Delayed Gratification and I

This is both a mix of an article that I've had half written a few months ago and a reply to Ross' article about not playing Bioshock: Infinite.

If it's not Bioshock: Infinite, it's Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. If it's neither of those, it's Tomb Raider or Defiance. Replace any of those names with three dozen others, and you have a gamers current state of affairs in terms of what they want to play at the moment.

Way back when, you would have to get up out of your chair, travel to your nearest bricks and mortar games store, converse with real human beings, purchase the game that you had heard great things about, travel home and then commence playing. After taking all of that into consideration, I found that it was actually much better if I just replayed a game I already owned. Nowadays, however, it's all online, it's all instant and it's all at your fingertips, waiting to be played.

We, as gamers, are spoilt for choice and this is the exact reason I haven't completed a game since 2008 (it was Fable II, for those of you who were wondering). By the time I've gotten into a game, another one has piqued my interest. "I'll play that one for 10 minutes, it can't hurt, then I'll go back to completing my current game" I would think to myself. A few hours later, I've lost interest in the first game and am now heavily involved in the second game, probably something to do with multiplayer. Two days later and I've most likely been interested by another title and so on and so forth before my Steam, Xbox and PS3 library looks like a hoarder's paradise, filled with half-completed or never touched games as I slowly mutter to myself "I'll play that one later".

As of late, I have been trying to stick to one game before buying another, that way I may be behind the times, but I'll be spending less money and playing more of a game. It didn't work out all that great to be honest. I picked up Skyrim after having my saved data corrupted a few days after release and got a good 20 hours out of it. However, shortly after I had started to play, Defiance came along. The thing with Defiance is that it's linked to it's TV show counterpart. This means that I had to drop Skyrim in favour of Defiance because it is time sensitive. I played 18 hours of this and then went to a Paradox Interactive event in our nation's capital, London. Here I got a glimpse of Leviathan: Warships and was instantly hooked. I dropped Defiance and picked up this. My plan to actually complete a game has yet to come to light.

I think what I need to do is teach myself some delayed gratification. I may not have my cake until I have finished my carrots. However, this little metaphor makes me think that it's becoming a bit of a chore to complete this current game so I'll change it to: I may not have my cake until I have finished my slightly older, stale and outdated cake.

I'm not too good at this metaphorical business.

Metaphors aside, I would like to be able to stop jumping from one game to the next without a second thought, but it's difficult. I want to play so many games and the sales keep enticing me to buy new and old games alike that I have yet to play. They then sit in my Steam library, staring at me like I've done something wrong by purchasing them, which makes me feel bad and I have to give them a try, at least once, further delaying the completion of my current game and thus, detracting the amount I actually care about completing my current game.

I seem to be doing nothing more than spinning in circles right now.