I've realised that as time passes, I'm playing fewer and fewer video games. At first, I thought that I had changed. Maybe my tastes for video games have changed. Maybe I just have less time. I've come to the realisation recently that this is really not the case. There's quite a number of things at play - and they all conspire to make me play fewer games.
The Paradox of Choice
Ever since I ended my boycott on Steam slightly over 3 years ago, I now have over 500 games on Steam alone. This is counterintuitively very bad. Can you imagine trying to pick a single game to play out of a list of 500+? It has led to countless number of times where looked at my entire list of Steam games and gone: "I have so many games, and nothing to play." I'm so overloaded with choice on Steam that I literally can't pick a game to play.
I have Battle.net, Origin, Uplay and GOG Galaxy installed; and it becomes clear that it's much easier for me to pick something to play from these clients. I have a much smaller list on everything except GOG, but GOG Galaxy only shows you what's installed by default, and I only have 5 or so games installed (compared to around 76 or so on Steam.) It's no understatement that it helps a lot when you have fewer to pick from – I'm sure I'll find a solution for Steam one day, but for now, I'm just playing whatever tickles my fancy at the time.
(I'm guessing the solution involves curating a selection of shortcuts for my desktop.)
Quality / Quantity
Some games just sell really well nowadays. The proliferation of "AAA-titles" being released every year is probably giving me some amount of exhaustion. I'm sure the model works and it works well. I have high profile titles I like a lot and would buy and play every year – Assassin's Creed being one of them. On the other hand, shooters have really fallen out of favour with me. I'm not sure if it's because I haven't played a shooter with a fresh storyline or gameplay in a while, or it's just that all of them are really the same and I'm not imagining things. I still haven't played Wolfenstein: The New Order, but Titanfall, COD:Advanced Warfare and Destiny have not scratched that itch.
Batman: Arkham Knight just came out recently, and that was when I realised that quality might be the deciding factor for me. I worked hard at finishing the game like I did with Assassin's Creed: Unity and I enjoyed every minute of it. (OK, maybe the tank boss fights and collecting Riddler trophies weren't that fun.)
It's probably time to come to terms with the fact that I will run out of games to play – and that's really OK.