I’ve finished both of my “Summer Project” games, and am now at an impasse. I don’t know what I want to play now. I have options, an actual written backlog I want to tackle, but nothing speaks to me right now. And so I’m just kind of “floating”, waiting on something to strike. This summer, my big project games were Final Fantasy VII, and Doom: The Dark Ages, and as of yesterday, they’re both completed. I could start FFVII Remake, or pick up Dark Ages Revelations, but I feel like I need a “cooldown” period from both. But, nothing sounds fun right now, nothing sounds like something I want to go through the process of learning or relearning. Even my “standby” games feel like an ordeal to try and play without asking myself “what am I doing? I’m not having fun with this.”, and closing them as fast as I launch them. Before I finished FFVII, I had penciled in either the Xenosaga trilogy or the first .hack series, but I haven’t found the motivation to start in Xenosaga’s case, or continue to trudge through the early part of Infection in the case of .hack . Playing through another shooter after Doom I think would be doing it a disservice after how good all three new-Doom games felt to play, so I want to pick up something different, keep giving myself changeups, different looks, but again, nothing is really speaking to me. I tried to load up Forza last night, but immediately got bored to where I just wanted to go to bed. And the taste of Western Michigan-Michigan’s bullshit ending in real life made wanting to play CFB27 a nonstarter. For the record, WMU won that game until the refs screwed them. I go through this same feeling every time I finish a game, where I just lose any motivation to play something different after. Even if like this time, I have a general idea of what I want to do next, I sit in this state of “I don’t want to play anything else right now”, and until it passes, nothing feels “right” to play. With FFVII, I kind of mitigated it by playing Doom in tandem, but now that I’ve finished both, I don’t know what I want to do next, or when I want to do it, even though I have the time at the moment. I’ve finished those games, but a part of me doesn’t feel “finished” with them. I could go back and grind out what I’d need to face off with Ruby/Emerald Weapon, or I could load up the Ripatorium and fight to my hearts’ content, but I don’t necessarily want to do that. I want to move onto the next, want to clear cut that backlog a little at a time, or replay something I haven’t played through fully in half a lifetime, but there’s that gnawing feeling of not being ready to move until I’ve chewed up every bit of the games I’d been working on. There’s nothing particularly in it for me, more materia I won’t use, character and weapon skins that feel boring compared to Eternal’s slate, but a part of me doesn’t feel finished until I at least chew on these things. Super bosses and combat arenas that aren’t mandatory to see the end of the game, I finished Safer Sephiroth with Omnislash, I put Prince Ahzrak down with the Super Shotgun, I did what I set out to do. Chrono Cross is sitting right there, finally making myself finish Duke Nukem 3D is right there, I have options, and it’s not like I’m not aware that I do. None of it speaks to me right now though. I kind of just don’t want to play anything at the moment, not because I’m not enjoying the hobby, but because I’m satisfied that I finished those games. Not 100%, everything uncovered finished, but, enough to roll credits and see the endings. Eventually that will change, and something will catch my eye and I’ll mainline it like I did FFVII and Doom. Right now though, I kind of feel okay just floating for a bit, playing things to see what sticks with me. This is usually when I have my dalliances with Live Service games or MMORPGs, where I have no single-player games I want to play in particular, and nothing else on my docket. I could switch it up and play the first three Silent Hill games for the first time, but even that isn’t really speaking to me yet. There’s no pressure, it’s not like my next project is going to blink out of existence before I decide on what it’ll be, it’ll hit me when it hits me. It could be when I’m playing something like Warframe or FFXI, it could be when I’m doing whatever errand at home, it could hit me in the middle of a work call, it’ll be what it will be. But ultimately, it’s on me to find a new goal and work towards it. Doesn’t matter what game it is, I just need to find a new thing to focus and fixate on. I could finish kitting out Nekros, or level Thief to 99, or I could go off on some wild direction in the wilderness, it’s all out there. Nothing says I have to start a new project immediately, I can wait a while until the mood strikes. I could right some wrongs and turn WMU into a machine that chews up Michigan and spits them out, everything is on the board, it’s just on me to whittle that board down to something I both can and want to do. I just have to find what that is going to be first.