After the massive success of sharing my goals, and importantly my plan, to complete the Pokédex last year, I’m going to repeat this with my gaming and blog goals for 2019. I found it very helpful to have a plan to refer back to to keep myself on task and written justifications for motivation. Even if you don’t read it, having it publicly posted will be enough to keep me accountable to avoid the embarrassment of not following through. But hectoring me in the comments helps. Like last time, this post will be updated to cross things off as they’re completed and modified if things go awry.
Backlog of games to complete
Terranigma
Years ago. From the maniacal fanaticism of Bill and others, I heard about this Super Nintendo adventure game that only got a JPN and PAL release and was really good. Someone was selling it second hand one time on a forum and I bought it. It was only the other month that I finally sat down to play it. It’s really good but I got stuck on a boss and missed a day or two and now it feels like forever away. The fear of the save battery dying should propel me to finish this quickly and sell it onto others.
Deadline for completion: February 7th.
Breath of the Wild
Amazing I still haven’t finished this incredible game. I’m putting it on top of my backlog to complete because we have some site plans for the game’s two year anniversary in March.
Deadline for completion: March 3rd.
Xenoblade Chronicles X
When this game came out I really loved it and wrote about how I was looking forward to analysing the themes of it’s unique colonial setting. The game never really took advantage of that though, or maybe I hadn’t found it as I’m maybe only halfway through before the sheer scale of the game wore me down.
Deadline for completion: April 9th.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Might as well just finish the series I guess? Xenoblade 2 has captivated me the least so far but the others rave about it and I worry that they’re limiting what they say out of protecting me from spoilers. I can just close my eyes guys! Also I found myself longing for playing a fantasy epic in bed and this is my chance.
Deadline for completion: May 15th
This War of Mine
This game is very hard and very original and I want to beat it. Also it would be nice to use my ancient, creaky old Macbook Air for some gaming.
Deadline for completion: June 9th.
VA-11 HALL-A
I started a review of this when it came out but I stopped because I stopped playing but I want to give it another go and compare it to the other games I’ve played about working at a bar, an activity I hope to never have to do in real life.
Deadline for completion: July 1st
By this point there should be some other games to get me through the rest of the year.
Pietriot articles to write
Why you should give us money on Patreon.
We quietly created a Patreon page and stuck up a link up but no one is supporting us yet. I need to tell you why that’s wrong.
I’ll write this after I convince a couple of friends and family to contribute from the outset. Hopefully this month.
Experience Scarcity
Something I’ve been thinking about a bit, regarding preservation/archival of games, the inevitable future of subscription streaming for all our entertainment, experiences vs material objects. Yeah there’s a bit here and it might be spread across several essays or one big thesis. But I had an ‘aha!’ moment that I want to think about and then discuss and have people tell me I’m wrong so I’ll try to put it all out there.
Start writing next week. See where it goes from there.
Digital decluttering, the Konmari method for your Steam library
Probably the last two years I’ve been into minimising and decluttering although not very good at doing it in practise. I’ve been like this sinne picking up Marie Kondo’s cult book and wanting to write about how I’ve gone about downsizing my game collection as well as how this applies to the digital space where everything I’ve bought since the death of the Wii is. I’ve been pushing back writing about this, probably because I’ve been pushing back the process of decluttering. But now that Konmari is back in vogue with a Netflix show and the BBC is posting articles about digital decluttering I should ride that wave of interest.
This is something that should just internally provoke a lot of discussion because, I know just among contributors to this blog are people who offloaded their entire collections of old games and people who keep meticulously organised indexed museums to classic video games. There’s those of us who shun all digitalisation of media and there’s me who digitises all their media. There’s no right or wrong way to do this of course but it’d be interesting if we could all explain why we behave the way we do with our gaming stuff and encourage each other to consider different perspectives.
Proposed timeline: This could take all year. Which I realise means I miss the peak Konmari bandwagon, but I want to share my personal story. I could probably start now with just brief accounts of what it’s felt like to rid myself of the vast bulk of my gaming collection and another story about how I might deal with the Steam issue and then another reflecting on that? That’s three articles I guess. Look, I’m planning in real time. Yes I am trying to turn this into a lifestyle blog.
- Reflection on decluttering – February
- What to do about Steam? – March
- Reflections on that – April
Single player games suck
Single player games are so tiresome, only multiplayer titles can truly be called games
Multiplayer games suck
Multiplayer games are just shit, you’re wasting your time and should be playing single player titles.
Terranigma Critical Analysis
Theres a lot that has been written about Terranigma, but perhaps not as much as should’ve been written considering its age and quality. Inspired by some long reviews I’ve read, I want to give Terranigma similar treatment. So far the best I’ve found for the game is this piece by shanktoofs. I hope to deliver something of similar depth.
Plan to publish in October.
More content generally
Along with the topics above, I hope to write something, be it impressions a review or a journal, on every game I play. I will also want to leave more bullshit commentary and hot takes on drama and events in the gaming industry.
I think what has hampered my production in the past is a sense of perfectionism. I didn’t want to write about something because I felt like I hadn’t fully researched it or the result wasn’t as informative or entertaining as I liked. And this would often prevent me from even starting. Looking back at what I have produced over the last, fuck, 15 years, none of it is perfect, most of it is rubbish, but it’s there, and that’s a lot more than the stuff I haven’t published. I want to be more comfortable with being wrong publicly and with unpacking my thoughts before they’re fully formed. Writing more will help me to write more. This is all practice and it’s not like I’m getting paid.
What could throw all this out the window
Overriding everything I’ve written here is my number one goal for this year; to get a fulfilling job. If I end up with something as all engrossing as I had in 2014, well my output for Pietriots might look like what I produced in 2014. Anyway I hope you enjoyed the last 1700 words I wrote in a couple of hours. If only I could write cover letters for jobs like this.
Pietriots 
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