1952: Orderly Play

With Final Fantasy XIV’s first expansion Heavensward coming in about a month’s time, I’ve been doing some thinking, particularly as I’ve dialled back the amount I’ve been playing vanilla Final Fantasy XIV during this “lull” between the story finale a while back and the launch of Heavensward next month.

You see, this “lull” period has allowed me the opportunity to get caught up on some other games — or, well, if we’re honest, to dive head-first into the rather wonderful Omega Quintet, which I adore — and I’ve been enjoying that a great deal. This may sound like a “first world problem” of the highest magnitude, but anyone who has ever indulged in an MMO will likely be familiar with how easy it is for such games to “take over” to the exclusion of anything else. It’s not necessarily a problem when it happens, but when you have lots of other games that you really want to play, and never really seem to have any time to play them, that’s when it needs to be addressed — or you need to make some tough decisions as to what you might “sacrifice”.

Anyway. The short version is that I have no intention of stopping playing Final Fantasy XIV completely as I’m too invested in the game experience as a whole, including the friendships I’ve developed as a result of playing it. But I also have no intention of sacrificing the (probably literally) hundreds of other games I have on my shelves and haven’t played yet. As such, then, some sort of compromise would appear to be in order.

Then it struck me — actually not for the first time, since I’ve had these thoughts before. A relatively straightforward solution to the issue — and one that I’m aware won’t be ideal for everyone, but which I think I might be able to stick to — is to treat gaming like any other hobby that requires a significant time investment: schedule and organise it.

This may sound like a bit much for something that many people regard as lightweight, somewhat “disposable” entertainment (though, I hasten to add, I’ve never been one of those people) — but think about it. Someone who’s really into tennis probably doesn’t play tennis every time they have some free time. Someone who’s a member of a book club isn’t constantly attending meetings. Someone who likes live music isn’t constantly at concerts. There’s balance; you do different things at different times, particularly when there’s a social element.

As such, I feel that going into Heavensward, it would probably be a good idea for the sake of my own sanity and satisfaction to specifically set aside times for playing Final Fantasy XIV — as a sort of “weekly event” or meeting — and times for playing other things. And then stick to them. That way, I won’t feel the strange “guilt” I feel about not playing Final Fantasy XIV when I’m playing something else, or the corresponding and equally strange “guilt” I feel about playing Final Fantasy XIV as my backlog of PS2, PS3, Vita, 3DS and PC games continually grows faster than I can complete them. The inherent benefit of something like this, too, is that it allows me to set some sort of schedule for experimenting with things that I’d like to explore more, like streaming and recording gameplay videos.

I’m not entirely sure what the right “balance” is as yet, but that’s something I can probably work out over the course of the next few weeks as we count down towards Heavensward’s launch. It’s something I’m keen to get right, though, because as I’ve already said, I have no intention of giving up Final Fantasy XIV, but I also really don’t want to feel like it’s eating into opportunities to play other things, too.

So I’m thinking I might experiment a bit starting this week. I’m going to try having maybe two Final Fantasy XIV evenings that are reserved exclusively for FFXIV purposes; one of them will probably be Monday, as that is one of the two nights we customarily raid, and I’m thinking that the other will probably be Friday, since that’s the end of the week and consequently a good opportunity to stay up and socialise with others. Weekends I’ll take as they come; I’ll play FFXIV if I feel like it — and we raid on Sunday nights anyway, even if I don’t play any more than that — and I’ll play other stuff without “guilt” if not.

If two days midweek doesn’t feel like enough time to Get Things Done in the game, I’ll consider it again. But we’ll see.

This has probably not been a terribly interesting post for you to read, dear reader, and for that I apologise. However, it has been helpful for me to “think out loud” in this way and come to some sort of conclusion. So if you stuck around and watched me do that, uh, thanks for your commitment and understanding, I guess? And perhaps I’ll see you in Eorzea on Friday!