Six Degrees of Time to Loot
Naithin over at Time to Loot put out an interesting post recently that I can relate to. In his No Man’s Sky Added post, Naithin looks at adding and removing games from his sidebar. This is a pretty big deal because adding a game means (to me) that you’re focused on advancing in or at least playing that game more than others and it adds inertia and stickiness to that game.
Inertia in the fact that you’ve now pointed out to everyone who comes to your blog that you are involved in that game. It’s no longer just a casual acquaintence, but as Naithin points out, he notices he’s “playing this thing a fair bit”. With that being the case, adding it to your sidebar makes it difficult to distance yourself from the game if you get tired of it. It’s on your sidebar so you kinda have to play it, and that leads to stickiness.
Once something shows up in your sidebar it shows up in your mind too. Every time you go to your blog, and I go to check on links I have to other sites all the time, you see the games you’re playing. And if you’re not playing that game there’s a pang of guilt since…it’s on your sidebar.
I think those reasons are why I don’t have a gaming sidebar right now. I don’t feel a sense of belonging to any game and I don’t feel like I’ve bought into any of the various games I’m playing. So…no inertia to keep me playing the game and no stickiness to make me feel guilty.
Regardless, No Man’s Sky is a game that sits in my Steam library. I really need to jump in some time and give the game a chance. I doubt I’ll get to the “boatload” of time that triggered Naitin’s placing it on his sidebar, but I wouldn’t mind giving it the good ‘ol College try.
So I want to thank Naithin for putting this game on his sidebar and I’m looking forward to seeing what his thoughts on the game are as he plays more of it. He reminded me I want to give this game a chance and so far I haven’t. For me, maybe the milestone I’m closest to is loading the game on my hard drive so I’m a long way from sidebar territory but with nudging from Time to Loot, I might at least make it into the game soon.
This has been an installment of my Six Degrees series in which I take a look at the wonderful blogs that surround Beyond Tannhauser Gate. The blogosphere is large but there are so many friends to be found within Six Degrees.
Six Degrees | Six Degrees of Time to Loot
It never occurs to me even to glance at the sidebars on almost any blog I read. They’re kind of like a frame for the post but I forget they have content or meaning of their own. TYhe only time I remember they’re there is if someone actually discusses them in the body of the post as Naithin did.
Other than my blog roll, which I know gets plenty of use, I don’t imagine anyone ever looking at anything down the side of my blog. I haven’t really touched any of it since the day I set the layout eight years ago. If I did have a “What I’m Playing” section I’d pretty much have to change it two or three times a week because I flit about so much. Don’t think I’ll bother!
I look at the sidebars hoping to see sites for my Six Degrees posts. If I can follow from site to site it’s a wonderful feeling.
At risk of possibly overstating this — I view sidebars as very important! Sure, once I become accustomed to a particular blog they can fade into the background a little more but I do find them functionally useful too. (And yes, even yours, Bhagpuss! In part for the blogroll but also just through recent posts. I’m really struggling to keep up during Blaugust.)
In the initial stages though of investigating a new blog and learning a bit about who someone is, the sidebar I find can be every bit as informative as the About page. (Which I’ve recently learned also has some debate over the utility of, hah.)
In any case — as to games on the sidebar? Yes to everything you said RR, except maybe stepped back a notch.
I want the list there to be representative of where my time is going and what upcoming game posts might be on (although sometimes there can be one without the other, so it doesn’t always work out this way).
And I DO view adding the game as a bit of a statement, as we alluded to in our posts. But I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say there is an element of guilt to it. Chagrin at myself and my fickle nature perhaps if I ‘commit’ to one and then rapidly after lose interest again.
But otherwise I try to keep things in the gaming and blogging space somewhat light and free of worry. Even ‘chagrin’ might be too heavy a word. Perhaps it’s more like an eye roll of exasperation but still with some degree of good grace to the whole thing. Exasperation but with a wry smile.