Back in the day I was all in on consuming every last bit of info for an upcoming game. We (bloggers) almost all did it for Warhammer Online, but I’ve done it many times for many titles in the past. Analyzing every screen shot, watching every interview or preview, diving deep deep into forums about the game, the works. In some ways, that part of gaming can be more fun than actually playing the game, which says a lot about both the games and the fans…
Today I just don’t have the time, energy, or desire to do that though, even for titles I’m really excited about. I still believe Crowfall will be a fun MMO, but its literally been years since I’ve kept up with its development, and can’t even bother to log into the alpha/beta/whatever that is happening right now. I invested real money in Pillars of Eternity 2, and I didn’t bother reading most of the updates prior to its release. And now today, I ‘know enough’ about Fallout76 to (mostly) stop caring about new info.
On Fallout76 specifically, do I know exactly what the game will be? Not really, no. I’m still unsure (and I suspect so are the devs) about how far the multiplayer vs letting you solo thing will go. Can you actually solo in the traditional definition of that term? If I want to play it exclusively co-op, can I do that even prior to the release of private servers? Does it have ‘real’ Fallout stories/quests, or is everything far more shallow and short-looped? Beta will answer most if not all of that, and then things will change anyway because that’s how games are these days.
But I know enough about Fallout76 to know I’ll most likely buy it (short of beta feedback being a total disaster). I can’t buy the special edition since that’s sold out, and the game isn’t on Steam (yet?), but it has my attention enough with what I have seen to remain interested, if from the outside sometimes looking in.
Hardcore Casual 
Widespread fanaticism about video games… at least as yet unreleased games… is sort of recent phenomena in the arc of my video game experience (which runs past 40 years at this point). There was a point in time before which you really didn’t know what was coming down the pipe without reading physical magazines, something that thinned out the crowd. Even Usenet, where such things were discussed, kept people away with its arcane nature. With the web and then social media, it suddenly became possible for anybody to fixate on new games. So I did that for a while… an arc that probably started with Diablo 2 and ended with Star Trek Online… and found that expending all that energy on being into a game before it launched had very little to do with how much I enjoyed a particular game in the end. And, in some cases, it was detrimental to my enjoyment. Sometimes going in fresh and learning for yourself is the right adventure. So I sort of stopped. I still like talking about video games, and still blog to excess about them, but if anybody thinks I am fanatical it is only because they aren’t comparing me to actual fanatics.
Welcome to my world. Then again, I have a few years on you.
:-)
I think that, psychiatric disorders aside, you can only keep up that level of interest and enthusiasm for so long. I’ve been a huge music fan – far, far more than games – since I was barely a teenager. I spent my adolescence and early 20s reading every music weekly and monthly, hanging out in record shops, going to gigs several nights a week, playing in bands… I still love music, listen to it all the time, constantly search for new stuff, but I can’t tell you the line-up of every band that’s up-and-coming or recite the track listing of their latest releases in order like I once could.
Partly it’s getting older but mostly it’s coming to a realization that none of this stuff is going anywhere. It’ll be there when you want it – if you want it. Even more true in the digiital age, although ironically online games are one of the very few things that genuinely do go away sometimes…
Then maybe you missed that
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/beta-battletech-update-1-1-release-notes.1106263/
“Ultrawide monitor support. BATTLETECH now supports displays with 21:9, 64:27 and 43:18 aspect ratios. Known Issue: a few cosmetic-only bugs still exist in this experience, but given the high-demand for ultrawide support we felt that these minor issues did not need to hold up its release.”
it still BETA patch with actual thing arriving sometime in July, but looks promising enough.
I did miss that indeed, awesome. Will wait until its out of beta, and when I’m done with TW:W2, but nice to have that game back as an option.