Decision Time

I’ve reached a crossroads. My PlayStation 3 died unceremoniously over the weekend. I can afford to replace it (just about) but at the cost of giving up new games for the rest of the year. This presents an opportunity – to play through the ridiculous volume of unfinished and even untouched games in my collection. I intend for this blog to chart my progress through over 20 years of videogame design. 

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Gaming is an expensive pursuit. It costs both time and money. I have little of either to spend, but I do have a passion for videogames - for their mechanics and for the brief and beautiful glimpses of interactive storytelling that they provide. I love the art, the design and the music of games past and present. I read a lot, and listen to hours of coverage each week, on the wider industry as well as the creative individuals that make it up.

Now my PS3 has died. The soulless blinking of a single red light tells me I can no longer access the five years of data saved on the hard drive, or eject the disc inside. My last back-up is two years old – that's my own fault. I can always buy a new system, but a new system costs money and I don’t have money to spare. Something has to give.

The console will cost me at least €250. That equates to about five new games – the bulk of my budget for the rest of the year. So to keep myself entertained I'm turning to my embarrassing collection of unfinished games. Everything from NES platformers, to late nineties PC classics, to sprawling 2011 RPGs litter my home and my hard drives. And this is the perfect opportunity to clear the decks.

So why replace the PS3? I have to play Bioshock Infinite later this year and I won't be doing that on this six year old laptop. I also have unfinished business with my dead console. Mass Effect 3 and Dark Souls - games into which I've sunk unacceptable amounts of time and personal strife - are my main reasons for wanting to rescue my lost saves. In fact, Mass Effect is a problem for a whole other reason too but I'll come back to that.

There is hope. I can get creative with hair dryers and credit cards covered in reversible packing tape. I can try to save the old PlayStation, at least for long enough to back up my data to the cloud. I'll chart my progress with the hardware, as well as with games of yore here at Hackett Out over the coming months. 

Now I just need to decide where to start. And to think about some sort of design for this crisp white page.