"There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do."

I play a lot of video games, read a lot about video games and I enjoy most aspects of video games. Without a doubt I am, and always has been, a video game geek. It is a societal label I'm not ashamed of so I wear game themed t-shirts and make game themed comments that, often times, fall on deaf ears. Hell I once went to a job interview wearing a Double Fine hoodie.

Despite this love affair with video games I have been feeling like I have been playing too many video games lately. Now don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying I'm addicted to video games, far from it. There are simply way too many video games being released lately and I don't have time to play them all. Yet some how I tried to play them all anyway.

It is usually right around this time of year when I catch up on all my gaming and have nothing to play. This is totally fine by me because the weather is nice so I can enjoy my time outside while I can. After all Wisconsin winters can be brutal so you can spend your days playing video games then.

Over the last few years I have been playing more and more video games during the summer months. Not because I want to but because more and more games have been released in the summer. In the past I would play games in the summer because there were just too many games that came out during the last holiday season to be able to keep up. Now I find myself playing those as well as the great games coming out during the summer months.

Video game companies have learned that they can release a game at any time of the year and people will play it. These publishers can now release a game without having to fight the tons of games that flood the market during the holidays. Great news for the industry but bad news for my free time.

I started to feel like I didn't have enough time to play good games anymore. As an experiment I decided to see how many games I plan to play this year. I was going to look at the upcoming game release schedule to see how far behind I will be this time next year.

This month, for example, there are 29 games scheduled for release and of those 29 games there are 6 that I would love to play. Granted they may not all be good but for the sake of the experiment lets say I buy all 6 of those games regardless of quality. I buy them all and sit down to start playing.

Currently on average I play 4 hours of video games a week. Although that number may sound low, keep in mind it is summer and the weather has been outstanding lately. So let us assume that each game takes around 10 hours of game play to complete. At my current rate of game play (ie summer gaming levels) it would take me 3 1/2 months to finish all six games. Even with a few all night game sessions we are still looking at around 3 months of gaming out of six games.

I read that number and think to myself, that is a pretty good return on your entertainment dollar. Looking further down the release schedule I start to see the the problem with all this quality entertainment. Over the remaining three months of the year games will continue to be released.

In September and October there are another 11 games I would like to play. If you do the math I'm now well into 2011 and I haven't even looked at what is coming out in November and December of this year.

With the yearly deluge of quality games that are released during the holiday season it's a safe bet there will be at least another 6 games released that will peak my interest. By the time I'm done playing all the games I would like to experience from 2010 we will be knocking on the door of 2012. You might as well add the few games that were released this spring that I haven't gotten to yet either.

Grand total of about 35 games I want to experience. WOW!

Obviously I'm not complaining about the large selection of quality games being released. The good news is that of those 35 games 25 will be good fun to play. For someone like me it couldn't get any better. Still I have to wonder if people are starting to skip games they would otherwise enjoy? 35 is no small number and if you want to play them all you have to skim by something.

The inspiration for this post is based on playing through 2008's Dead Space for a second time. It was released at a time of year that is full of quality games that are all trying to get noticed. When Dead Space was released I played through it in a few short hours (If I remember correctly about 8 hours). I recall beating the game and when asked if it was good I complained that the game was too short and the story wasn't fleshed out enough.

Just a few weeks ago a friend of mine dropped off a copy of Dead Space at my door so I could play it again. What I discovered as I played through the game again is that I missed all the nuances of the game on my first play through. I was in such a hurry to get through the story and on to the next game that I skipped all the audio logs and text logs that are found throughout the game. In effect skipping half the story as well messing with the games pacing.

When I finished the game again I realized that I have been playing through games too fast in order to play everything I could get my hands on. Often abandoning a great game long before I get tired of it just to move onto the next one.

Looking back over the last two years I wondered how many others games like Dead Space had I played? How many good games did I think were "OK" just because I wanted to get to the next best thing? When I went to answer those questions I found that I didn't like the answers. I have been playing too many bad games just to finish them and I haven't been spending enough time on the good games.

Looking at my game shelf now I see a few gems I would love to go back and spend some more time with. Heck I have a ton of download games I've barely touched let along gotten sick of. Keeping that in mind I'm no longer looking at 35 games I want to play by the end of the year. Instead there are three games coming out this fall that catch my interest. When I stopped and looked at my gaming habits I was playing too many games because they are games and not because I was interested by the subject matter or game play. Maybe this is the birth of a more responsible gamer who doesn't need to play everything under the sun? Maybe this is just a phase where I don't want to buy games right now?

In the end I think Tim Schafer said it best.

"There is enough love in my heart for all great games. Just not enough hours in the day!"