Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Methodology Update

I've both bought and sold a lot of games since the last update, but I'll avoid going into the specifics of them. Instead I have a bit of a methodology / backlog rules update I'd like to try.

First, trying to budget games into my savings account is a nightmare. Things move around way too much (this includes funds, prices, and release dates) for it to make much sense. Especially with how I have it set up (one account, detailed spreadsheet)


So I'm separating them, except for big ticket items. Like a rare game I want ($100+), expensive DLC (DOA5:LR season passes), or expensive hardware purchases (starting to save now for the NX/ NEO).
Basically the idea is to only use the savings account for things that are too expensive to be an impulse buy, or to plan for hardware.

The other plan is to limit the frequency of random game purchases. I'd also like to limit the pre-orders I'm not super excited about, but this hasn't worked to well in the past.

So, as is typical. Anything with an extremely limited run (summon night 5) or something I'm very excited about (Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Special Editon) are immune.. maybe. Need to find the sweetspot with some testing before completely committing.

So what's the plan?
The simply version is this: Beat 2 games, get 1. Budget time to play things that don't count as chipping away at the backlog

To accomplish this I'm adopting a bit of a 'slots' mentality again, but pairing it with 'days'.

There are PROGRESSION days for beating games in the backlog, and CONTINUOUS days for just playing something that's fun.

PROGRESSION DAYS: Work on games in the following order: 2x NEW, 2x Highly Rated (personal), 2x Random. This should be a good mix of the latest games, the games I think I want to play the most (I rate every game when I put it in my backlog on Darkadia, and I really suggest anyone else do the same), and Random to kind of mix things up and ensure no corners of the backlog get outright neglected (a game that doesn't have release date info in its GiantBomb entry, messing up Darkadia's sorting, etc)

But it serves another purpose. To vary the new backlog games coming in!
The idea is that when I beat two new games, I unlock a "pre-order" credit for myself. Whenever I pre-order a game, I'll spend one of these fictional credits.
When I beat two highly rated games, I'll get the game with the highest rating (that isn't a pre-order) from my wishlist. I also rate everything when I add it to my wishlist spreadsheet.
When I beat two random games, I get a random game. Again, this makes sure that a low, gut-feeling rating isn't the kiss of death for a game in my wishlist. If I realistically would never make it to 2.5's and lower I'd probably never add or never rate something 2.5 or lower in the spreadsheet. So it needed some wiggle room.

I'm also not going to be afraid to 'shelve' or 'null' a game that I don't ever want to beat when coming across it here. In general, retiring a game won't count as beating it but I should really consider selling it if I disliked it that much. If I sell it, it's okay to count it toward unlocking the chance to buy a new game.

CONTINUOUS DAYS: These are for games I just really love. It's not about completion, but I may have milestones or goals of course. For me, these games seem to be: World of Warcraft, Audiosurf, Hatsune Miku games, Dead or Alive 5: Last Round, Pokemon (FireRed / LeafGreen / Red / Blue / Yellow / Virtual Console releases.. I like Gen 1), Valkyrie Crusade, Sakura Clicker, or finally: I can take a look at games I've beaten and just see if there's anything I feel like playing more. Like a random fighting or shmup game I technically 'beat' easily, but that didn't really do it justice.

It's also important that these be able to trump progression days if I feel like it. Sometimes I have a game 'assigned' to play and I just won't touch it for days, finding something or nothing else to do but I also won't just relax and play the games I love out of guilt for not making progress when I should. That's useless, and having a 'rule to break the rules' I think would help me quite a bit.

Current flow is set up like this:
Alternate PROGRESSION and CONTINUOUS every other day (continuous can trump progression if you just don't feel like it)

PROGRESSION
NEW StarCraft II: Nova Covert Ops Mission Pack #1
NEW Dead or Alive Xtreme 3
RATING Time and Eternity
RATING Aegis of Earth: ProtoNovus Assault
RANDOM Puyo Pop (Ngage)
RANDOM Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix


Success will result in:
NEW: Pre-order Credit +1. Current count 0
RATING: Croixleur Sigma (PS4/Vita)
RANDOM: Eternal Destiny (Steam/PC)

CONTINUOUS
World of Warcraft (main)
World of Warcraft (alts)
Dead or Alive 5/5+/Last Round
Audiosurf
Project Diva F
Project Diva F 2nd
Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen
Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow cart of VC release
Valkyrie Crusade
Sakura Clicker

And that's the plan! We'll see how it goes. I think the bump in the road will be the same as always. Games are long (especially all the JRPG's I play), and it's easy to buy more than I play. This is a step toward trying to correct that. (after all, if I pass on buying something I can just wish it in my wishlist with a high rating and it'll flow in natually).

Often my concern is that a game will get more expensive later, but if I pace it out like this I don't think it'll be a problem. If a game gets more expensive from the print drying up it's not a huge deal since that won't happen to all of them. MOST of them SHOULD get cheaper, and since the buying rate will be slowed these two things together should result in extra cash to put up for something a bit more rare / out of print.

Thanks for checking in, and sorry for going idle for a bit. Good luck with your backlogs and I'll see how this system works out for me!

Monday, February 8, 2016

New Games (2/2/2016-2/6/2016)

Steam Heart's (Sega Saturn Import)


BLADE ARCUS from Shining EX -Tony's Premium Fan BOX- (PS4)


Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel (PS4)


Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth (PS4)


Gravity Rush: Remastered (PS4)


Megadimension Neptunia VII Limited Edition


Sunday, January 31, 2016

Now Playing (2/1/2016) - Trails in the Sky First Chapter

Next up I'll be starting The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky



It breaks the order I originally had set up, but I made a deal with my wife over it. She's been a bit stubborn to play Steins;Gate given that it's a visual novel. She recently played TitS:FC and was suggesting it about as eagerly as I was Steins;Gate to her. Eventually we agreed that I'd play TitS:FC next and she'd also play Steins;Gate next. Looking forward to seeing how both things go!


Games Beaten catch up post (2/1/2016)

I haven't beaten nearly as many games as I've acquired recently, so the backlog continues to swell. I did manage to beat a few though, at least.

Panzer Dragoon Saga
Cel Damage HD
Amplitude

Panzer Dragoon Saga is a charming game in my collection. It's incredibly unique and I appreciate a lot that it pulled off in its world building and storytelling, but even though I'd say I definitely enjoyed the game I found it difficult to keep coming back to it to play some more. Confession time: I only made it to the part where you approach the tower the last time and really, really didn't feel like doing it, so I just YouTube'd the ending :x I will say that I have a much greater appreciation of Panzer Dragoon Orta after seeing the ending, though.



Cel Damage HD - This game was on sale recently and was one I kind of wanted as a kid. I had an original Xbox as my console of that generation along with an official Xbox Magazine subscription. One of the demos I really enjoyed playing over and over was Cel Damage. It's not a great game, but I was happy to spend a few bucks to relive it on my Vita for a bit.



Amplitude - I dig it. I liked the original Amplitude on PS2 a lot when I was a kid. The PS4 game is quite short, but the original music met all of my expectations. Changing lanes and keeping a multiplier going on the highest difficulties is a lot harder than I remember it being. I just can't tell with my peripheral vision which button that note is going to be a split second after I seek a different track. Otherwise, I'm really happy this Kickstarter was successful!


New games catch-up post (2-1-2016)


I've been a bit lazy about posting some news games for a bit, but here they are! These were mostly the ones I mentioned before as being in the mail. There are still a couple of things remaining and I'll update as soon as those arrive.


Pictured:
Rodea the Sky Soldier
Lost Dimension
Atelier Escha & Logy Plus Limited Edition
Langrisser II
Panorama Cotton
Divine Sealing
Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower
Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker
Ghost Blade Collector's Edition
Redux: Dark Matters Limited Edition (includes Dux 1.5 too)
Eternal Filena
Emerald Dragon
Slayers
Cyber Knight
Shockman Zero
Sailor Moon: Another Story
Tenchi Muyo! Game-Hen
Der Langrisser
Dragon Ball Z Super Saiya...something. It's really hard to remember. :P It's the RPG
Magic Knight Rayearth


Not pictured:
Final Fantasy 13 collector's edition guide
Final Fantasy 13-2 collector's edition guide
Parasite Eve on PSN
Suikoden on PSN
Chrono Cross on PSN
Xenografts on PSN
Cel Damage HD on PSN

The PSN games were all on sale for great prices when I picked them up.
Rodea, Lost Dimension, and Devil Survivor were also on sale (+another 20% off with GCU) from Best Buy.
Darkstalkers was just an auction with no bids I saw was ending soon on eBay
Langrisser II, Panorama Cotton, and Divine Sealing are all reproduction games I got from sellers on Etsy. Unfortunately Divine Sealing is still being locked out by actual Genesis hardware, so I have to play it through a Game Genie. A bummer, but not a biggie.

The two dreamcast games are by Hucast. The Ghost Blade Collector's Edition was on sale from Play-Asia for a bit lower than sellers on eBay had it for (and screw the VAT that Hucast has to tack on).
Redux: Dark Matters, the other dreamcast game, I got for half of going price when a seller surprisingly accepted my lowball best offer on eBay.

The remaining 10 reproduction SNES games were all purchased from OCD Reproductions. I requested they paint 9 on them white and Sailor Moon pink and have to say I really like how they all turned out!

Eventually I'll need to bring my printer back to life and print some new covers for them. Given that not all of them have readily available covers from The Cover Project though this could be a bit of an undertaking. Unfortunately, the longer I put it off the bigger of a job it'll become too. :P

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Gaming Budget

I decided to come up with a budget to control gaming and gaming related purchases.
I think the best way to control it is to also tie it to my savings.

ie, 25% of everything I put into savings can be used to gaming things.
Or, everytime I want to buy something I need to also put 3x that amount into my savings account.

This won't apply to current pre-orders or things I just got in the mail (but to compensate my tax return is going completely to home repairs and none to gaming, so I think we'll even out a little)

I will try to apply it immediately though. For example, right now Best Buy has the launch edition of Rodea on Wii U for $40. With my GCU discount I could get it down to $32 or so. Meaning I also have to put $96 into my savings account if I want to buy this, making total 'expense' $128

There will undoubtedly be some exceptions. Maybe favorite franchises like Neptunia or very limited editions like the Fire Emblem Fates SE. Seriously, any Nintendo pre-order I see that I want is getting placed immediately these days. They sell out way too fast.

Alternate ways to compensate are also excluded.
I can use my credit card cashback rewards without this rule. Same for gift cards from bing rewards.

That's about it for now. We'll see how it goes!

Monday, January 18, 2016

Gaming Summary January 14th-18th

BEAT:

I finished up Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 a little bit back. I really enjoy these games, even though there's so much recycled content in each one (I swear I've done the same few dungeon layouts with the same enemies many times across these games).

But there's something uniquely satisfying about leveling up to get your best combos even though you know what they are, or adding your favorite CPU, unleashing your favorite flashy EXE Drive (as loyal as I am to Iris Heart, I've gotta say I really love Vert's EXE Drives).

PLAYED:

I also started Panzer Dragoon Saga. For some reason I'm usually hesitant to start games that are recommended to me so highly or have such great acclaim. I'm experiencing this a little bit now with the Trails in the Sky games and will probably put them off for a bit. (maybe it's because thus happened once with a terrible game, Oblivion, and now I have trust issues). But my 8 slot system finally served it up to me.

I have to say it's a pretty neat game. I didn't know much about it beforehand - the first Panzer Dragoon game I ever played was Orta on the original Xbox, but I thought it was a really neat game. I knew that Saga was an RPG and somehow got the impression things were turn-based fights while riding a Dragon rather than the normal rail-shooter gameplay. I also somehow got the impression that there would be a lot of "on-foot" gameplay using the clunky reticle to target objects "near" and "far" to unlock some annoying puzzles that would resemble a point-and-click game.

I'm happy to say I'm wrong and kind of right about a few of those things. While I definitely prefer traditional turn-based RPG's, Saga is kind of in-between. Basically you activate skills based on a meter that fills at a set rate. This meter freezes when you're re-positioning yourself (but your enemies' doesn't!). Thankfully the entire battle seems to freeze when you try to find a target for shooting your gun. There can be a lot of target on screen and trying to cycle through to the one you need can take a while. It would be infuriating if your enemies kept re-positioning you while you were trying to target someone.

It doesn't seem too puzzle heavy. They actually do feel a little "point-and-click" style, but so far they've been so straightforward that it hasn't been a problem. Bonus: It seems like you won't normally do these on foot, most of the ones I've encountered I still get to fly around on my dragon. Yay!

Cutscenes are a little painful to view, but man, this is probably the coolest looking Saturn game I've played when flying around. I guess the other Panzer Dragoon games look kind of similar, but being about to freely fly around makes it a lot more fun.

Which brings me to my next point: Linearity. This is a HUGE plus for me. I hate open world games. A lot. Give me linear, please. Final Fantasy XIII isn't a masterpeice because it's story was kind of flat, but the gameplay itself was actually a ton of fun. Everything seems to be very linear so far. Sometimes you'll get dropped in an area to fly around in, but they aren't massive. You can explore to whole rectangle in just a couple of minutes. It's not like you have to slowly drag yourself across a massive world or anything (you pick points from an overworld map acting more like a menu). Which is beautiful. I love it. If you like open world games where you have to walk halfway across the earth while being lost I'm not sure I can understand what you enjoy about that. Levels and level selection are king.

NEW GAMES:

Okay, so I mentioned having a lot of stuff forthcoming in the mail before I switched to the new, backlog-aware me and said that I wouldn't count those. That's still true, there are some things still coming, but I've definitely gone astray and added even more things. Something about trying to restrain myself seems to always end in me going hunting for new things to "buy later". But then I invariably find some reallllly cool things I want now for a good price and pull the trigger singing the "buy now, regret later" mantra. I'll save the long list for now and post as things arrive, but it's a pretty spectacular mix of items at this points. Collector's Edition books, posters, modern-day dreamcast games, import games, reproductions, and new limited edition releasing are all involved and it's more than a little crazy.

BACKLOG METHODS:

This brings me to thinking more about my methods again. Waiting to beat 8 games before buying 1 new one is madness. I can't live like that. 4 is still too much. Maybe I could work with 2, but I think there'd be too much fluctuation. Playing a lot of short games would still result in buying a lot in a short time.

I'm considering something more like a dollar amount allocation. Somewhere in the range of $30-$50 a week, and then spending it whenever I want. This wouldn't just be limited to video games though, but would probably also include manga, anime, figurines, etc. Basically it's just a good old fashioned budget. Even better, don't allow myself a dollar allocation for my vices until I also put a certain (higher, definitely) dollar amount away in savings. ~$200-250 sounds about right.

I still very much like the idea of progressing on my backlog, but a budget may be more maintainable for me at this point. I haven't decided in either direction yet for sure, so I'll continue to think about it.

Beat 2, buy 1 could be a ton of fun. Especially if I require in the next cycle that one of the two games be the most recently acquired one. ie, Beat two games -> buy a new game -> Beat the new game, plus one backlog game -> repeat.

But I don't think it'll have quite the flexibility I need being a game collector. I can't pass up a short pre-order opening for something like the Fire Emblem Fates SE just because my backlog rules haven't caught up yet since it would probably be out of stock the very next day. Similarly, there are some games I'm hunting that I just can't FIND yet. Their secondhand appearance on the internet is really just that rare, and when it pops up I'd probably grab it. It could be tomorrow, or it could be in 6 months.

There are some other backlog problems I'd like to address. For example, there are some games I've beaten but would still like to come back and play. This mostly seems to be fighting games. Dead or Alive, Bloody Roar, etc. I beat them, but they're easy to jump back into and play a little bit more. With such a mechanical approach to my backlog I'm really limited in my approach to games I've already beaten. This also applies to something like World of Warcraft, which I really enjoy but obviously if I want to clear my backlog I can't spend too much time in it.

Possible solutions could be to dedicate a day of the week to replays, do a replay after a certain number of backlog games beaten, etc. Functionally it would work, but it doesn't sound appealing. I'll have to think on it. Or, I could set post-beat goals for a game and create them effectively and "things in my backlog to do" for example, I could say that getting an alt to max level in world of warcraft is a backlog goal and then just cycle it in somewhere like everything else. When it comes up, level up the alt, grind out the honorable kill count, etc and then move on to something else. For a fighting game it could be to play a certain number of matches, unlock some costumes or something. Not sure, but I'm leaning more toward something like this. The problem of course is that my slot rotation would be a bit weird for arbitrary tasks rather than a game. Not to mention adding it to something like Darkadia. I think in Backloggery this would be easy. You could just make World of Warcraft a compilation and then treat each goal as a "game".

Which brings me to some other thoughts. Jumping all over the place with the slots is great since I couldn't stick to just one system of "newest first", "longest first" etc. but I still long for that sometimes. I'm leaning more toward "marathoning" in my backlog. Like, let's crank out some final fantasy games. Or, let's take those 8 game slots and only do original Xbox games. Or, forget the slots this time let's only play 8 newest games by release date or something.

Rough draft cycle could be something like:

8 slot mix of 5-star games: NEW, RANDOM, OLD, LONG, A-Z, Z-A, LOWEST, HIGHEST
8 new games
8 random games
8 old games
8 long games
One game from every letter of the alphabet
8 lowest critically acclaimed games
8 highest critically acclaimed games
8 games from one platform (this could be random, a choice, or the platform with the most unbeaten games)
8 Genre-specific games (this could be random, chosen, or could even do a rotation for each genre. "action game marathon, RPG marathon, Racing game marathon, fighting game, rhythm game" etc.

This doesn't solve the "how to do I decide when to play games I've already beaten?" problem at all, but calling each it's own marathon with a start and finish sounds like a blast. 8 is probably too many, admittedly. I think we'd be better off with something like 3-5.

Another downside is that in order to get some of the information, like game length, would require me to put all of my games into howlongtobeat again. It's a feat that would take a long time, and I'm thinking I'd like to avoid it. Darkadia would be much simpler, but it doesn't have a game length estimate / sort.

I've also considered opening up "RANDOM"'s to include games that've already been played but I don't think it would work. There are only a handful of games I want to play more of, opening it up to everything would be a mess.

I more like the idea of adding things to my backloggery that start with "TASK: Unlock more costumes Dead or Alive 5" "TASK: Get 100,000 honorable kill in World of Warcraft"

The "TASK:" at the beginning is a must. My backloggery is an extremely accurate representation of my game collection that I wouldn't want to wreck in a way I couldn't undo. With a prefix if I changed my mind I could come back later and search for the "TASK" string if I wanted to delete all of these entries.

Backloggery sure could use a way to mark a game I have, haven't beaten, could beat, but just don't want to play without completely removing it from all the site's statistics like "NULL" does.

The more I start to think about backlog as a set of goals and breaking them into tasks the more it starts to feel like a bit similar to corporate management / issue tracking. So a new hobby of mine is to kind of take productivity blogs / tips and apply their ideas to playing games. The result is both part hilarious and actually kind of useful.

I'll save the elaboration from each bullet point (not to mention the whole article this was summarizing), but taking this list and adding a gaming spin for example is pretty amusing:

1. Develop Self-awareness - Realize you're not making enough progress on your backlog and try to play more
2. Give a Shit - You have to care about beating your backlog! Otherwise the apathy and shrink-wrapped games will consume you!
3. Minimize Uncertainty - This was about avoiding poorly defined goals and making them clear. (I'm a bit guilty of that in this very article)
4. Commit to Getting Something Done Every Day - Obviously beating a game every day would be nuts, but I think everyone would be happy to make sure there's a little game time every day
5. Never say "I'll finish it up tomorrow" or "I'll make up for it by coming in early/staying late/working the weekend".  - This one actually doesn't translate well at all. You should absolutely shuffle around your leisure time this way if you feel like it (one caveat: sleep is important)
6. Do Not Overpromise to Make Up for Poor Productivity - If anyone does this, it's probably not healthy for a gaming backlog. "I didn't beat my game on time! Now I need to punish myself and do more!". No, stop. This is where you should remind yourself a backlog isn't a job.
7. Have an Objective Productivity Metric - This is pretty straightforward. Weekly, monthly, blah blah blah, look back on what games you've played / beaten.
8. Accept That "The Grind" Is Part of the Job - Yes? No? Maybe? If something isn't fun, you should stop. But even great games you love may have some annoying things you hate.
9. Screwing Off - Originally this was about still finding time to waste time on Facebook and the like. I guess it also applies. You aren't always racing. Find some time to screw around in the game, or go do something else like watch some videos. Productivity in the war against your backlog doesn't have to consume your life!



To sort of summarize all of this section in a few points:
I'd like to do some 'marathons' like the ones I listed above.
I'd also like to find a sort of mechanical way to complete some tasks in games I've finished.
I need to decide what my end goal to control is. Budget? Or backlog? Leaning budget, but maybe I could do both.