The Library Giveth and the Library Waitlisteth: 30 Days of Borrowing My Entire Hobby

Here's a fun fact about my personality: I own 47 unplayed games across three platforms, and yet when my bank statement arrived last month featuring a suspicious cluster of $59.99 charges, I experienced what I can only describe as a moral event horizon. Something had to change. And since my willpower has the structural integrity of a wet napkin, I outsourced the problem to an institution older than my entire console generation: the local public library.

The rules were simple. For 30 days, every game I played — video or cardboard — had to come from the library. No purchases. No exceptions. No, I could not 'just preorder the thing,' thank you for asking, inner demon.

Week One: The Honeymoon Phase

I want to report that my library is a gleaming palace of media, but the truth is more beautiful than that. It's a beige building with a flickering marquee sign and a video game section that takes up roughly one shelf and a half. The selection is curated by what I can only assume is a dartboard. There were three separate versions of a kart racing game, a farming sim with a cracked case, and a puzzle game whose disc looked like it had been used to spread cream cheese.

I checked out all of them. It was free. I felt like a criminal. A law-abiding criminal with a library card.

Enter: The Librarian

Every great experiment needs a nemesis, and mine turned out to be Deb.

Deb works the front desk, has worked there since approximately the Clinton administration, and has opinions about my checkouts that she shares freely and without solicitation. When I borrowed the puzzle game, she looked at the case, looked at me, and said, "That one comes back a lot." When I brought it back eight days later, unsolved, she didn't say anything. She just made a small sound. A sound I will be hearing in my dreams for the foreseeable future.

I returned it a second time with the disc still pristine because I'd played maybe forty minutes. Deb held it up to the light like a jeweler appraising a fake diamond. "Didn't click, huh?"

Deb, I have a mortgage's worth of unplayed Steam games. Nothing clicks. Nothing has clicked since 2016.

The Board Game Interlude

Midway through the month, I discovered our library loans out board games, which is either the best-kept secret in America or a sign that my town has too many HOA disputes and not enough hobbies. I checked out a cooperative strategy game that required me to read a 20-page rulebook, which, as longtime readers know, is my personal kryptonite.

I recruited my neighbor, a retired man named Gary who mows his lawn in cargo shorts, to be my co-op partner. Gary understood the rules immediately. Gary then proceeded to make every optimal decision while narrating them like a golf announcer. We lost. Gary asked when we could play again. I have never felt so used by a man holding a tiny wooden cube.

The Late Fee Reckoning

Look, I'm not proud of this, but I forgot to renew one of my checkouts and incurred the princely sum of $1.40 in late fees. That's right — the entire month of entertainment cost me less than a vending machine Snickers. I paid it in exact change while Deb watched. She said nothing, but the receipt she handed me was warm, like a judgment.

And that's kind of the whole point, isn't it? This scuffed, underfunded, one-shelf-and-a-half operation gave me a month of joy for the price of a candy bar. Meanwhile, the game industry wants $70 plus a battle pass plus an early access premium deluxe edition that includes a skin I will never equip.

A Love Letter, Buried Under the Jokes

Here's the part where I get sincere for a second, so buckle up. Libraries are quietly doing the absolute most with the absolute least. The one in my town runs a summer program for kids, hosts a D&D night that's standing room only, and somehow keeps a video game collection alive on a budget that wouldn't cover one AAA game's marketing spend for a single afternoon.

If you haven't been inside your local library since elementary school, go. Check out a game. Pay your $1.40 in late fees like a decent American. Look Deb in the eye and let her judge you, because honestly? It's the most honest feedback loop in gaming today.

As for my backlog: I beat exactly one game in 30 days. It was the kart racer. I have never been more proud of anything.