OMG BBQ WTF?

Yeah... I know it has been a long time, and everyone has probably thought "oh Kreg started another project he is never going to stick with", but I am back! And seriously I have a pretty good reason for my absence.

Let me tell a quick story.

So fairly soon after my last post,  my life got flipped on it's head, in a very good way. I got a new job, with a well known company, in Seattle.

It put a smile on my face!

Pretty much all of my time in February and March was spent moving to Seattle, and starting my new job. But I hear you saying "well Kreg, I can let you off the hook for that, but why have you not gotten back to this earlier?". That is a great question, that I am going to give a half assed answer... I have been really busy. Seriously, I have just in the last couple weeks started to get back to playing games again.

So to end this post I am going to make the same promises as before (that I will inevitably break), more updates, pictures of my Stack, and much much more!

-K

Whatcha' been playin'?

I haven't deserted this blog yet...

I was fairly busy this weekend, so I didn't get to game nearly as much as i wanted to. Other then a bit of League I did start playing Antichamber. I am about 4 hours into it right now and let me tell you, it is nothing short of brilliant. At it's core it is a first person puzzle type game (think Portal), but it is so much more then that. Almost like a look into the human psyche. It actually wears down your cognitive abilities as you play. I absolutely recommend everyone buy and play it.

I know I said I would get pictures of my physical Stack of Shame up, but yeah... I was busy, and lazy, but I promise it will get done... eventually... someday

As soon as I stop looking for funny cat pictures to put in my blog posts.

-K

Things to look for soon...

Update time...

First, this weekend I plan on posting pictures of my physical game stacks on here for all to see (and look down upon me for). Once they are all up I will be fleshing out the WTF? and The Stack Pages.

Second, I was thinking about using polls to determine what games I start playing. If you like this idea, let me know in the comments.

Not those kind of polls...

Third, I am thinking about writing quick reviews of the games I have "Sufficiently Played". Nothing super in depth and no grading scales, just a quick blurb of what I liked/didn't like and if it is worth checking out. What do you think? (points down at the comment button)

Last, I know everyone wants to know what I have been playing, and if it includes anything other then League of Legends (my worst bane against actually getting to my Stack). Well, I have been playing more League, but I also got in some time with Guild Wars 2 and a game that is actually from my stack, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. I have clocked in almost an hour and a half, which doesn't sound like much, but I paid less them 5 bucks for it, so it is technically "Sufficiently Played". However, I am really enjoying it, so I will probably stick with is for a while.

Well, that is it for now!
-K

The Price is Right!

Hey All!

First a quick update... ended up buying some more Steam games (Amazon had a 5 pack of games I have been wanting to play on sale... I couldn't pass it up.) So yeah, that list is a little longer now.

As for gaming, I didn't really get much in last night, just a match of League of Legends.

Now on to business. I figure I should start outlining my plans for getting through my Stack of Shame. So let's start with the rules.

...

..

.

OK, so there really are no rules. 

Except for mandatory funny blog images.

Rules are restrictive and lame. This is gaming, gaming is supposed to be fun.

I will however give an explanation to a term I have used before, since it really is the basis for all of this. That term is "sufficiently played". 

"Sufficiently played" will be how I determine when a game goes from the stack back on the shelf. It is fairly self explanatory. I am not looking to finish every game, that would be unreasonable and diminish the idea of having fun. What I am looking to do is play every game for either a period of time in which I feel I got my moneys worth, complete some kind of goal I set for myself, or I come to the conclusion that I no longer enjoy playing said game.

Let's start with determining if I got my moneys worth. I will be using the theater ticket price divided by movie length calculation. We'll set the average ticket price at $10 (this is reasonable if not a little low) and the average movie at 2 hours. This gives you a pretty fair $5 per hour of entertainment. 

I feel this translates to games pretty well. If you pay a full $60 for a game, you should be getting at least 12 hours of entertainment out of it (which is a reasonable length single player campaign) by this calculation. It also works well for games you get on the cheap. Anything that cost you less than $5, but you enjoy for an hour or more puts you ahead of paying to go out to a movie.

Sometimes instead of using the monetary factor, I will be setting goals for myself. Examples of these goals might be reaching a certain level in an MMO, beating the arcade mode with every character in a fighting game, or winning a certain number of matches in a FPS. Setting goals will mostly be used for games that I want to keep motivating myself to stick with past the point of getting my moneys worth.

The last resort is just giving up on a game. Typically I don't buy bad games, but you never know, no matter how highly praised a game is, it just might not be my cup of tea. However, I will not let this be the easy way out. If I choose to give up on a game before getting to the break even point of monetary investment, then I have to make up these hours of entertainment on another game. For example, if I paid $10 for a game, play it for an hour, and decide I never want to play it again, I need to make up the other hour of entertainment by adding an extra hour onto a different game. Since I don't want to be in game hour debt hell, this will hopefully not be the case very often.

Wait a second... these sure as shit sound like rules. 

"Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered."

-K

The Stack

Over the next few days I will be outlining my plans for chipping away at my Stack of Shame. For now lets just start with some of the shame part. Here is my list of Steam games.

I have crossed out games that I have already sufficiently played (I do not plan on finishing everything in my SoS, I will address this in another post).

 Yeah I know...

It gets worse...

-K

Welcome to Stack Of Shame!

If you are not aware of what a stack of shame is, a quick Google search will clue you in.

Now that is out of the way, time for introductions...

Hi, my name is Kreg, and I have a Stack of Shame.
I am not particularly proud of this, nor am I regretful.
How bad is it? Bad. I don't know solid numbers, but in my Steam account alone I have 200 games, the vast majority I have never played. DAMN YOU STEAM SALES!
How did it start? Well... I have been a fan of video games since a very young age. Games of all genres and styles, new and old. When I was young it was different. I could only afford a few games a year, so I played what I had, rented or borrowed. Now that I am an adult, with disposable income, and weakness for cheap games, my collection exploded. I have been much better that last few months, but before that I could not stop myself from buying games while they were on sale. Now that is a key point to make, most of the games in my SoS were had for less the 5 bucks, which makes it hard to feel bad about acquiring them. What I do feel bad about is never getting around to playing them. These are not crappy games, many are triple A titles, but when you pay next to nothing for it and throw it on the shelf it is easy to never actually pop it in.
This is the reason I am starting this blog.
I am going to try motivating myself to get through my Stack of Shame by writing about it, and maybe others will get some kind of sick pleasure from watching the process.
So, in the words of Mario...
"Here We Go!"
-K