H-Index, motivation and mastery
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Finding motivation is perennially difficult.
One way to find motivation is measuring one's effort against an external rather than internal benchmark. One such benchmark useful benchmark is the "h-index," which measures the count of games with plays. An h-index of 10 means 10 different games played 10 times.
The notion of h-index is present in the game community. At the moment, my h-index is 4. With a small amount of effort, it could get to 5. Getting to 6 and beyond would take a slightly different strategy than what I'm doing right now.
Currently, I'm pursuing mastery in a couple of games, and playing most of the others once or twice. Building an h-index requires gradually increasing both depth and breadth. Probably the best way to do this would be to commit to playing everything I own at least once solo to get a feel for the mechanics. If I like the game, or think it's worthwhile in some other sense, play a couple more times, once as each side.
If the game inspires a desire for mastery, move it to a list of games for multiple replays to start building depth as the next member of the h-index list. While replaying this game, the other games can get a play each to bump their number to support the h-index.
For example, to get to h-index 5, I need one more play of Battle for Moscow, and 3 more plays of any one of a half-dozen remaining games. I think I'll choose StarForce as the next h-index candidate.
Thinking about games this way drops some replays pretty much off the list permanently. For example, The Final Frontier is a cute little game, but not one I think I would want to play indefinitely, or even more than once or twice more.
Also, h-index isn't everything. There are bound to be a large number of games which are worth playing once or twice, and they should be. Examples here include Duel on the Steppe, the S&T Tobruk game which is currently unpunched, probably most of the OCS games as lengthy play time simply doesn't support large numbers of replays.
Games that will support it include everything in the PanzerBlitz family, and Tobruk (Tank Battles), the Ogre family, VPG's States of Siege games, fast playing games such as Chadwick's Battle for Moscow.
Other games such as Starship Troopers fit somewhere in the middle. It has seven scenarios, which would be fun to play, but possibly not much long term replay value solo.
Building an h-index isn't unlike building a resume. Resume building gets an undeservedly bad rap. While it's true that "resume building" may have a connotation of empty achievement, this doesn't have to the case. Approached correctly, resume building provides a wonderful way to stay interested and motivated in an activity, while ensuring what you're doing is meaningful and relevant. Likewise, filling an h-index with games of no substance has little value, while using an h-index to provide motivation for mastery has great value.
Skill building
I have a few oddball games such as Chad and Nicaragua, with Tito and Warsaw Rising on the way, that seem to have been games which did not quite hit the mark, despite being historically significant and interesting. I'm considering adding these to my h-index efforts as part of a redevelopment investigation. Why did these games not work? What could be done to make them work better? Is it worth the effort, and why? Since I haven't gotten any of these to the table yet, it's not worth writing much more. If I do put in the effort, it will require dozens of plays for each game.