What I learned from the 106 games I played this year

Polygon’s Editor’s Letter is a column by Editor-in-Chief Chris Plante that reflects on the video game and entertainment industries, their communities, and Polygon itself. New editions appear in the first week of every month.

One of my more neurotic habits is keeping a spreadsheet that tracks my media diet. Every movie, TV show, comic strip, sports match, Japanese study session, podcast and of course video game is clocked in 15-minute increments. Every day. 365 days a year.

Time tracking allows me to analyze where and how I prioritize my time. For example, this year I played a lot number of video games – 106, to be exact.

When scanning the spreadsheet, gaming was by far more demanding of my time than any other medium. This was intentional. I wanted to keep up with video games in a year full of endless new releases. So why does it feel like I missed something?

For this month’s Editor’s Letter, I’m sharing my findings from a year of drinking straight from the hose. And hopefully, along the way, I’ll understand my persistent FOMO.

Some of what follows will read like the frantic barking of someone who gets paid to, on some level, play video games for a living. But I hope most of my response is relatable. Because with services like Game Pass, an abundance of high-quality free-to-play games and sales seemingly every week, the challenge for most people isn’t access to games, it’s deciding what to play.

Or, to put it another way: everyone is a game critic now.

The cost of keeping new games? Old masses

I’ve written elsewhere about the current era of abundance in gaming, where a dump truck unloads dozens of new releases every week, burying the previous week’s haul. Despite the Sisyphean nature of this endeavor, I’ve done my level best to keep up and have spent most of the year trudging through the ever-growing pile.

Of the 106 games I played in 2024, 95 were released between January and today. The costs of that decision become clear when you run the numbers. In 2024 I only played 11 “old” games. Like everyone else, I have a backlog that makes me laugh every time I open Steam. I’d love to play more of these games one day, but if I make time to play old games, I’ll miss out on new releases, adding to my backlog.

One person can’t see the whole picture, but a community can

Ten years ago, playing 95 new games in a year meant I’d played every major release and every remotely interesting experiment, and still made room for some real stinkers. Today I may not have played your favorite game of the year.

Here are some games I didn’t play in 2024 that I honestly wanted to try but for whatever reason didn’t have time: Impasse, Satisfactory, Shin Megami Tensei 5: Revenge, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, Sandy soil, Planet roller coaster 2, Core keeper, Hits 2, Chained together, The final trialsAnd Person 3 Reload.

And what about living games Fortnite And Final fantasy 14? No way. These are the kind of games that, if I played them, would consume every moment of my playing time. And so from the top 10 most played games on Steam, in 2024 I only played one.

You may be baffled. How could the person who runs Polygon skip some of the most important games in the world? I argue that my experience is a clear justification for Polygon’s existence. Even someone who has partially paid for an obsessive understanding of video game culture can’t play everything.

For the average person, a mix of websites, videos, streams and podcasts will fill in the gaps. So even if I haven’t played your favorite games, I’ve probably read, watched, or heard about them.

People playing only a few popular games are the norm – and for good reason

Honestly, I’m already exhausted just looking at the list of games I’ve played and included in the comments. Trying to keep up with the game du jour (more like du jouer, am I right?) is expensive, time-consuming, and often requires jettisoning one game I enjoy to make room for another. As I near the finish line of my annual marathon, I have a newfound appreciation (jealousy?) for people who choose not to play the new cool thing, but instead commit to one, two, or three games that do the most take up their time.

As I wrote in an earlier editorial letter:

According to a report from Newzoo, by 2023 players will spend 77% of their playing time on games aged three or more. Much of the time players spent on new games was spent on annualized franchises such as Call of Duty, Madden and EA FC. A paltry 8% of total playtime in 2023 went to new games that weren’t tied to a major annual IP.

I suspect these statistics held true in 2024. Commitment to established, especially free-to-play, live games costs much less than a subscription service, let alone new games every week. These games offer constant updates to keep rewarding the time investment. Their familiar loop requires less of their players’ brains, freeing up those players’ mental workload to be social with friends on Discord while they play.

If you play games as a social activity or as a relaxation exercise, a few familiar games may be all you need.

Video games will be whatever you want them to be

Even with everything I wrote in mind, I wouldn’t have handled 2024 any differently.

As happy as I am for a slow December, I’m already looking forward to January, when Steam releases will inevitably ramp up again and my free time will be reclaimed by indie games I’d never heard of until release. appear below New and remarkable.

Because if you’ll grant me some seasonal, saccharine sincerity, this is what I hoped games would become as a kid.

The variety of games released this year is unparalleled compared to the medium’s contemporaries such as film and television. This year you can play thousands of hours of some of the best role-playing games ever made. Or maybe you’ve refined your taste in roguelikes, the way a sommelier hones their palate. You could have flown a perfect recreation of a commercial airliner from Hong Kong to New York, raced in the Monaco Grand Prix, or won MVP in the Super Bowl.

In 2024 I played a remake of a game from the eighties, a pastiche of a game from the nineties and a deconstruction of the shooters from the early twenties. One game turned my Windows operating system into a bullet hell. Another gave a squirrel a gun. Games questioned the tenets of democracy, the unexamined sadness of a pandemic, and the mind-boggling joy of stealing a shopping cart and shooting it down a hill.

Even if I didn’t have this job, I would still be on this gaming diet. Because I get the greatest pleasure from the possibilities. How fortunate we are to be able to experience video games at this time when there is something for everyone. Whether that means enjoying one game or a hundred all year round. And six. And counting.

I wrote earlier that I hoped to gift you all with a universal takeaway. And here it is. What I’ve Learned Over the Last Twelve Months Playing an Absurd Number of Video Games:

Whether it’s video games or another hobby, it’s tempting to look back at how we spent a year and think about everything we could have done instead. To reflect on the gap between our ambitions and our achievements. Don’t dwell on what you missed; grow from what you have experienced.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from tracking my life in a spreadsheet, it’s that there’s never enough time.