Only Playing One Game at a Time

Does anyone here only play one game at a time?

I have half a dozen games in various states of completion and I think, but am not sure, that I'd have a better time if I just uninstalled every game but one and then when I was tired of playing that one game, uninstall it regardless of if I was finished or not.

No way in hell. I don't read one book at a time because I have different moods. Sometimes I want a meaty RPG, other times I'm jumping in to that twin stick shooter for a quick half hour explosion fest.

I don't but I sometimes wonder like you, if I wouldn't enjoy gaming more if I did play only one at a time.

Sometimes I feel like I am constantly relearning the controls of games when I go back to them. The last time I played a bit of Dark Souls 3 I was constantly chugging estus because I had been playing the Witcher 3. Plus I died a lot more often because DS3 requires being in the groove.

This happens a lot when I switch between games. I spend the first 30% of my time playing readjusting to controls and story.

YES. This is the only way I'm able to finish things. I realized a few years ago that I've got a long history of being halfway through a game I really like, then stopping to play something else and not going back. I've got a terrible memory, so I know that I'll have forgotten how to play and what was going on, which makes me less likely to go back.

I decided to switch to the "one game at a time" rule. Basically, in my head, I have a single game that I'm playing at home, and another one that I'm playing on a portable. If I'm at home and want to play something, that's the game I play. If I go a session or two only reluctantly playing the one game, I take a look at how much more there is to go until the end. Then I figure out if I'd like it more if I change something, like playing on easy or starting to ignore side quests. If I can't change much, or there's a long way to go until the end, I bail and usually just write it off. Otherwise, I go through to the end.

This plan means that I abandon some games without finishing, but that I finish a LOT more games. There's a few problems with it:
- Paying attention to the gaming scene with the forums or podcasts means you tend to get tempted by the new hotness. Ignoring this impulse is key to sticking to the plan.
- Multiplayer games that you never finish are hard, because if they're your One Game, you could effectively be playing them forever. You can also make them an adjunct to the One Game, but then you can get caught leaving the One Game off too long and abandoning it.
- It's harder when you've got less gaming time. One Game strategy means that you're always going to be months or years behind The Conversation, unless you plan your gaming so that you finish a game just before a new one releases. Mostly, you have to accept that you're almost never going to get to talk to anyone about the game you're playing without being that XKCD comic.

But if you can live with those, yeah, One Game strategy is super effective! Also good for the wallet, because you can pretty easily put off buying new games until they're cheaper.

As proof of the effectiveness of One Game strategy, I used this method to get through all three Dragon Age games in a single year, and then did it again with all three Witcher games the following year. The year I did Dragon Age, I also put 100 hours into finishing Metal Gear 5.

Yes I do this, as well as only read one book at a time. The exception is if I am playing a really long game, like Witcher or Zelda BOTW or similar, and I just want a short game snack, I'll play a quick round of tetris or hearthstone or something like that.

Since starting to focus on one game at a time my enjoyment of gaming and my completion rate has improved orders of magnitude.

If a single game can't hold my attention any more I abandon it and move onto the next.

Tough call...

I just sank my teeth in Dragon Age -after a gaming pause of 10 years- but I can't wait to fire up a big Football Manager game with a humongeous database. Allthought the latter is experienced by many of you as 'spreadsheet watching', i do love the game.

As far as the Friday evening goes... drunken gaming requires some turnbased game, being able to mule to the fridge an back.

Play many and finish none seems to be my modus operandi.

jrralls wrote:

I have half a dozen games in various states of completion and I think, but am not sure, that I'd have a better time if I just uninstalled every game but one and then when I was tired of playing that one game, uninstall it regardless of if I was finished or not.

Not only are there different kinds of gamers; there are different kinds of lives.

I was a big advocate of "two games at a time" for a while. Usually one longer and story based (usually an RPG), one lighter (usually more action-oriented). This was a good balance between focus and changing moods. Now that my life is busier, I've dropped to one at a time.

But, you know, I play mostly long games with heavy emphasis on story; RPGs or AAA epics. I don't like to graze; I like to drink deeply of a game. I also tend to have trouble with forgetting controls, much less story details, if I'm away from a game for a week.

So are you a grazer and gourmand, or a focused gourmet?

I play whatever I want to play when I feel like it. Is fine. Also don't care if I ever finish anything.

tboon wrote:

I play whatever I want to play when I feel like it. Is fine. Also don't care if I ever finish anything.

I used to only play one game at a time. I actually felt like I enjoyed games less because I was forcing myself to play that one game no matter what my mood. Now I literally play whatever I feel like and I enjoy games a whole lot more. I also still finish games that really grab me: The Witcher 3, MGS V, Final Fantasy XV, Persona 5 and Breath of the Wild were all finished while bouncing around to random games.

When I think back to when I was a kid, that was exactly how I played. I popped in whatever NES game I felt like and never worried about finishing games or about the existence of any kind of backlog. And like now, I still finished the games I really cared about. I feel like putting too much pressure on oneself about finishing games or getting through a pile is kind of the opposite of fun, for me at least.

I've tried playing more than one game at a time, but invariably one of them will be the most interesting and that's the one I end up going back to again and again until I'm done. If I try to spread myself across several games, I don't get invested in any of them and ultimately end up dissatisfied.

The only exception to this is that occasionally I'll play one game on PC and one game on PS4. That way if one of them is occupied by my kids, I have the other as an option.

JeremyK wrote:

Play many and finish none seems to be my modus operandi.

I'm part of this club.
Sigh, May I present, my Games folder. Some may be missing
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/MkEIWv0.png)

Some of these I haven't played in over a year. I'll probably do a purge TONIGHT!

I'm a grazer for sure. I'm not too proud of it. I was following a Kotaku article about how to beat your backlog and involves three games and that is it. I've been trying to follow that path but it is still too hard sometimes. I sometimes go and do one game at home and one portable game at work. I don't feel as guilty with this path too.

The funny (sad) thing is that even after reading my own post and other comments I am very tempted to buy Assassin's Creed: Origins this month.

When I get hooked into something meaty and great, I'll play one thing at a time, or nearly 1 thing at a time. When I was playing The Witcher 3, I probably only touched some lightweight filler games. Same with Dark Souls 3, the Dragon Age Games, The Last of Us. I guess it usually applies to story heavy games or long games that I like and they suck me in.

Other times I've got a bunch of games I flit between. I think today I played Pinball FX3, Out of the Park Baseball, Cuphead and Through the Ages.

For the most part I play one game at a time. I play a lot of big RPGs so there will be times when I take a break with one or two shorter games before coming back. I don't think there's any specific reason I'm like this, it's just how I tend to play. When I finish one game, I can sometimes take a while to decide what to play next. I might try a few before settling on one to dive deep into.

I only play one game at a time (just like I only read one book at a time). I like to focus on the story and the mechanics of one particular game, and it also helps me remember the control scheme and which button does what. When I'm done with a game, I switch gears and try to play something completely different, both in genre and, if possible, in length, and when I'm done with that one, I do it all again. This usually works for me, and it means I finish every game I start, with very few exceptions. However, like Chaz said above, it's tempting to try many things at once when I read the forums, but I'm staying strong!

I tend to dabble in both old and new games until something catches my attention. Then I focus in for a while. I rarely complete games though - I find most to be too long to support the depth of gameplay they offer and just collecting stuff or powering up does nothing for me. It's usually not long until I start dabbling again.

For me I’m thinking about going one game at a time because of controller memory issues. I don’t remmeber that being an issue when I was young but maybe that’s becaude I had so many fewer games when I was young and I, effectively, only played one at a time?

jrralls wrote:

For me I’m thinking about going one game at a time because of controller memory issues. I don’t remmeber that being an issue when I was young but maybe that’s becaude I had so many fewer games when I was young and I, effectively, only played one at a time?

Also, fewer buttons.

I'm in the 'sort of' category with robc.

For the most part, I only play one game at a time. However, I will only play another if the other game has a radically different and/or simpler input scheme or system. My fingers simply cannot remember more than one modern control scheme at a time. (Needless complex modern control schemes should be the subject of a thread, btw. One of the reasons I don't Madden anymore is because I'm too afraid to find out what's been added to the controls since my last full-sized Madden: Madden 2001.)

So for a few years, I had Need for Speed: Shift 2, Gran Turismo 6 and The Walking Dead (which I really must finish) as my second/alternate games. I am currently playing my Until Dawn and Life is Strange when I tire of my main game, Elite Dangerous.

I'm not as extreme, but I try to play only one type of game at a time. Sometimes by genre: I won't play two crunchy fantasy based rpgs at the same time. Sometimes by mechanics: I won't play two open-world or third person hack-and-slash action titles with similar game play. I also try to spread the love between all of my consoles.

I'm also big on story and I only have so much head space for different stories which I why I limit my reading to only two concurrent fiction books and one non-fiction at any given.

Lastly, and most importantly was that I have decided that I must be "done" with a game before I move on. This doesn't necessarily mean finished, complete, 100% etc. It means that for me, I've had enough for whatever reason and I don't plan on going back to it.

This has really helped me move through more games in my pile and I think has allowed me to enjoy a game more for what it is at a pace more suitable to me.

I think I have settled on a “rule of 2.” I will have two different games of two different genres that I play at a single time.

Playing one game at a time feels like only eating one thing at a time. I mean, sure, you can do that, but why the hell would you?

Here's what's currently in my rotation, and the style of play that they require:

XCOM2 - relaxed, slow methodical thinking, can "switch off" the outside world and get lost in the tactical complexity.

DOOM - on-edge, twitch reaction, able to withstand a firehose of gore and metal. Exhausting after a short period

Assortment of driving games with a FFB wheel - intense focus with a view to skill improvement/mastery.

Rise of the Tomb Raider - explorative, constantly jumping between numerous sub-goals

Cuphead - charming presentation stands at odds with repetitive failed attempts at the same task until it's mastered.

There's 5 games right there that are all starkly different experiences. I don't want to be challenged by Cuphead at 9:45pm on a work night, I want to unwind with something slower like XCOM2.

Sad to say but I have about 30 games that I'm in the process of playing, and that's over about a 12 month cycle. I finish maybe 1% of them, and as it's been said here I'd be a much more satisfied gamer if there were only a handful of games for me to choose.
I can't tell you the last 4X game I've actually finished in the last decade, but before the mid-2000's when Steam became popular I'd rarely install a new game til the current one was complete.

Jonman wrote:

Playing one game at a time feels like only eating one thing at a time. I mean, sure, you can do that, but why the hell would you?

Because with limited time to play during the week, if you play multiple different games at once, you never see anything through.

I wonder if there's correlation between people that like to play one at a time vs those who play a bunch at a time, and how much time they have to play on a weekly basis. While I'd like to play a bunch of stuff, that realistically means that I'd play an hour or two of maybe two games a week, and if I've got a half dozen games in "rotation", I'd only play any particular game for an hour or two every three weeks. Which is silly.

Chaz wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Playing one game at a time feels like only eating one thing at a time. I mean, sure, you can do that, but why the hell would you?

Because with limited time to play during the week, if you play multiple different games at once, you never see anything through.

I wonder if there's correlation between people that like to play one at a time vs those who play a bunch at a time, and how much time they have to play on a weekly basis. While I'd like to play a bunch of stuff, that realistically means that I'd play an hour or two of maybe two games a week, and if I've got a half dozen games in "rotation", I'd only play any particular game for an hour or two every three weeks. Which is silly.

Sure, but the corollary to your point is that if you only have limited time to play, without playing multiple different games, you only see one thing through.

Which is part of why I'm a grazer who finishes very few games. There's too many fabulous games - I'd rather play half of a lot of them than all of a few of them.

Yeah, that's true too. I'd rather play one thing through to completion than a bunch of things part way through.

My extension of this is that the longer I go without playing something, the less likely it is that I'll get back to it at all. So for me, it's less "play three things halfway and get bored", it's "play three things for two or three hours, get distracted and not get back to it, and regret it."

But I'm a weirdo in that the main thing I get out of games is the story, and I hate only getting part of a story, even though I've been told repeatedly that stories in games are bad and not worth it.

Chaz wrote:

My extension of this is that the longer I go without playing something, the less likely it is that I'll get back to it at all. So for me, it's less "play three things halfway and get bored", it's "play three things for two or three hours, get distracted and not get back to it, and regret it."

This is definitely the case for me too, but it's also the acid test for whether a game "hits" for me. The ones that really do keep me coming back to the well, as the 164 hours that Steam reckons I've played XCOM2 will attest to.

The ones that don't are a reflection on how that game didn't "gel" with me. To be fair, there's always the danger of distraction taking you away from a game that you were truly into, but once again, for games I truly want to play, I come back to them. I started playing Rise of the Tomb Raider in May of this year. I am 10 hours into it, and was playing as recently as yesterday.