The Steam Summer Sale ended Thursday and I did the thing I do every single year, which is convince myself that this time is different, that I'm actually going to play the games I buy instead of just adding them to a pile that already has something like 200 unplayed titles sitting in it. I'm not going to pretend I learned anything from last year. I bought seven games in the final three days alone.
Here's the breakdown, because I keep a spreadsheet like an actual lunatic: Kingdom Come: Deliverance for $35.99, which is still not cheap for a game that reportedly shipped with more bugs than a Prague sewer, but I've wanted to try it since February and I'm a sucker for anything with horses and swords in it. Into the Breach for $11.99 on the recommendation of basically everyone I follow on Twitter who makes strategy games their whole personality. Subnautica for $14.99, even though I already own it on a different storefront, because apparently I hate money. Dead Cells while it's still in early access, because the trailer looked good and I have a weakness for anything that calls itself a "roguevania" even though I'm still not convinced that's a real word.
None of this is a complaint about Valve, to be clear. The sale works exactly the way it's supposed to. It's a very well built machine for getting me to spend about $140 over four days on games I will open twice. The little animated banners, the badges, the countdown clock ticking down on the front page like it's a hostage situation, all of it works on me every single time. I know it works on me and I do it anyway. That's not a design flaw. That's just what a good sale is.
What actually got me thinking, watching my library balloon past 400 games this week, is how disconnected owning something has become from experiencing it. I own Kingdom Come: Deliverance now. In what sense do I own a video game I've never opened? It sits there as a line item, a little green checkmark that says "this person paid for this." The playing part is apparently optional. Increasingly it feels like the transaction was the whole point and the game itself is just a receipt I get to keep looking at.
Two things happened this week that had nothing to do with any of this and I'm going to mention them anyway
Tesla put out word on Sunday that they'd finally hit their long-promised 5,000 Model 3s a week production number, apparently by throwing up a tent outside the Fremont factory and running a third assembly line out of it. I have zero stake in whether that company succeeds or not, but I've been half watching this production saga for over a year now the way you watch a slow-motion car crash, and there's something almost funny about the fix being "put a tent in the parking lot." Not glamorous. Very much a we'll-figure-out-the-elegant-version-later move. I respect it more than I expected to.
And it's the World Cup right now, obviously, and today's two quarterfinals, Uruguay against France and Brazil against Belgium, mean half my Slack channels are useless this afternoon because everyone's watching a stream instead of working. My own stream kept buffering during the first half, which is its own small tech complaint: it's 2018, we've had "the internet" for a while now, and live sports still finds a way to choke at the exact moment something happens. I missed a goal because of a spinning wheel icon. Not the first time. Won't be the last.
Back to the pile of unplayed games, I suppose, though if I'm honest I'll probably just boot up Slay the Spire again instead of starting anything new. Old habits, and all that.