Years ago I made the decision to never play a game on launch, never buy a game full price, never play a game just because it was on the online buzz.

I decide what to play usually days in advance, carve out a chunk of my recreation time to explicitly play, as if it were going to a movie or a party with friends. It's like a date with the game. I block a couple of hours to it. If the game is good, it will get a second date, if it bored me, we would break up.

I don't buy on sales pressure either. If I decide I want to play a game, I would wait to buy it on the historical cheapest price. Only then would the game get schedule time to get played. That keeps the FOMO away.

It has made gaming super enjoyable and no longer the dopamine chase that publishers want to make to milk the most money out of me. As a result I usually enjoy my time way more, play older games more frequently, not out of nostalgia but because I never played then. I also spend less money, which lowers stress and anxiety. As a result I haven't played a AAA game in a long while.

Time is scheduled for a game on what I'm interested in right now. But since the decision is always for a time far away in the future (up to a week in advance) I can make a more directed and intentional decision. Some weeks it's thematic, some weeks it's just genre based. Some weeks are retro. Some weeks are for comfort. All with small and concrete goals for each.