One Of Us

Even by the standards of a hobby that runs on fads, frenzies and fear of missing out, Valheim really has dropped a rock in the pond. Ancient heroes awaken from their slumber and not just in the game. I was amazed to see a post from Potshot in my Feedly feed this morning. As he mentions, it's been seven years since the last time he felt moved to post. This is why I almost never cull my blog roll. The good ones always come back.

Yesterday SynCaine weighed in with a very good pocket review of the game. He hasn't gone silent altogether but it was only his third post of the year.

His old sparring partner, Tobold, posts more frequently, although rarely any more about video games. His interests have strayed into the so-called real world, board games, table-top adventures, a seemingly interminable digression on the merits of 3D printers. (There are none. They're the modern-day equivalent of the hi-fi separates of yesteryear, designed to be sold at high prices to people who like to fiddle with the process while the rest of us skip straight to the product). 

 

Tobold, too, has been tugged back into the slipstream of the blogosphere's prevailing winds by Valheim. His succinct summation of the game's strengths and attractions, not excluding some ways its loopholes can be exploited for personal profit, makes a tidy companion piece to SynCaine's. If only Friday blog wars were still a thing.

Syl, herself a recent returnee to blogging after a lengthy silence, popped into the comments here to express her resistance to the ongoing onslaught of commendations. She was kind enough to credit me with the potential power to pull her in but also quick to affirm her determination not to succumb. It's not really my intention or desire to act as an influencer when I pen gushing posts about my latest fancies but it's nice to know someone enjoys the enthusiasm.

I have an odd relationship with recommendations, anyway. I very much enjoy receiving them but making them unsettles me a little. It's an unfortunate psychological quirk, given my paid job literally requires me to "make recommendations" every day, both in person and in writing. On top of that I've chosen a hobby, blogging, in which I frequently de facto cheerlead for all kinds of things I like. I really know how to make things hard for myself, apparently.

 

My problem with recommendations is the commensurate sense of responsibility, something I loathe. It always worries me that something I say may be taken seriously by someone, who may then go on to act on it and receive an outcome that's not what they expected or, worse, wanted. Also, it's really awkward when someone comes back and tells you they hated something you loved. Or even just kinda liked. It can sit between you for a while.

All the same, it's a natural desire to spread the word when you find something you like and believe others might, too. And anyway, keeping good news to yourself is pretty selfish, isn't it? 

It depends how entertaining you can make it, too. I'm pretty sure Wilhelm has a lot more people looking forward to his instalments on the life of an Imperium footsoldier in EVE Online (can a spaceship pilot be a footsoldier?) or the instance group's latest trip through another World of Warcraft Classic dungeon than can be playing those games themselves. 

 

His series of (mis)adventures in Valheim make for great reading, whether you play the game or not. The latest post, in which he catches us up with all the things that happened when he didn't have time to post because he was playing the game, scores high with me for recognition humor but makes for a great tale whether you've drunk the Viking Kool-Aid or not.

As Wilhelm points out, it's tough to keep up a blogging narrative in real time when you're spending all day playing. In my case, for the first time I can recall in years, I have found myself wanting to carry on playing in preference to posting at all. I only bought Valheim a week ago and I've already bailed on two days of posting as a direct result. Sorry about that but it's going to happen again.

How long is all of this going to go on, though? Hmm. That's a tough one. These sudden squalls of interest blow up all the time but how many of them last? Remember Genshin Impact?

 

Mailvaltar does. He's been kind enough to remind any of his readers still playing there's an event on they might not want to miss, suggesting "...anyone who’s played and liked the game before... put Valheim away for a bit (c’mon, we all know you’re playing that one right now) and take a look". 

I'd like to. I really would. I was enjoying Genshin Impact. I played it, I wrote about it, then I drifted away. Other things came up. 

One of them was Black Desert. I was enjoying that one, too. Again. There was a ripple of interest in the blogosphere when ownership transition and the need to sort out your account or lose it pushed a bunch of folk who hadn't been back for a while to dust off their characters and get back on the horse. Or camel.

Aywren was one of them. And what's she doing now? Well, she might be playing Valheim. She posted an excellent overview of the new viking's experience although she hasn't mentioned it again. And Belghast, the first blogger I noticed posting about the game, doesn't seem to have been bitten as hard as some, although his interest seems to have revived with the arrival of friends.

There are a few hold-outs. As well as the aforementioned Syl, Azuriel has professed his intention to sit this one out, at least while Early Access lasts and Jeromai agrees. Other potential pickers-up on the prime posting potential of Valheim, the likes of Syp, Tipa or Kaozz, have yet to reveal their hands.

If I had to guess (and of course I really don't, but I'm not going to let that stop me) I'd say Valheim will become something of a standard. Not a flash in the pan or a nine day wonder but one of those background games everyone dips in and out of for years. That would put it squarely in line with the game to which it's most frequently compared, Minecraft.

 

I've never played Minecraft but I've read a lot about it. Oh boy, have I ever. At any given moment there will usually be someone in my blog roll just starting a new project that involves piling brightly-colored blocks one on top of another. It's a toy as much as it's a game and that's why it has such persistence.

Valheim does seem to have a through-line but the procedurally-generated landscapes, the open world and the extensive construction and terraforming opportunities suggest an indefinite lifespan well beyond the scope of any scripted narrative. I wonder how long it will be before the game gets its own dedicated creative mode? Not too long, I hope.

The current thrall the game exerts will fade in time, but not for good. I imagine it receding into a mellow awareness, always there but rarely heeded. Occasionally the urge to revisit the surprisngly lush lands of this imagined North will return, be indulged, then slip away again. 

 

In some ways, already, after just a week, I look forward to that day. To relish waking up with what you'll do in a game already there in the front of your mind; to resent competing activities, even ones formerly anticipated with pleasure (other games, blogging...); to welcome being absorbed, taken over by another, imagined life... to welcome that kind of takeover unambiguously, you'd need to be less comfortable with the life of the mind you were leading already than it seems I was.

It's a peculiar sensation. For the moment I clearly prefer to be playing Valheim than doing most anything else I could be doing instead. That's good. It's pleasant to have an occupation. To set against that pleasure, there's some discomfort in realizing what's being pushed aside. Opportunity cost, I suppose they call it.

I had plans for other games. Things I wanted to do. Things I was looking forward to doing. Some of those can be returned to in due course. Others won't be there for long. With irony, having had the mildest bout of gaming ennui not so very long ago, I'd found a happy rhythm again. Then Valheim burst in and threw it all to blazes. 

 

Ah, well. Can't complain. No, let's rephrase that. Can complain but really shouldn't. If finding a game's too much fun to stop playing because not stopping means not playing other games or writing about them, that's not so much a first world problem as a problem from a world that needs minus numbers to delineate the sheer extent of its excess privelige.

Guess I'd better get on play the thing, then, and stop going on about it. And in case anyone's still on the fence about whether to throw in their lot with the rest of the converted, understand, I'm not recommending anything. Just pointing out the risks.