GAMING
Play to Satisfaction
For me, saying “Play to Satisfaction” gives me explicit permission to drop a game that’s not working for me, but also to grind away for nerd points if I’m really loving something. I’m trying to make it a policy for myself that I will always play to satisfaction – no more, no less.
August has the potential to be the kind of month where I want to do a million different things, but no single thing really gets all that much attention. In a way, this is kind of great, since August means Blaugust, and it seems like having more things to write about can only be a good thing.
Usually I go into Blaugust with the intent to get my Rainbow award for 31 posts, but this year, I’m going to set my sights a little bit lower and see where I end up.
World of Warcraft
With all the recent allegations (and the accompanying lawsuit) being exposed, a lot of people in my blogosphere and social media circles have uninstalled their entire collection of Blizzard / Activision games. I have not, and while I expect someone somewhere will judge me harshly for that, I want to stress that I did not make this decision because I don’t believe the horror stories coming out about the work environment, rather, it is because I understand that the entire tech sector is rampant with these exact issues. Maybe this is the beginning of positive changes happening in the industry, or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
Either way, I fully understand that I already continue to give money, time, and attention to many corporations that do shitty things, and enable shitty people to do shitty things all the while drawing a paycheck, and for me personally, a Blizzard boycott would feel an awful lot like virtue signaling. I absolutely respect the decisions other people have made for themselves, but when neither choice feels completely satisfying, I’m going to go with the one that lets me spend time with the people I’ve gotten close to over the last 10+ years of gaming together.
I am not finding the 9.1 content so compelling that I’m playing as consistently as I once did, but so far, I’m liking the new zone, and the new raid, and the new story. I have a little bit of catch up to do, in part because I switched mains, but also because I missed a couple weeks, so I’m slowly playing catch-up. I’d like to dedicate enough play time to keep my raiding main, and my forever main up to date, as well as to keep the gold flowing well enough to continue to pay for my sub via token purchases.
Community Game-Along – #SciFiGameMonth
Since I am going into August anticipating a lot of different things I want to do this month, I’ve chosen a relatively short and linear game for #SciFiGameMonth. Eliza is a science fiction visual novel about an artificial intelligence counselor, and is short enough that I should be able to play through it in a single evening.
I don’t play too many visual novels, and I would have been very unlikely to purchase this game individually, but it was included in the February 2020 Humble Choice, and looked interesting enough to add to my library.
For the first time in a while, I haven’t actually given a lot of thought to back-up games for this month’s theme, partially because so much falls under the Sci-Fi umbrella, and partially because I cannot really see any reason I wouldn’t be able to play through the initial game I selected.
New Releases, Beta Builds, and Early Access
I am a little concerned that my library is going to be ignored this month in favor of new and shiny things. All my kickstarter backings are starting to bear fruit all at once. I’ve been playing quite a bit of the beta release of Kainga – Seeds of Civilization. My Coral Island alpha key is about to hit my mailbox. Starmancer is finally going to drop an Early Access release on the fifth, only a couple of years overdue! Last but certainly not least, Psychonauts 2 is set to release towards the end of the month, and I am far more excited about that than I should be considering it took me over a decade to actually beat the first game.
In all honesty, I really don’t know what I’ll be playing throughout the majority of August. My handful of must-dos aren’t all that time intensive, and I have a lot of fairly recent additions to my library that are still calling out for attention. We’re also planning on further home renovations in August (including a bathroom rework that I’m absolutely dreading), so I’m not sure how that’s going to impact my gaming time. This could be a great month, filled with lots of new-to-me stuff and tons of blog posts, or I could just get totally burned out and paralyzed by choice, and spend half the month in bed reading or watching TV. Right now, both feel about equally likely.
Nerd Girl Thoughts 
Yes, yes, yes! I didn’t have a name for the concept before now – Play to Satisfaction. That’s perfect!
A few years back, when I started to try to tackle my terrible Steam backlog, I adopted this very mindset. There’s no way I’m ever going to have the time to finish every game in the stack. But I should at least give a game a good shake, see if it’s something that captivates me, and if not, move along to something that does.
I’ve been a much happier gamer ever since.
I also backed Coral Island! Looking forward to trying that out, but I tend to find myself not playing alphas of things I’ve Kickstarted, and I don’t know why. Maybe because there’s too much else to play! XD
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I usually at least load up any alphas / betas I get invited to – or buy my way into as the case may be, but I don’t usually deep dive until at least early access, or more commonly, full release.
The games aren’t going anywhere.
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