I miss games

I miss games all the time...

Not because there aren’t enough of them. My Steam library looks less like a curated collection and more like evidence from a police raid. But I have hundreds of games still untouched. I've installed some and maybe launched them only once. Some were bought off the back of a YouTube short watched while on the toilet, and some because a random Redditor mentioned it was a "hidden gem".

It's not a problem of lack of choice. The problem is, if I don’t play a game during the launch window... its coverage falls off the edge of the earth.

Gaming discourse moves on so fast these days. Reviews land. Streamers squeeze out a few goofy thumbnails. And Bluesky argues about fair representation of their particular 'tism. Then the entire internet collectively decides the game is done.

Archived. Old news. Next... and I hate that.

I grown up with games and love them. From prestige RPGs to the weird indie experiments. I dig PS2 jank, and old strategy games that require studying a bible sized manual. I love finding a mechanic that just clicks with my brain, or getting attached to a new world. I love the feeling when a game gets its hooks into you, and you’re thinking while unloading the dishwasher.

Except visual novels. Sorry - I tried. And I refuse to spend 19 hours clicking through anime flirting to occasionally make a dialogue choice that boils down to “yes” or “sarcastic yes”.

But outside of that... I’m all in.

The problem is there’s nowhere to be excited about older games anymore.

I’ve been playing SnowRunner recently and it’s incredible. It’s slow and muddy, but weirdly meditative. Half the gameplay is making a terrible decision and then spending forty minutes undoing it.

The same with Days Gone. That game got flattened under launch discourse. Bugs. Middling review scores. “Generic open world”. Then years later people actually played it and went... "this is actually pretty good?” But by then the internet had already moved onto 10 other outrage cycles and whatever Ubisoft did wrong that week.

I’d love to spend time reading and watching people rediscover games. Falling into games late. Talking about mechanics and stories without the pressure of review embargoes and launch day tribalism. Instead, every gaming site feels like a conveyor belt aimed directly at pre-orders.

Steam doesn’t help either. The platform is incredible at making me buy games. Absolutely world-class. I can find 8 new games on the Store page in ten minutes and somehow convince myself I urgently need all of them despite still not starting the last thing I bought during last year's Summer Sale.

That's a big problem Steam for me... it isn’t built for lingering. It’s built for acquisition.

Gaming websites are also tied to traffic cycles and ad impressions so naturally they focus on what’s new. Don’t even get me started on the mobile browser experiences... I know these websites need adverts. But RockPaperShotgun on mobile feels like I'm trying to read an article while being mugged by a casino. Banners and videos overlaying text I'm trying to read. Then another ad that appears while scrolling. I just wanted to read about differential lock strategies in SnowRunner, not burn out my phone battery!

What I actually want is better third spaces for games.

Not social media timelines. Not engagement farms. Places where people gather because they genuinely love a thing. Forums used to do this well. Old websites too. You could find communities dedicated to one weird niche game and people would still be posting discoveries seven years later.

Now everything feels temporary, disposable... optimised.

A game launches. The internet consumes it. Everyone moves on before the rest of us even finish the character creation screen.

Meanwhile I’m sat here in 2026 lovingly crawling a Kenworth 963 through waist-deep mud thinking surely somebody else is excited about this?

They probably are.

I just can’t find them any more.