The Collection

Here’s what I’ve played this last week.

Dex
Nail’d
Valley
404 Sight
Enemy Front
Red Faction II
Captain Tsubasa
Firefight Reloaded
Saints Row: Gat out of Hell

With Brutal Legend, Shadow Warrior, Shadowrun Returns, and Divinity: Dragon Commander cued.

Ray, why are you playing a bunch of games from the early 2010s?

I've realized that ten years ago... I had an actual semblance of my collection of games. There was once a time when my Steam Account wasn’t 1000+ but a few dozen. Games that I bought during a sale with an intended purpose, be that to start a new series, play coop with friends, or just cross a classic off the list.

All of these games squarely fit into this category.

They’re not all good, some of them I dropped after ten minutes - Enemy Front… good grief - but when scrolling all the way to the bottom of my Steam Library’s “recent activity”, I suddenly felt at home. Even though I’d never actually sat down to play these games, their names, artwork, and community hubs immediately struck me with a sense of place, like stepping back into a familiar building after a decade.

This personal goal of experiencing more art rather than falling into the old addictions of social-media and Youtube hasn’t been an easy journey. There’s days and weeks where I find myself sliding down the mountain I just climbed and with no one to blame but me. It’s usually when those addictions are numbed that I crawl back to my library and start a game more out of apathy than interest - not unlike when I asked out a flirting cashier a couple years ago - and at first it seems like I’m doomed to disinterest in the artform; back to back to back games that stir absolutely nothing inside me, when all of a sudden…

I get inspired by Techland’s attempt at an ATV/MX game?

Eyes wide mouth agape repeating “why is this good?” in my head over and over.

And I remember buying it.

I can’t recall if it was in a pack or not but I do remember buying it only a few years after it released for a steep discount thinking hmm, might be interesting to compare it and PURE. It took ten years for that to actually occur, and yet the inspiration is the same.

And it was playing these games it hit me.

I know exactly when this attachment to my library faded away.

The reason I made Halo: Combat Evolved 14 Years Later was because I was dirt poor, and wanted to make a far bigger video than my previous works but couldn’t afford to do anything on a game that was currently relevant to the gaming community. The following year after I’d been laid off and given the ad-revenue cheque from COGConnected for my work, it was my first time of games being directly connected to my livelihood.

When I bought Humble Monthly, it was for that month’s prime inclusion, Call of Duty Black Ops 3 Multiplayer Edition, with the intention - that was realized - of playing Call of Duty with my buddy that I’d played COD with for the last bunch of years.

But then I kept the subscription with the attitude that it may relate/inspire my work.

It didn’t.

All it did was flood my library with dozens upon dozens of games I have absolutely no personal attachment to. That’s not to say there’s total disinterest in all of them, lots of them are games I’m looking forward to finally crossing off the list, but I didn’t acquire them with any intent associated to them.

I feel the same looking at them as when I boot up Netflix.

Total disconnect.

It may be such a small thing in the grand-scheme of things but I’ve now realized how much I actually attach to not just the art I consume but everything that’s attached to them. When I see Strange Brigade, I smile, remembering it might be the last time friends that I’d grown up with in school had the time together to sit down and playthrough a whole game together.

When I see a bunch of Fantasy RPGs all bought around the same time, I remember playing through Dragon Age Origins and how it made me realize I don’t dislike Fantasy Games at all. The same for Stealth games when Splinter Cell, Thief, and Hitman were all bought around the same time.

I’ve accepted that this idea of just booting up a service and seeing a random collage of art just doesn’t do it for me. I meltdown not so much at the sheer level of choice but just the lack of connection.

I’m not going to be literal about going through my Steam collection in linear order of purchases, and at a lot of them will be games I drop immediately, and it’ll be a long, long time - if ever - that I exhaust the list before I’m gone. But I’ve already felt more in one-week of playing these games than years of browsing subscriptions.

I don’t have a word to describe what this is yet, but I know it means something to me.