Keeping Up With The Joneses

It’s getting more and more difficult to keep up with the online games I play. I’m playing a few single player games at the moment (Donkey Kong, LittleBigPlanet 2, Need For Speed, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood), and I’m trying to keep up with the multiplayer games I want to enjoy, but I can’t.

In Starcraft 2, I’ve lost 18 out of the last 25 matches I’ve played. I used to be a Diamond level player (admittedly that was a bit of a fluke, but I like to think I was legitimate Gold), but right now I’m finding the Silver League to be difficult. I’m adapting, and I’ve turned the losing streak around (four out of those 7 wins were in my last 5 games) but it’s still a hard pill to swallow.

And all the time I spend playing Starcraft is time I’m not spending practicing Halo; I’ve never been this bad at crushing down Elites as I am right now; I haven’t even beaten the Campaign on Legendary yet, and let’s not even look at my multiplayer stats! (A Halo stat tracking website actually told me to just stop playing). And my World of Warcraft characters have fallen the furthest behind. Only one of my 70+ characters has surpassed 80 (he’s capped at 85, actually), and he isn’t even well geared enough to do Cataclysm heroics. And if I take the few hours it’ll take to gear him, my Starcraft skills will start to falter. Plus, a bunch of my friends are trying to get me into League of Legends, but thankfully I despise it, so that’s not a problem. And I think it’s a fair assumption that I won’t be hitting level 50 in AssCreeBro’s online play, although I do enjoy it.

I’m too much of a broad gamer to try and focus on these games. Because all of the time I spend on getting better at games I love is preventing me from seeking out new experiences. If I can draw any conclusions from my Achievements post, it’s that I don’t finish enough games; I’m just biting off more than I can chew. But I’d rather enjoy my games buffet style than play, say, only World of Warcraft but be a l337 h4x0r raider.

If this comes across as baseless whining, I don’t mean it to be. This is a great time where I have so many A+ games to be playing, so many different experiences I can enjoy. It’s just funny that this great variety is coming at the expense of savouring games that could otherwise occupy me for months. Still, I suppose I’ve learned nothing, save that it’s difficult to keep up with the Joneses (assuming the Joneses are hardcore Halo players). But as long as I finish Dragon Age before Dragon Age 2 launches, I think I’ll be okay.