How am I supposed to clear my video game backlog when multiplayer exists?
New Years Resolutions always come from a fairly kind place in a person’s heart. Maybe it’s ‘I want to get to a healthy weight’ or ‘give up drinking’ or maybe even ‘let’s write more’. As for me? Well, I just want to get through a good chunk of my video game backlog this year.
How’s it going? Well, it’s going pretty awful, thanks for asking. Before I got into writing about video games, I was very dedicated to sticking to one game per month to try and complete it. Sure, some of those games were ones I’d played previously – yes, I’m looking at you Dragon Age 2 – but I usually completed them in a week or two.
Then Overwatch happened. I had only just started to write about video games then, mostly on a blog that nobody dared to read because it was pretty crap. But I enjoyed it, and writing about a multiplayer game that both me and my friends loved sounded like a good idea.
In 2018, the year where I first got into writing video games during my time at university, I consistently put in over 1000 hours of Overwatch. It was also the year that I played only five other games, two of them were multiplayer as well. While neither of those reached over 100 hours, it became pretty obvious to me that the majority of my time spent gaming that year was with friends in multiplayer.
It wasn’t time wasted, of course. At the time I truly was having the time of my life, playing with friends and making new ones online. Overwatch was fun, and we enjoyed the characters to the point that most birthdays and holidays we gave each other Overwatch related gifts.
Looking back, I can’t say I regret it. But it’s 2020, new single-player games are just waiting for me to jump into them and explore their stories, stories that I know I’d love because who can resist a good story, right? Not me!
Only, I seem to have fallen into the same rut once again. In 2019, my most played game was Apex Legends, getting just over 110 hours this time. The next game was Dead by Daylight, a game that I’d only recently got into in October time. But, according to my stats, I’d racked up nearly 90 hours on that alone. Both are multiplayer games, and the only game that came close to either of them was Yakuza 0.
So, is this a bad thing? Not really, I am enjoying playing games with my friends and I’ve even become closer to a friend that I only played Dungeons and Dragons with before. Multiplayer games do bring us together, and I find it hard to see that as terrible.
From another perspective, is it bad for my New Years Resolution of getting through my video game backlog? Oh most certainly. Particularly due to the inclusion of ‘battle passes’ and the rampant need to get everything on said battle pass in order to get the ‘full’ treatment of what the game offers to you. With how easy these passes play on their players, it’s probably no wonder that I’m so obsessed with multiplayer games right now.
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