systems and cartridges up and running on modern display technology. I’ve also purchased a Retro Freak console, which allows me to do a bunch of nifty things including dump rom and save games from cartridges and apply translation patches on the fly. The next project is to try and get my Neo Geo CD system up and running again and maybe apply the mod that replaces the very slow CD Rom with an SD Card interface.

To Those Departing

Destiny 2 – PC

I am not sure where we went wrong boo, I’m just not playing you. I have no clue what is up but for whatever reason I just haven’t been interested in playing Destiny 2 in this current season. I am not sure if it is the impending gear sunset or the fact that they are “vaulting” content to remove it from the game, but whatever the case I am just turned off right now. I think games should get larger over time not shrink constantly, and I hate the FOMO aspect of seasonal play. The truth however is just that I have not been interested in playing a shooter lately, and this last few months has been largely marked by me playing more single player and narrative driven content. I am sure I will be back when the expansion launches in November and have a grand ole time.

Guild Wars 2 – PC

You know that mission that AggroChat folks have been on about playing Guild Wars 2 and getting others to play it as well? For whatever reason it never sunk its hooks properly into me. I still don’t fully understand why this game that on paper should be something I am deeply into… never quite seems to work for me. There is just something about the gameplay loop that I don’t find as enjoyable as I should. The story content also never really hooked me, so while I keep trying to revisit this game… it never really does it for me. I am sure I will be back at some point because I am a glutton for punishment with a very short memory.

Phantasy Star Online 2 – PC

I can’t fully explain what happened here and why I stopped playing this game, but it happened. I am not even sure what distracted me. I just know that I have not logged in for a long while other than to convert to the Steam client. I am sure I will return because I was having quite a bit of fun with it. I also know that I was only a few levels away from hitting the cap at the time, and that there is a raised cap now that we have entered Chapter 4. I think I mostly got distracted by a string of single player experiences like Death Stranding.

Torchlight III – PC

I really do want to like this game, but I have not been all that into of it late. I think the core problem I have with the third iteration is that there just isn’t really a class that I enjoy. In Torchlight there was the Destroyer that I played a ton of, and in Torchlight II it was the Engineer. Both were big and bashy melee characters and right now in the third game there are two characters that CAN be played that way… but they both sorta feel fiddly. So I have been splitting my time between the Forge and the Railmaster…. and to be truthful neither of them feel the way that I want them to feel. I know Torchlight is a game that tries to cast aside the traditional Mage, Rogue, Warrior, and Cleric blend of classes… but I mostly just wish they had proper representation of those archetypes. My preference is to play something akin to the Diablo Barbarian or Crusader and they just don’t really have that represented.

Ships Passing in the Night

Death Stranding – PC

Death Stranding was a phenomenal experience. I legit get emotional just thinking about it. This is the game that I needed to play at the time in which I played it. It has become this extremely relevant allegory for the time that we are living in. I am not sure this is a game that everyone would enjoy, because the whole courier aspect of it that I found enjoyable could be pure tedium for someone else. The story being told though is really good and if nothing else you should probably watch a play through of it at some point.

Horizon Zero Dawn -PC

I had been anxiously awaiting the release of Horizon Zero Dawn for the PC, and when it came out I burned through it like wildfire. I think I put in a solid 50 hours in a very short period of time and cracking this open and revisiting it all was truly magical. I love Aloy and the world of Horizon, and I am anxiously awaiting the sequel. This is pretty much the reason why I will be buying a PlayStation 5 as soon as the pre-orders open. If you have never played Horizon Zero Dawn, you owe it to yourself to experience the game and the bow combat just works so much better with a Mouse and Keyboard.

Summary

I guess this is what happens when I wait almost three months between updates, there is a lot of change. I’ve bounced a few things off the list that I am almost certain I will revisit. Hell to be truthful what usually happens is just writing about them ends up making me want to log back in again. I know we have the launch of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 that will be eating some of my time, and I would really like to restart Jedi Fallen Order but this time play it with Mouse and Keyboard. Additionally I really want to play through Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which has been on my list for awhile. In between those I will be wrapping up Avengers main story and seeing if I like the group content or not, and probably poking my head into New World each time a new test event opens. All the while the backlog continues to grow, but I have gotten fairly used to knowing I will never quite conquer it.

Goodbye Promptapalooza

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Well Folks, for better or worse we have finished the running of another Blaugust. This year things were mixed up significantly given that we technically ran the traditional Blaugust event back in April as “Blapril”. Instead of repeating things I made an attempt to create something different, and I think the jury is still out on how well it worked. The idea was simple in my mind, but the closer we got to actually starting it I realized just how complicated it actually was. I think the original intent was that we would be providing prompts for the community to write about, but instead it largely just turned into a thing were someone wrote about a prompt each day and we attempted to shine the light on that effort.

The dates were staggered so that for example on 8/30 I would technically be giving the prompt for 8/31. However that just confused everyone involved, and instead we shifted to something that carried off without a hitch. I am super proud of everyone who offered their support in this madness, and how reasonably well it worked. In the spirit of this adventure I figure it is a good time to do a final rundown of the prompts that were shared.

That is of course just a fraction of the posts that were created during this event, and you can see a large number of them using the Blaugust2020 Hashtag. The biggest complaint that I saw from anyone was that the prompts didn’t fit them that well. The challenge there however was that I tried to create 31 prompts that were fairly generic. Blaugust being what it is, it is a community that spans anyone one game… or even gaming in general and the hope was to try and make it as malleable as possible. The ultimate hope was that the writers would take that generic seed of a prompt and turn it into something that fit them personally. There were an awful lot that managed to do that which makes me exceptionally proud, and when I look at the list above it seems like a success to me.

Prompt 31

Horizon Zero Dawn – PC

So, I would say the event went off without a hitch minus one slight problem. Given that the prompts were offset by a day… I was originally supposed to be making this post on the 30th and not the 31st. That felt odd however and I made the executive decision to just sorta bump this one post a bit so it lines up better with the end of August. The prompts were legitimately assigned at random and the final prompt that landed on me is as follows.

What is your favorite thing to do in order to relax?

Blaugust 2020 – Prompt 31

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you are probably going to realize that my answer is going to be gaming. There are a myriad of reasons why people play games. There are folks who really have a competitive spirit and love to play games for the challenge. There are folks who really enjoy the social aspect of gaming and do so as a way of hanging out with their friends. For me… when I am playing games at the purest I am playing them as an escape from the woes of the day to day grind. I love coming home and effectively melding into a game, shutting my brain off and just relying on pure muscle memory as I pilot the character like an extension of myself.

The Many Faces of Bel in various games

I think this is in part why Open World games and Massively Multiplayer Online Games have always been my kryptonite. They present to me this entire world for me to inhabit while I am playing it. I get to set my troubles aside on the shelf and be someone else for awhile, even if that someone else is just sorta the idealized version of me. The above image is something I commissioned from my friend AmmosArt for the 7th anniversary of this blog, and it shows some of my characters in various games… and there is a similarity between them. The character of “Belghast” has a certain appearance and I seek to create it as closely to that mold as the game will allow me. I think ultimately it is the me I sorta wish I was?

The Actual Bel with Josie

I am not this person however, and while I am largely okay with the bumbling oaf that I am in real life… there are times when it is really enjoyable to stop being me and become someone else for awhile. It is fun to become a person of action rather than to be forever locked in this overly cerebral state of indecision and self doubt. The most disturbing self realization that I had years ago… is that effectively “Belghast” is just Adrian Paul from the Highlander… with a beard. It is really weird the baggage that you carry along with you in your psyche, but I remember being super into that show as a teen.

My Blood Elf Paladin in World of Warcraft – PC

I think why I like games where you can grind your way in skill and level, is that they ultimately allow you to feel powerful. There is so much of my own life where I largely feel powerless over the actions swirling around me. I know this sounds weird given that I manage a fairly large team and have moved up in my career considerably since starting it in 1998. However no matter what my station in the working world is, there are just so many things that always feel out of my own control. I am always relying on the whims of someone else and never really feel like I have complete control of my own destiny. Instead I am just reacting to the things as they come and making the best possible decision I can at any given time.

Ghosts of Tsushima – Base PS4

In a game however, I am the ultimate arbiter of my fate. As I level up, gain new equipment I eventually reach a state near the end of the game where I am powerful and a force to be reckoned with. The thing is… it also has the side benefit of happening within a safe closed box that doesn’t impact others. So much of power is wielded in the real world by the selfish and the cruel in fulfillment of their twisted fantasies. Games allow me to safely act out upon those power fantasies while saving the day and being the big damned hero, rather than doing so in a more harmful manner. When it becomes too much, I can just log out or power down the console and move on with my very real life, all without any negative impact on others in the process.

Mass Effect Andromeda – PC

Games act as a sort of wish fulfillment. I wish I was a better person, and at times I wish I was off on grand adventures. I wish I was saving the galaxy or at least a village full of people from a rampaging horde of monsters. Games allow me to live all of these lives within the span of a couple dozen hours, and still log right back out and keep my normal life as well. There are times I think that games have been what have kept me sane, as I have dealt with all sorts of issues over the years. The truth is it is really my friends that I have made through gaming that have become the large extended family and support structure that I needed. I love my gaming family that puts up with me even when I am being a little boorish. Ultimately gaming is an escape for me, and I am very thankful that it gives me a relatively safe vehicle for relaxation.