The Stack

It’s been over two full months since my last post. I could describe the immediate causes for the delay, but to be honest, I’ve been through worse before and still posted. So I have to admit that the real reason is simply my abandonment of the Oath. I can’t write without a pretense of obligation. (And it really does have to be a pretense. Nothing kills motivation faster than real obligation.) But I am still unwilling to simply resume the Oath in its current form.

You know when I was posting the most frequently? 2010. The year of the Chronological Rundown, when I added an additional stricture on top of the Oath. I’d like to try something like that again, but without the Oath underneath it. I’ve made mutterings about doing the alphabet — one game starting with each letter — under something similar to 2010’s rules: at an allotted two weeks per letter, it would take a full year to get through all 26. I had been thinking of this as something I’d start with a new year, but why wait? It’s going to wind up irregular anyway, especially if I take October off for the IF Comp. Plus, on reflection, there needs to be a slot for 0-9, and possibly punctuation, depending on how one wishes to handle the .hack series. So what the heck, this begins now, almost but not quite halfway through the year.

The new rules: I’ll start playing and posting about a game every two weeks, give or take. I may play other games without posting them, even if they’re on the Stack. In choosing the game to post about for each letter, I intend to give preference to ones on physical media. Bundles have exploded the Stack of late, but if I narrow my sights and only consider things I own on disc or cartridge to matter, the Stack can be seen to be shrinking after all. Exhausting my supply of such games is something I could actually accomplish, given a few more years, and when I do, I can pretend that it means something.

Tomorrow is 80 Days.