Gaming Resolutions for 2004

January 1st. A time when many people reflect upon the past year and think of ways to improve the upcoming year. I always enjoy making New Year resolutions. I don't get all stressed out about keeping them to the letter, rather I think of them as ideals to be working towards. I decided to make a few resolutions pertaining to gaming this year, as it has happily become my main hobby and takes up large amounts of my free time. So without any further ado, here they are:

1. Halve the amount we spend on games. After doing a little number crunching with Quicken, some illuminating information about our expenditures this past year was revealed. While I refuse to disclose how much we spent on games in 2003, suffice it to say that we spent more on games than we did on clothing for a family of four, more than gas for a year, more than.....well, you get the picture. It's not just a matter of money. We make sacrifices in other discretionary areas to feed our gaming addiction. No, what bothers me is the fact that we've gotten in the habit of buying every game that interests us right away, with nary a second thought. The result: a vast collection of mediocre to decent but not spectacular games that only get played a few times, if that, because there are so darn many of them. It's time to go back to "try before we buy" instead of "buy so we can try." Given the fact that we are planning to attend no less than three big gaming events this year, this should not be hard to put in to practice.

2. Play all the unplayed games on our shelves and revisit some older ones. This ties in nicely with my first resolution. Less new games = more play for older ones.

3. Keep up with writing session reports. I'm going to try to simplify them so I can churn them out quicker. I plan to shorten them to just a quick summary and/or comments and leave out detailed descriptions of the game. I also plan to put them right here on this blog. Several other people do this and I really like that format. Check out one of my favorites, Chris Brook's blog: http://www.chrisbrooks.org/

4. Play more two-player games with Ed. We used to play games together at least two evenings a week. After getting a regular weekly group going, our two-player evenings have gone by the wayside. Time to remedy that. We've added many fine two-player games to our collection this year, such as those in the excellent Gipf series, and it's time to explore them further.

5. Write more reviews. These are a lot of work but I enjoy writing them because it requires me to explore a game more fully than usual and think about it in greater depth. I hope to combine it with resolution #4 and write reviews for some two-player games.

6. More gaming with my kids. Gotta raise 'em up right!

Well, that's certainly enough to shoot for. I'll visit this entry a year from now and see how I did.

Posted by Susan Rozmiarek at January 1, 2004 5:52 PM