I have been getting better about finishing games lately. It's a combination of being picky, using whatever tools or cheats I have at my disposal to get through it, and shifting my mindset to consider quitting a game I don't like anymore as another form of completion. But I still like to ruminate on what makes me *not* finish a game. I think it helps me continue to feel like I'm using my time well, and also it's just interesting. One thing I've considered in this regard is the incline vs the decline. I absolutely adore the mid-game of most stuff I play, particularly because the genres I dabble in - [[JRPG|JRPGs]], [[Action-RPGs]] and the like - feel best in period of time. It's when you're learning and adapting to a game's world and systems and mechanics. Because of my [[Goopy Goblin Gamer Brain]] I get to engage with these mechanics, figure out how they work and what makes them tick, and get a lot of enjoyment out of it. It's like a little puzzle for me to solve. If a game's mechanics aren't very interesting, I'll usually drop it. ![[Inclines and Declines-1740697781310.png]] But sometimes a game's mechanics *will* interest me, and I'll still drop it anyways. I've come to realize that this is because of the decline. It's that point where the game stops showing me new things and just focuses on what's already been shown. My brain is made of poison, you see. It does not like knowing that it has already seen everything there is to see, because if it's already seen it, then there's no reason to keep playing. Now I'm just experiencing the same things over and over again, when a different game could be giving me new mechanics for me to obsess over. It's at this point that I think the length of a game becomes very important. I can push past that dumb barrier in my brain if a game doesn't overstay its welcome. But if I'm about to do the same things over and over again in a 40 hour game, its mechanics have to be **Yakuza** or **Nioh 2** or **Kingdom Hearts 2** or **ASTLIBRA** levels of satisfying for me to want to keep going. The alternative is for the game's narrative to be strong enough for me to want to keep going, but the possibility of that happening is so low that I basically don't even consider it. Most game narratives just aren't good enough for that. ![[Inclines and Declines-1740698100872.png]] That said, my boredom isn't born out of disappointment in the games that I drop for these reasons. Again, it's partly because my brain is broken, but it's also because keeping a game mechanically engaging for hours and hours and hours is *extremely* hard! I came to this realization playing **Pokemon** again recently. Now equipped with the ability to fast-forward and burst past the terrible pacing, I wondered - what keeps me coming back to these games? Their loop doesn't change from minute one to hour 40. But they continue to entice you with the drip-feed of new monsters to catch around every corner, and new strategies and moves to consider as you catch said monsters. That takes a lot of work! It has been really interesting examining my own habits when it comes to playing games. I am about to dump an unholy amount of time into **Monster Hunter Wilds** because I know it will keep me satisfied from a mechanical perspective. There isn't really a decline to speak of. I just didn't realize that I'd distance myself from narrative and length as I got older. And there's your random thought dump for the evening.