Gaming Efficiency

A week early, but on Monday I decided to make a New Year's Resolution to better my gaming habits.

I am terrible at finishing video games.

It's not necessarily because I lose interest in the game, or don't like them enough to play through them. Often, it's the opposite. I become really involved in a fun video game and play it endlessly for days. But I'm getting so much enjoyment out of it, I feel like I don't want to have the fun come to an end. Thus, I stop playing that game and save it for later while I play a less desirable game. And by the time I get back to the first game, I've forgotten how to play and no longer retain the knowledge of all the intricacies of the fighting system that I had slowly learned through the easier levels. Or it has an open-world design and I just totally forgot where I've been and still need to go. This often causes me to start from the beginning again, repeating the cycle.

Perhaps if I didn't play the crappy games, I'd put more effort into the good ones. But then I wouldn't appreciate quality as much. Plus, I'm drawn to creative aspects of game more than an overall polished chunk of standardness. I really appreciate little features of a smaller game, and the obvious ambition that it presents, even if it doesn't live up to its potential. Still, whatever the reason, I play a boatload of games.

From now on, I am going to make more of an effort to finish these games that I've invested so much time and money in. To track my progress, I am relying on the Xbox 360's achievement system.

The Xbox is my console of choice anyway, it is where I easily spend 90% of my gaming time. I only buy exclusives for the PS3. As for the Wii... well, I know I played it at least three times in 2010.

As of December 27, 2010, I have played 353 "games" on my Xbox 360. Four of those are just apps such as the Rock Band Music Store which have no achievements tied to them. I went through the list and counted 91 games that I have beaten (Though the definition of "beaten" is a bit fuzzy on some games, such as puzzle titles like Bejeweled 2). I've only beat about 1/4 of the games I've played. Not a good percentage.

Also not ranking in at a good percentage is my achievement point total. 70,560 out of a possible 305,165. About 23%. Rather pathetic numbers.

I vow to improve these numbers over the next year.

My goal is to have 150 completed Xbox 360 games by the end of next year. That's a little more than one a week. Should be doable, right? Having to make an effort to play video games doesn't sound like a bad task. I've already got one out of the way for this week. I completed the Story Mode for Lego Rock Band right after counting up my totals. I own more than enough games that I've already started to complete my goal of 150 games. I even own enough games that I haven't even started that could be used to reach my goal. But it's not efficient enough to leave so many games barely played. Which brings in the next part of the Resolution: gamerscore.

My overall goal is to eventually have an achievement point total of at least 50% of all points possible for my played games. At this point, that would require more than doubling all the points that I have earned since I got my Xbox several years ago. That would also exclude playing new games until I hit that magic percentage. The latter won't happen. The lofty 50% goal is not really feasible for me to accomplish in a year, so baby steps...

My goal is to raise my overall achievement point total to 35% by January 1, 2012. That is still a hefty sum of points I shall need to acquire. Not counting new games, I'll need to increase my current gamerscore by 50%!

To add another layer of "work" to my list, I am also going to write reviews for every game I beat, regardless of how old they are. If I can get into a smooth routine, I should be able to restart my video game webcomic sometime in the new year as well. But for now, I've got plenty of things to focus on. My review of Lego Rock Band will soon follow.