The Ultimate Backlog Item

There was never enough time to play every video game.

That proposition is even worse these days, both on account of how many video games are released every single day and the fact that, according to scientists, we're all getting older? What a bad deal.

On the latest Remap Radio, someone asked what we'd bring back with us, if a time vortex consumed us and send us back a few decades. But Rob had a simpler question: if you could spend your time however you want, what type of game would you want to use that on?

Rob: In one way or another most of our letters end up being about aging, the inevitability of death, and discovering that you're growing more comfortable with both as time goes along. So screw it, let's talk about our video game backlogs.

Now if I know my Patrick, I suspect you're someone who doesn't actually let himself have much of a backlog of things he's intending to play because you're pretty pragmatic about what your life as a father will allow and the fact that your job requires you to be stay in touch with the present rather than fishing around in the past. However, on this week's Remap Radio you mentioned that if you were sucked into a portal to 1976 at the dawn of video games, you'd maybe take the opportunity to learn to play one of the Civilization games. So there are things you'd like to satisfy your curiosity about, you just don't really have time to dig into them.

I am curious about what is the game you think is going to remain near the top of that list of things you'd like to learn but probably never get around to starting much less finishing. The game where, as you go gently into that good night, you'll find yourself raging–just a little bit–that you didn't manage to make time for it somewhere along the line. Not Civilization obviously, because that one requires you being yanked through time into an alternate universe where you have decades to kill without access to many games. What do you think you should probably play, and even want to play, but know that it's just probably never happening for you?

I'll let you answer before I give you mine.

Patrick: The reason Civilization lept to mind when that question came up on the podcast was because, like you said, so much of my free time is divided into little pre-structured chunks of time. I have very little say in how the flow of a day is going to play out because it was decided months in advance. I say this with very little regret! I love being a dad and having my weekends utterly booked up! It’s just describing reality.

What playing Civilization represents, though, is time. I do not have time. And so when I mull over the video games that I would spend time with when I’m no longer under such constraints, I tend to think of like, MMOs? Way, way, way, way back in the day, when I was writing for 1UP.com, I was somehow assigned a weekly column about EverQuest 2. My editor wanted weekly columns about every major MMO, no one wanted EverQuest 2, and I was happy to stock away money for college and booze while playing one, even though I basically had no grasp of the genre, or what people would want from an EverQuest 2 column.

In other words, that column probably sucked. But it did pay well! I’m sorry, but I have no regrets. 

Is there a greater time sink of a genre than the MMO? And so while the question of game/genre that I’d like to spend hundreds of hours in as part of a (potentially vain) attempt to understand how it works, an MMO would be the game/genre that I’d like to spend infinite hours in simply to pass the time away.

The question, then, is what MMO, right? 

I’m probably okay never stepping foot in the world of EverQuest again, I’d probably like to know what the deal with World of Warcraft was. But that would mostly be a curiosity. The fever would break. EVE Online sounds neat, but that’s more LARP’ing and economics than anything else, right? Not really my thing.

The answer that comes to mind, funny enough, is Warframe. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it, and the only reason it’s not an ongoing obsession of mine is, again, time. But the real answer isn’t even a game that’s out yet and it’s the successor to Warframe, the Souls-inspired Soulframe. Warframe has never actually hit “1.0,” so I’m not sure when the right time would even be to enter into the world of Soulframe, but for the purposes of this conversation, let’s say it’s whenever this proposed time space paradox occurs.

That’s it. My final answer. A video game that isn’t done yet, one that I wouldn’t have time for even if it was, and yet I know I’d pour thousands of hours into it if given the opportunity to watch the hours pass on by.

What about you?

Rob: So the thing that prompted this was what I mentioned on the podcast, where I realized I did intend to play Puzzle Quest at some point and knowing it inspired Titanium Court jogged my memory about that intention that I've been hanging onto since I was a super-senior in college.

I'm obviously someone with a very different make-up and I live in denial that I cannot possibly play all the games I intend to or find interesting. I also have a horrible habit of saving things for later, when I find the perfect moment and circumstances to have a transcendent experience. For instance, as long as I don't finish Death of the Outsider, the Dishonored franchise isn't over! I've still got some missions to look forward to!