#this is several paragraphs of rambling about how video games work in my brain. click at your own peril

[glitchbirds]

there are three major video game genres to me- "total focus", "foreground noise", and "spreadsheet games"

"total focus" games pretty much require my complete undivided attention, maybe with some moments of downtime (ex: lobby load times, pausing the game) sprinkled in, but otherwise they are the main thing i am invested in the entire time the game is open. most story-driven games are this by default, as are most multiplayer games. under most circumstances these are not easy to make myself sit down and play unless im fully in the mood for it, because i have to carve out a block of time to dedicate to whatever the game is, and if i have anything else thats even slightly engaging to me going on that requires less energy thats often going to be what i gravitate towards. dead by daylight is one example of this, since its a multiplayer game that i will play in several-hours-long chunks of time "foreground noise" games are ones that i normally play while doing something else, usually putting more focus on the other thing than the game, with occasional exceptions. these are games i found myself playing while listening to pre-recorded lectures for classes, or that i turn to while struggling to keep my attention on a movie or video without either pausing every few seconds or otherwise ignoring it, or just so i have something to do with my hands while rewatching something. while they CAN be played with full undivided attention, thats a bit of a waste of mental resources, but they Are very easy to just pick up again and again at any time. most pokemon games (after ive played through them at least once) fall under this umbrella, gen 3 games in particular i have replayed from start to finish more times than i can count (mostly as randomized roms these days) "spreadsheet games" are the hardest to commit to playing at any given time and often the easiest for me to burn out on and feel like im not actually enjoying them and just pushing myself through (and yet i still somehow want to play them and will normally just take significant breaks). with these games i get caught up on optimization and will completely ignore story-related content for as long as physically possible while grinding for the best encounters, best items, getting as close to 100% completion as i physically can, etc. because of this i rarely can play the games casually without fretting about whatever stuff im missing, and have to have some sort of document keeping track of what im looking for open or easily accessible at all times. not all of these games involve me using actual literal spreadsheets but, for example, i have MULTIPLE files related to the game pokemon conquest and my efforts to get every single character to match with their perfect link pokemon;

the oldest of these files was last updated in 2015 and is just a notepad document of sentences like "takatora[charmeleon] needs litwick, kanemori[gurdurr] needs croagunk, nobuchika[panpour] needs gyarados"... this information corresponded to a ROM file of pokemon conquest that i lost the save file to at some point, likely while changing computers in 2018. my CURRENT file, though, is an actual spreadsheet using a base made by someone else Similarly Insane about pokemon conquest and corresponds to a physical copy of conquest that i own, which is in the early stages of the very long postgame (i have never actually finished conquest's postgame because of my perfect link quest). it was last updated late 2022 and looks like this:

(my past self did not make a color key and im not digging up the cartridge right now to double check, but after a few minutes of deliberation i believe blue = "i have this character but not the perfect link", yellow = "i have the link but not the fully evolved version of the pokemon yet", and red = "i have the fully evolved version of the link pokemon". white ofc means i havent recruited the character yet)

anyway all this is background information so i can say that rdr2 is slowly becoming a spreadsheet game to me because i am obsessed with getting as close to 100% game completion in chapter 2 as physically possible so that from now on whenever i decide to replay rdr2 from the start, i can play the game normally until the end of chapter two THEN make a copy of This save and go on playing from that point so i can have all the pearson camp stuff completed, all the trapper items, all weapons unlocked, all challenges complete, all collectathons done, etc and play stress-free. but also i really wanted to actually replay rdr2 from the start right now so these two parts of my soul are at war. and yes i have an rdr2 spreadsheet open (keeping track of all perfect pelts collected for pearson and the trapper) as well as an interactive map of the game so i can keep track of collectables, easter eggs, etc