To play, or not to play?

I've recently introduced a certain regime in my playing culture. The idea comes from that time some while ago when I was writing about how I have too many games installed. I decided to go on gaming rehab.

How this works is that I limited myself to playing only a few games at a time, and the rule is that when I'm playing something, I have to finish it. Some titles are out of this system, like Diablo 2 or Jedi Academy, because those are games I tend to play all the time, not for the sake of finishing them (as with some campaign-driven games), but because I like to get back to them often.

The effects? I've managed to finish C&C: Tiberian Sun - Firestorm and Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance, as well as remove Warcraft II, Freedom Force, Evil Genius, Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2 (the first I wouldn't play, the second I decided was not my thing, the third doesn't run well enough to keep it, the last two were here because of the nostalgia, but were to irritating for me to care). At the moment, I'm trying to finish Anachronox and an expansion for Disciples II. All of this means that I went from about 30 games installed down to 21. I am forbidden to install any new titles as long as I'm at the 20 mark or higher. This is an additional incentive - if I want to play some of the stuff I recently bought (including Tony Hawk's Proskater 3, Age of Empires II Gold, Resident Evil 2 and Mafia) I have to finish some older titles first.

I know this may sound funny, but I'm deadly serious about this system. I just hate leaving things unfinished. With a majority of titles, I will only play the game once - that includes Anachronox (which I'm playing at the moment) and Grand Theft Auto 3 (which I'm going to take on somewhat soon, I would imagine). Some older titles I will inevitably re-visit, but I would like to finish them first (Total Annihilation, Starcraft or the expansions to Disciples II fit this category nicely), as they are not gripping enough to play all the time.

The plan is pretty much the same for when I get back to Poland. The trouble is, I've got about eight new games that I'm planning to play while there, plus at least three or four that are already there which I'm going to play anyway. So I'm going to be under quite a strict schedule. With only a "max three games at a time" allowance, I'll have to finish some titles rather quickly to manage to come back to England satisfied. That may be quite the challenge, but I'm planning on finishing at least half of my new purchases.

After all, there's more to life than only playing video games, and even I get bored of staring at the monitor at one point or another... Remember my Triangle of Interests? It's shifting slowly towards board games again, at the cost of both RPG's and Video Games. Maybe that's a good thing - they are not as damaging to your eyes as the latter, and I can actually play them, which is not the case with the former...