What Eric's Playing

Anyone who has checked out my blog has probably noticed a list of game on the right side of the site.  This is my "What Eric's Playing" list.  I started to compile the list sometime after I started this blog, so obviously it's not my entire history of games played, but it at least gives you a snapshot of what I have been playing for the last couple of years.

I believe anyone in the industry should be playing games.  I've heard a number of times how people "don't have time to play", or "nothing interests me", or worse yet "I play games all day at work, when I come home I don't want to play anymore".  While it's easy to understand that life happens and things can get in the way of a good gaming session, I will never understand someone who is a responsible party in the industry can't find time to enjoy games for game's sake.

This is tantamount to someone in the fashion industry not wearing fashionable clothes, or someone who makes movies for a living and doesn't watch movies.  I am not suggesting that plumbers plumb on their days off, or a truck driver who wants to drive just for fun.  We are in a creative industry, one that is market driven, and what we do has to be relevant to people you may not fully understand or relate to.  We must play games to understand them.  We have to play games to know what may be fun.  Of course it's better if you can actually enjoy yourself while you are playing, but at the very least I believe it's important to examine games systematically so you can understand what may make them work or fail in the marketplace.

Playing games, especially English language games, isn't as easy as one may think while living in Asia.  Some locations aren't too bad - I found it easy to find the latest games in the Philippines and Singapore.  It's great that the new releases come out roughly the same time as they do in the US, and the prices are competitive, if not a little cheaper in some instances.  Living in Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, or China is problematic though.  The games are localized for the market, and that doesn't include English.  Thank goodness for Amazon.

I offer my games list here as a way of not only seeing what I am playing, but also what interests me personally.  You can see my family game inclinations from some of the games on my list, but you can see the more hard core games for after-hours play.  Yes, there are a few work games in there, and a few that I selected because I thought they were important enough to examine from a market perspective.  But I will continue to love my personal game time as I love the industry and it's extremely exciting to be developing entertainment like this.