05 · Stop Waiting for the Perfect Time to Start That RPG
The 80-hour RPG sits in your library. You bought it on sale six months ago. It’s a great game, you know it’s a great game, you’ve heard nothing but praise. But you haven’t started it.
The reason you give yourself: you’re waiting for the right time. A long weekend, a vacation, a quiet stretch of evenings. Once you have that, you’ll really commit. You’ll do it justice.
That stretch never arrives.
The fantasy of the right time
The right time is a fictional period your imagination has constructed. It has these properties:
You have unlimited evenings. You’re not tired. Nothing else competes for attention. You’re in the right mood for a 60-hour epic. You’re committed to seeing it through.
This person doesn’t exist. You don’t have unlimited evenings, you’ll be tired some of them, things will compete, your mood will vary, and your commitment will waver. These are all true and they will all remain true forever.
The plan to wait for the right time is a plan to never start.
Why long games trigger this specifically
Short games don’t have this problem. You can dabble. A four-hour indie game can be tried tonight without ceremony.
An 80-hour RPG carries the weight of a contract. Starting it feels like signing up for something. If you’re not sure you can finish, the safer move (your brain reasons) is to not start. Once you’ve started and abandoned, the game is wasted. Better to keep it on the shelf of pristine future.
This is loss aversion applied to time investment. The fear of starting and not finishing outweighs the certainty of never playing. The latter is what’s actually happening, but it’s invisible because it’s the default state.
What works
Start with a session you’re willing to lose.
Tell yourself: I’ll play this for 45 minutes tonight. If I don’t like it, I’m done. If I do like it, I might play more. Either way, the 45 minutes is fine.
You’re not signing up for 80 hours. You’re signing up for 45 minutes. The contract is small.
Most people who try this find that one of two things happens. Either they discover the game isn’t actually for them, in which case they’ve saved themselves 79 hours of guilt. Or they discover they’re enjoying it, in which case the next session is no longer a contract because they already started.
The 80-hour fantasy is the obstacle. The 45-minute test session is the antidote.
One more thing
Maida doesn’t care how long a game is. It shows you one installed game. You decide whether to try it tonight. If you do, you don’t have to commit to finishing. You’re committing to launching it.
That smaller commitment is what most decisions actually are, when stripped of the future-you anxiety.