Not Addicted

Fine, I admit it… I’m an indecisive gamer, and a subscription junkie. Okay? There, I said it. What’s so wrong about that? All of the cool kids are doing it. I just hate having precious memory and space being consumed by bad games. At present, I’m staring at my computer desktop and CD rack, trying to decide on which games go into the “I don’t play this anymore” pile, and which ones get to stay.

So here I sit, mouse poised over the Add Delete Programs menu as I inspect each one. “I’m sorry Dark and Light, but you have to go. EverQuest, you can stay—I can’t quit you. EverQuest 2, and World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, you can stay, and the rest of you have to go. That goes doubly for you, Star Wars Galaxies.” And now my hard drive is clean again. Boy, it sure looks empty. I guess there’s only one thing left to do about it.

Buy more games.

One might ask how it all came to this. The simple answer is that a lot of people made a lot of games. Most of them offered free subscriptions to start with, and a few of them were great… most of them were unmemorable. In fact, some of them were so unmemorable that I forgot to cancel my subscription for months at a time. Yeah, I’m talking to you, Horizons!

That’s fine. I love paying subscriptions for games that I don’t play.

For years, it seemed that for every MMO that I deleted from my hard drive, about three more took its place. Maybe that’s because every time I’d go to the electronics store, I’d be running on autopilot. I head right to the game section, and my eyes would glaze over as I’d look for the “next big thing” and a little pang of panic would drop into my gut if I already owned everything that was worth owning because—by gosh, what if I ran out of games?

I think back to simpler times when my choices were limited by what was available. If I wanted to play an MMO in 2D, I played Ultima Online. If I wanted to play an MMO in 3d, and lag a lot, I played EverQuest. Now as the years have passed, my choices have multiplied. My decisions are no longer limited by what my computer can handle. I can be choosy.

If you were to look into my mind, you’d probably see a flow chart, and the chart might look like this... (click below)

Now when I head over to the games section in my local electronics store, seeing the titles that I already own no longer slows me down. I’m slowed down because I can’t decide on what I want. There’s so much out, and judging by the CD rack of bad MMOs Past, which sits next to my desk... I think I want the ability to make up my mind.