What do you play?

It probably shouldn't surprise me when someone asks about the sorts of games I like to play, but the question stalls me.  Not because I'm the least bit uncomfortable about my game-habits, but because it's a surprisingly complicated question.

I can talk about genre labels, but they tend to be both broad and fuzzy.  And honestly, I do play a lot of different games.  I'm tempted to use the word eclectic, but I'm pretty sure there's only one hentai game in my back catalogue so surely I can't be all that eclectic.  Something to work on, maybe.

If you've asked me about the games I play you probably would have been happy with a simple answer.  "Mainly wRPG and action-adventure", perhaps.  Maybe I could list some favourites.  Accurate, as far as it goes, but I often prefer to discuss the genre overlaps and difficult-to-classify oddities.

I'm tempted to bend the truth in some cases.  I love survival horror, but I'm a soft touch (with games anyway, horror movies are fine) so they take me a long time.  Sometimes I watch someone else play instead.  Survival horror's a genre I love, but telling people I play survival horror is a bit of a stretch.  I'm working on it.

What I'm really trying to get to here is why do I play the games I play?  I don't always know, and it varies a lot for each game.  I don't always play games because I like them, either.  It's also a matter of whether they are important or interesting enough, although of course I can't play everything.

I think I've just reached my answer.  I play games that make me feel something and/or have something to teach me.  To understand what that means you probably need to know me better.

That would sound like a terrible pick up line if I used it in a pub.

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