Nine Months of Not Spending Money on Games

Nine months ago was new year’s eve and we all make new year’s resolutions. Upon seeing that there were so many gamer resolutions to complete this game or that game, entertainment should never be a resolution. Its just too easy. So I resolved to not spend money on games this entire calendar year. Here it is three quarters later and I still haven’t spent anything.

Somehow it all backfired though, because I play more games than ever, but games that I already own. Things that I would have never played. I can still sink hundreds of hours into Team Fortress 2 and nothing else, but lucky for me after spending probably two thousand dollars on a free game, i still have yet to spend anything this year. I even consider spending my steam wallet money to be cheating. It was money at some point I suppose.

I never make new year’s resolutions. The entire thing is silly. If you vow to do something, just do it rather than waiting for a day. I’ve read other articles about how people purge social media for a month, avoid Twitter and Facebook, but in their articles they mention how they fail or slip up for a day. For me it was always the addiction of buying more since bundles are always so dirt cheap and even waiting for a full year means they’ll be even cheaper.

Humble Bundle now has a monthly bundle that you pre purchase without knowing what games will be offered. They say it’ll be new games never before in bundles. yeah, but the problem with that is they’ll be in normal bundles soon enough. Once a game is in one bundle, its in all bundles shortly after.

I feel bad for new games, because they’re competing with older, better games that have been out longer, so they’re cheaper. Why buy something new for the same price that you can buy three or ten of that are older? Old games can get played out, but if its new to you its still fun. That’s why I think fresh concepts sell more. Experiences people haven’t played before. Well as long as they involve crafting and a lot of down time. Those seem to sell the best.

Switching gears here, for around four months from may until August, I just never played games. I realized that this whole blog thing was a lot of effort. Then getting review copies meant more time having to be entertained with an hour or so to write a 1,400 word review. It felt like too much cake and exercise, so I just quit for a while. I got a lot done, but here I am again. Its still effort, but at least I have not spent anything on games this year. I’ve been granted dozens of review copies and reviewed most of them that weren’t so awful I’d feel bad for giving them a bad review.

When I would get an itch to play a game, I’d go for FTL, Prison Architect or a city builder. Those are true time sinks for me and I can spend three or four hours invested and engaged in them. They’re fun to me to build from nothing to something. Its the starting over fresh rather than balancing something that gets out of control. Its a different game each time.

Certain Steam friends would even buy me games on sale because they wanted me in the game with them. That’s a good incentive for anyone to make multiplayer games, because then you sell more copies. Sometimes I’d get single player games, just because my Steam friends are so kind and I’ve been generous to them in the past as well. It was wise of Steam to include gifting to sell more copies.

Well I have three more months to go. I’m well over the hill and I’ve been thinking if I can continue beyond twelve months. I’ve missed out on some fantastic bundles, but with 1,100+ games on Steam, I shouldn’t need anything for a while.