No Game New Year: What Next?

So Norm posted on the NGNY Facebook page the other day about what’s going to happen when the next year starts. His post read: “As the year winds down, we prepare for another instance of No Game New Year! For those in this group, what are some rules you would like to see changed / modified / added?”

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’m looking on course to beat the challenge, and I think for those of us who didn’t, another go at it would be more than welcome. However, I don’t think I’ll be doing No Game New Year again for 2015.

Several of us have said that it’s changed the way we think about and play games, and while that’s absolutely true in my case, it’s not something I particularly want to keep up. Part of the appeal of NGNY for me is that it is not forever; it is a way to challenge myself on the way I spend my money and acquire new games. I’ve learned a lot from NGNY and it is certainly going to have an affect on how I handle it in the future, but I don’t want another year of not buying games.

For one thing, I’ve been quite interested in the Wii U. It looks like this is where all the consistently good console games are, and seems to be operating below the radar of the Triple-A market. It looks like good fun as well; far too many games take themselves too seriously and I’ve enjoyed games the most this year when they’ve actually been fun, not the gritty realism often mistaken for fun and tragically mis-applied in many cases.

There are a couple of Xbox 360 titles I could pick up as well, and now that I view enough youtube channels to be able to make an informed decision on what Steam games are good or not, I might branch out into PC, assuming my computer supports it. The likelihood is, then, that if NGNY continues into next year, I won’t participate in the challenge.

How Ever…

... but what will happen next year?

One of the major things that I’ve… realized from participating in No Game New Year is just how many of my games I’ve never beaten or even played. This is what many people call the Backlog. I’ve got backlogs in almost all my hobbies; songs I never learned on guitar, models from Games Workshop I’ve never built, board games I’ve never played, the list goes on. So the major challenge for me when playing games this year was getting through as many of them as I could, so that I can say that at least I’ve seen the story mode through to the end. Getting what I can out of the game, then moving on to another – with the option to come back to it, of course, if I’m in the mood.

This was made all the more special by the fact that I got to share that information on my blog with the NGNY guys, and while I think it’s only those guys who read them judging by my view count, it is great to know that people actually care what I’m putting out online!

So I might make that my challenge for next year. I’ll call it…

BACKLOG BEATDOWN.

The idea behind the challenge will be to beat as many of my games as I can, while still allowing for the possibility of new ones. I’ve seen some good ideas from some of the NGNY guys that might help with this; Andi for example suggested that you could only buy a game if you’ve beaten one previously. And if I can get enough people to do it, (All the NGNY guys are welcome!) it would create… a support network of gamers who comment on what they’ve cleared, ask for help if they need it (or if they’re playing Dark Souls, which basically amounts to the same thing,) and generally making getting through the ever-growing pile of games a lot easier.

I’ll have to think carefully about how I’m going to do this, but I’m definitely up for the challenge.

Who’s with me?