I realise that the amount of time I spend watching video game streams, particularly League of Legends, is excessive. In fact, I think League in general is a huge time sink that doesn't provide me with all that much benefit; I enjoy the game (playing and watching), but it's just too much of an involvement necessary to get better, and I have so many other things to do that I can't justify it any more.
I have many ongoing projects that would benefit from more attention. The most obvious is my ever-growing collection of video games. It doesn't make any sense to continue buying them when I have over a thousand yet to beat, many hundreds of which I haven't even started! I'd also like to get back into streaming regularly, and this seems like the most obvious way to do it.
Speedrunning still appeals to me, however disillusioned I am with Speed Demos Archive and Games Done Quick. I have a few runs at various stages of completion, and it would make me feel like a better gamer to research them further or actually finish them. Occasionally people have also let me know that they're interested in the games I've picked up, so it would be some entertainment for them, too.
There's also two large programming projects; the strategy game I'm working on with some help from Emily, and a new website. The game is nowhere near done; it has much engine development but little content yet, and it's not possible to play a full battle so far. It needs many, many hours of work to be usable and a couple of multiples of that to be good. I probably won't be able to finish it in a year, but I could put a large dent in the needed work. This would also help me improve as a programmer, adding the ability to appreciate projects of greater scope.
A new website has been something on my mind for a long time. My current site doesn't really show off what I know about HTML and JavaScript, so it would be neat to revisit it as a showcase alone. The functionality is what I really want to improve... I've been putting more and more focus on it being a decent repository of video game information, and to that end it keeps track of game prices, collection data and now I'm starting on linking games together that share characters. I want to take this to another level and make it possible to define collections of games by certain companies, or about certain events in history, and so on. This time I want to design the website properly from the beginning, leaving enough room for extension but not relying on a hodge-podge of techniques.
So, to recap:
- Watch as few video game streams as possible
- Play no League of Legends
- Regularly stream play-throughs of unfinished games from my collection
- Record and submit a speedrun or two
- Create a working prototype of a strategy game
- Re-build and re-style my website
That's enough for a year.
