Day 18 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available.

I’m not a gamer; this month I unsubscribed from Apple Arcade because I wasn’t playing any of the games on offer despite a number of them being good. It’s an opportunity cost issue. There are only so many hours in a day and I find enjoyment doing other things ahead of gaming… most of the time.

I say that because rarely I do become obsessed with a game. My most recent example is Zelda: Breath of the Wild. With that game, I would sneak away with my son’s Switch and play it for hours. At first I was making my way through the game naturally. Then as I progressed, I got more serious and downloaded an iOS app to help me track the locations I had been, and which areas I still needed to unlock.

I continued to upgrade my character, beyond that which was necessary to claim victory over the big boss. I didn’t know that at the time of course, but given how relatively easy the final boss battle was, I’d say that I had swung the scales significantly in my favour.

Zelda was an epic game. It captured my mind for months. It was an expensive game but on an entertainment per hour basis, was incredibly cheap. I don’t know when I will encounter another game that captivates me in that that way but I’m sure it will happen, I’ll become a gamer for a month or two, then go back to normal non-gamer life.