There are so many games that I want to play, or at least think I want to play. And so few hours to play them in! To make matters worse, I have a bad habit that exacerbates the ‘not enough time’ issue. Too often I sit down to play something but then instead of playing I just stare at my list of installed games pondering WHAT to play. I just freeze up and sometimes end up not playing anything, but also not doing something else more productive. I sit there in a semi-vegetative state doing nothing (ok, probably doom-scrolling) and losing track of the time until it’s too late to do anything.

Over the years I’ve done weird things to get past this. It started simple. Write down the games I’m playing, assign each a number, and then use a random number generator to pick a game. Honestly that worked fine. About half the time I’d play the game that was randomly picked, and half the time it would lead to me thinking “Nope, I’d rather play X instead” and going to play X.

But the world gets increasingly more complex, and I go along for the ride.

I’ve built a few apps to help me pick games to play, and the difference between them and the random die rolls was mostly in weighting things. The longer a game sits idle the more likely it would get picked, the idea being nothing sits unplayed for so long that I forget how to play.

This week I’ve upgraded again. My latest app does the weighting stuff but adds new features.

First, I can assign attributes to the games I add, and as an option have those attributes influence the random choice. So I can say “Pick a cozy game” and the system will weight games tagged as cozy more heavily. Mostly I wanted this because there are nights where I want to play something but don’t want to think too hard, so I want to play something I’m really familiar with. So that was new feature #1. Note in the screenshot at the top of my post I’ve chosen “Low Mental Energy” for the next pick!

Feature number 2 was a tickler section for games that haven’t been touched in a long time. I can then choose to play one of those or choose to “Park” it (eg take it out of rotation for now). This feature is so the randomness of the system doesn’t lead to a game becoming completely forgotten.

Feature #3 needs a bit more explanation. One of my issues with playing a lot of games is basically forgetting what I was doing the last time I played, or even forgetting HOW to play. Either of these often lead me to starting over, so I never wind up making any progress! I’d watched a YouTuber suggest that when you’re done playing a game, you make a short note in a journal reminding your future self what you were working on. I did that for like 2 days then I lost the journal. Then I found an app for the iPad that does the same thing. But then I need to keep track of my iPad. Which generally is under a pile of junk with a low battery warning.

So I decided to fold this functionality into the app. The workflow is basically:

1) Ask the app to pick a game (or just pick one myself).
2) Start a session and leave that page (it’s a web app) open while I play.
3) Play the game! And when I learn a new technique, or something eventful happens, I alt-tab over to the app and make a note in one of the journal fields.
4) Finish playing. Close the game then make a note of what I’ll be working on next time, and close the session.

I think this is going to be pretty fun; it’s almost like each game gets a micro-blog. At least it’ll be fun for 2 weeks until I drift away from using it. At least I’m honest about my attention span!

Yeah, just me being my weirdo self.