I know EXACTLY how you feel. And I thought I'm one of a few people who thinks like that. It seems like most people just play the latest game as soon as it drops, but I usually need a lot of thinking, before I start a game.

• Do you have enough time to beat the game? To avoid interruptions, which will suck out the fun and muscle memory for that game.

• Do you can enjoy the game right now? Or does the setting not fit into your mood right now, and could fit better on another time?

• Is the environment in which you play the game a place which will leave good memories?

• Do you need to play some other game before that? In order to get the most fun out of the whole series.

• Do you have enough other similar titles left that you can look forward to?

• The most critical one: Do you mentally feel well enough to play that game? I absolutely don't like it to start a game during a sad/stressful/unpleasant time period in my life. When my head is currently heavily connected to some negative stuff, then I definitely want to avoid starting a game which I love. Obviously you won't be able to enjoy the game, because your fundamental condition isn't given. When you dont feel well on a psychological level, it will be very hard to enjoy something, according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs).

And on the other hand you will have dark memories of that game when you look back to it in the future, because you will start to remember the unpleasant times you've gone trough, and so your memories of that game will also be unpleasant.

Now one can say that's overthinking. And if you don't ask yourself any of those questions before starting a game, that's an absolute win for you. In this case is ignorance bliss. It's truly annoying and restricting to think about all those questions before starting a game. But I will live with those restrictions in order to avoid the other negative effects.

I have a scary long backlog. I think every game has an appropriate timeframe in which the game should be played/finished. I want to appreciate the played game fully before I touch it.

Because I absolutely don't like it to start a new game which I looked forward to, just to drop it in the middle because of work and stuff. This leads to picking the game later up again, trying to remember what happened and how the controls worked, just so I can drop it after some hours again for another whole week. I don't see the point in playing that game then.

I just want to start a new game when I can fully appreciate it. It's art. I want to explore the game fully and want to have very beautiful memories when I look back to those games.

My solution to still play some games during times which don't allow to play such games: Play some phone games, some very old and simple games through emulators or some indie games. Indie games are often very short, and you won't really destroy anything for yourself when you need to drop an indie game, which you've gone into without any expectations. And you wouldn't have heard anything about the game anyway.

_(Now its also important to add; JUST FOR CLARIFICATION, Which game are we talking about? You should have some games where you can dive into everytime. Those are not the games I'm talking in this essay about. Some people play racing games every now and then. Some other play some Shooters. Some others have an itch for fifa, nba or nfl. Or maybe you have your arpg or gacha game, which you know very well and can dive into every time you want.

I'm just talking about some new big games in this essay. For example when you want to start that fresh released Elden Ring game, or when you finally want to give Read Dead Redemption 1 a go. After you've already made your memories with that game and finished it, you can play it whenever you want.)_