Here’s my streaming schedule during my vacation week. A few things:
The Miles Morales stream on Saturday will be a LONG one. I intend to start a new playthrough, basically turn off the music, and then complete it from start to finish (not planning to 100% it). Expect at least an 8-hour stream that day.
The episode of The Web Line on Sunday has not yet been determined, but it’ll probably be a solo episode.
On Monday 7/3, the intention is to play Marvel’s Midnight Suns to completion. It’s sat forEVER, and I want to knock out the story. I think I’m close, but it might be a longer stream.
For the Fourth of July, I’m not sure what we’ll be doing. Suggestions welcome, but tentatively I’m hoping/planning to finish out any of Miles Morales or Midnight Suns that I didn’t finish, but I’m open to other ideas. Hit me up in the comments if you have any ideas!
This one was, fortunately, not a problem. It’s a strategy RPG, I haven’t played it in years, and I remember it stopping me from progressing pretty early on because I either needed to pay for characters or materials, or I had to wait a LONG time for them. I like the concept, but this to me was the epitome of how badly some mobile games can make a grab for your wallet.
So long, Star Trek Timelines. I’m sorry to say, you will not be missed.
Okay, I’ve been deleting games for a week. Let’s celebrate by deleting one that’s gonna hurt… a little bit, at least.
I started playing Star Trek Lower Decks Mobile pretty recently; within the last few weeks, really. And as much as I enjoy the cartoon graphics, the wacky scenarios that unfold in the story chapters, and the irreverent Star Trek-ness of it all, its ultimate undoing is that it’s a resource management game.
Yeah… those.
Resource management games are designed to keep you in front of them for as long as possible. You want to automate a task? Earn just a little more money (or in the case of this game, merit points) so you can afford it! Wanna upgrade a specific character so you can unlock the automation in the first place? Earn more money! And so on.
What hurts most is that I’m starting to watch Lower Decks, and I do enjoy the overall atmosphere of this game as it relates to the show. But I’ve dabbled in enough resource management games to know that I’ll only get more annoyed the further I go into this one. It’s almost an inevitability for these kinds of games with me.
So, even though I know I’ll miss this one, I’m going to dispense with it now, as I know otherwise I’ll spend way too much time waiting on front of my phone to get just one more achievement, unlock one more capability, obtain one more character.
Yep. Beam me outta this one. Take care, Lower Decks Mobile. You were fun at first, but your nature betrays you’ll be bad for me.
Let me be clear: Figgerits the word game itself is fine. You solve words based on phrases and the number of letters in them. Each letter is assigned a number that, if correct, will spell it a phrase that consists of those numbers. It’s actually a decent word puzzle game.
But, my god. The ads.
They’re all over the place. Pop-up ads on sections of the puzzle. Commercial ads between each puzzle. And they just. Never. Stop. 🛑
This app would actually be a decent, and harder to delete, if it would just dial it down. But hey–capitalism gonna capitalism, right.
I’ve only really played Fallout 3, which I enjoyed immensely, but otherwise I have little experience with this franchise. It was, however, enough to get me interested in this mobile resource management game. While its animation and gameplay was pleasant enough, it’s still probably been years since I actually logged into this game.
Like Last Fortress: Underground, you’re in charge of a facility that has survived a large scale cataclysm. You create facilities with resources, direct people to undertake necessary tasks, and level up facilities to unlock more abilities. Unlike Last Fortress: Underground, I have some fairly positive memories tied up with this game.
While I wouldn’t call this a difficult deletion, I feel like this has been one of the more benign games thus far in terms. It’s associated with a franchise I enjoy, and it never felt like it was grabbing for my wallet too much. It did, of course demand my time if I wanted to keep things running smoothly.
Resource management games tend to be like that by design, though. So, I very well can’t fault this game just for being what it’s supposed to be.
Goodbye, Fallout Shelter. You were decent. Maybe someday I’ll return, but if not, know I’ll remember you fondly.
This flimsy excuse for a mobile game deals with the premise that you’re managing a ragtag group of zombie apocalypse survivors who happen upon an abandoned fortress that happens to contain everything they need to survive. You’ll need to put some work in to survive, of course, but as you discover new areas and level things and people up, the base becomes easier to manage.
I must have downloaded this years ago, and I remember playing it, but apparently my account got zapped after a period of inactivity, so it started me all over again. Which is fine. It was going to get purged regardless, and while the gameplay concept is simple enough, I had simply lost interest.
Aside from that, the game had some bugs, wasn’t easy to navigate (at times infuriatingly so), and the premise was eye-rollingly cookie cutter. This was an easy one to get rid of, and not even take a backwards glance at.
I’d recently added Star Trek Fleet Command back to my phone because I’ve been watching season 3 of Star Trek Picard, and it’s really been fueling a desire to immerse myself in More Things Trek. When I started the game, I realized that I must have played it years ago, because I’d already made it past the tutorials and had a ship and some characters.
It… wasn’t an ideal situation.
The things you need to do, the resources you have to monitor, the number of events and tasks you need to keep track of, all make for a confusing game that really was too busy to enjoy. Since the game was already assuming I knew what I was doing, I just didn’t have the interest to keep with it and try to build my fleet and officers. Throw in the gacha/proto-gambling mechanics that come with these kinds of mobile games, and it was a quick decision to purge it.
So… almost as soon as I’ve downloaded it, I’m giving it the boot.
This was an easy decision to make. I find it impossible to believe there aren’t many, many more, better Star Trek games out there that can slake your thirst for a voyage to the Final Frontier.
The first casualty of my slow purge of f2p/p2w mobile games has occurred, and it’s Marvel SNAP.
I’ve uninstalled the game, and removed myself from a Facebook group about the game. As far as I can tell, I didn’t belong to any other social media for the game: no Instagram, no subreddits, nothing like that. It’s gone, and any mentions of it through my normal passive means should be gone–if I missed something, I’ll immediately erase upon discovery.
Marvel SNAP wasn’t a really hard habit to break for me. It’s a good game for what it is, but I’m only so interested in card games, and this was a fairly new game, so I didn’t really get that invested. I know there are some games I’ll have a much harder time deleting, but this wasn’t one of them.
So, the first baby step is complete. I’ll do another one in the next day or so.
A few years ago, I took any and all mobile games off my phone in an attempt to free myself of their addictive hold on my time, attention, and money. I don’t think I went more than a couple months before I downloaded a couple of favorites and was back at it again, playing and swiping as I derided myself for my lack of willpower.
This time, I think I’m ready to make it stick. Here’s why:
I won’t be getting rid of ALL mobile games–just the “free” ones. I’m deleting the ones that are “free to play,” which usually support themselves through a number of micro transactions, often built around some form of gambling style gacha system. Essentially, if it uses randomized prizes that incentivizes the use of real money, is gone. Goodbye Marvel Contest of Champions, Marvel Puzzle Quest, and Star Trek Lower Decks. Also, collecting apps like Topps Marvel Select.
I WILL be keeping any mobile games I’ve either paid to own, have access to through a game pass system, or that I feel I can use in tandem with content creation projects. These types of games are pretty much paid for and won’t be trying to read recurring income off my payments, and they’ll therefore be more likely to not punish me for not being on them ALL THE TIME. Or not paying to win. So, titles like Grimvalor, Wayward Souls, and Lovecraft’s Untold Tales can stay.
I’ve got plenty of other things to do now, and other distractions and media. Seriously. Between podcasts, books, graphic novels, audiobooks, movies, shows, and console & PC games, there already plenty of there to take up my time and attention. And that’s not even taking into account my aspirations as a content creator: between my YouTube channel, this blog, Instagram and so on, it’s not like I don’t have plenty to do when I’m not working. Oh, and of course there’s Trouble to keep me occupied, along with friends and family. Y’know, a life.
I’m deleting all mentions of them. Twitter and IG accounts. Subreddits. Emails or other notices that promote them will be modified and taken down. I’m going to remove the temptation by blinding myself to their promotions. It’ll take time, but it’ll be very complete.
I think this will be a good move for me, as I try to increase my productivity and become a better librarian, content creator, and overall person. I’d love to hear people’s perspectives on this, including any similar struggles you’ve dealt with, how you broke them, and what you think of what I’m proposing for myself here.
Best of luck to everyone as we all try to become the best versions of ourselves.
Action RPGs have always been a favorite video game genre of mine, as some of my previous posts will make clear. And while I’ve never been a die-hard fan of sandbox games like Minecraft and Terraria, they’ve always been amusing occasional distractions that usually take away the anxiety that can come with the more action-oriented titles.
But in 2016, Square Enix published a game that took elements from both genres and combined them into a Dragon Quest title that puts a strong emphasis on building and creating (as opposed to fighting and conquering) while still driving an epic narrative that focused around rebuilding humanity up in a world ruled by monsters. And while I didn’t discover that Dragon Quest Builders even existed until several years after its release, once I heard of its existence I knew I was going to have to try it out.
I knew I would want to play this game, but I also suspected it would be of interest to my partner, who is a big fan of cuteness and low-stress gaming. She tried out the demo after I mentioned it to her, and before we knew it I had ordered a copy of the game, and she was soon outpacing my progress by leaps and bounds. Eventually I resigned myself to watching her progress, knowing I probably wouldn’t get as far as she had for a LONG time.
I play Dragon Quest Builders every so often, mostly as a way to decompress from many of the higher stress games in which I tend to immerse myself. And even though I have yet to make a significant dent in the story material, I did recently stream some gameplay from the game’s start on my PlayStation 5.
First go at DQB on my PS5!
I’d really like to make a go at a full run of the game on stream, but I would imagine it would be in a series of occasional, interrupted sequence of streams where I need to relax and take a break from my Breath of the Wilds, or my Marvel Midnight Suns, or even my Hollow Knights. Those kinds of games.
I know there’s a sequel, 2018’s Dragon Quest Builders 2, and possibly a third installment on the way. I plan on playing through those in the future, too. I’m just not sure how soon, or how long it’ll take me…
Spidey Librarian 