Game Collector
I think I just need to admit it: I no longer play games, I collect them.
There is no other explanation for what just transpired. Which was me buying the Humble Capcom Bundle, that included Resident Evil 4 & 5, Devil May Cry, and Remember Me. In my defense, it was the inclusion of Resident Evil 4 – which I have heard is one of the best in the series – and Remember Me that pushed me over the edge. In my prosecution, this was a few days after getting the Humble Weekly Bundle Valentine’s Day 2. For the pants. Or for Hatoful Boyfriend for $1. Your choice.
Indeed, the entire reason I am writing this post is as a distraction to not also pick up Grand Theft Auto 5 for ~$32. Granted, GTA 5 is on my 970 hit-list along with Far Cry 4, and this is an all-time low price. At the same time… I’m at 45 hours in Witcher 3 and I doubt even halfway done with the game. Then there’s Pillars of Eternity still languishing in my Steam account. And, you know, the literal library of other games that were purchased presumably for a reason. Don’t get me started on all those PS3 games on my shelf either.
This shit is the first-worldest of problems. And it has to get sorted out in the next three weeks because Fallout 4.
I don’t even know anymore.
Posted on October 21, 2015, in Miscellany and tagged #firstworldproblems, Digital Hoarder, Fallout 4, GTA 5, Humble Bundle. Bookmark the permalink. 9 Comments.
In An Age 
Man! Don’t worry be happy!
Don’t even think about all the games you have not played yet. The key to the problem is to play any game that you enjoy at the moment. Getting AAA titles to be played later if the price is right now is perfectly okay.
GTA V is a great game even in single-player mode. Get it unless your spare time is on a tight schedule and you know everything you are going to play till Fallout 4 (which will be bad at start because programmers like to fix their bugs after release these days thanks to the Internet availability).
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This risk with GTA 5 is that I’ll just drop Witcher 3 and Pillars and not look back. I typically do not return to games I have stopped playing. Which is perhaps what I should be doing anyway, but I doesn’t really solve the dissonance I experience in buying all these games that I never really finish/start playing.
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Welcome to the club. My personal solution was waiting until 75% off for any game that I wasn’t going to play -immediately-, as in -now- now, this very hour after downloading.
It wasn’t so much the affordability per game, but just the sense of waste if I never got around to it. At 75% off, it feels like both a contribution to the developer’s royalties/next game, and a stocking up of games I could have the option to play whenever I wanted, without the sense of guilt from “oh, I paid a decent amount for this, I should really get around to it…”
As a result, I’m now nearly immune regarding the size of my Steam games list.
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Waiting is absolutely the best bet. The tricky part is avoiding “being in the mood” to play a particular game when it is no longer on sale. Will GTA 5 be on sale for $30 during Black Friday/the Winter Sale? Probably. Will I complete Witcher 3 (etc) and have a two-week period in there in which I want to play GTA 5 really bad? Possibly. I’m frugal as hell, so I can resist, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I like denying myself things either.
Luckily, I believe once this clot of new games passes, I should be in the clear for a while.
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I’m not sure how old you are, but if you’re close to my age (37) it might have something to do with the state of gaming as we grew up. Back in the Coleco Vision, NES days, options were pretty limited so the problem wasn’t “how do i find time for all these games”, it was more “how do I eek out 5% more entertainment out of this game I’ve already beaten 3 times” while waiting for the next title. When every game is $50, it also limits how many you can hope to obtain, especially as a kid with limited income.
These days, games are cheap and plentiful, and usually really good. I’ve had a hard time coming to grips that my mid-80s, early 90-s mindset of playing every available game to completion just isn’t feasible anymore.
I wonder if kids that grow up in today’s gaming world have the same problem? Or is it easier for them because they don’t know it any other way?
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Yep, grew up pretty poor in the 80s, early 90s. Had a Nintendo, but my most vivid gaming memories was with the SNES. I don’t ever really remember getting more than 3-4 games all year, so each had to count. I can’t even tell you how many times I played A Link to the Past; I’d boot that up and play without even saving the game, just to have something to do for a few hours. Luckily enough, I was a huge Squaresoft fanboy back then, so I ended up getting some real winners: FF6, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, etc.
My other hang-up on this issue also comes from my early freelance reviewer days, when it was drilled into us that we couldn’t review a game until we beat the game. And that is more or less true to this day: the vast majority of my reviews are from things I have completed. I feel bad when I don’t. I’ve dropped awful games before, but then I don’t review them, which feels like a double-loss to me.
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I love this theory because it also explains cases like me, who are the complete opposite: I grew up with a Commodore 64 for which we had literally hundreds of pirated games (I didn’t even know where you bought games legitimately in those days). I tried most of them and found the vast majority not to my liking at all. Whenever I found one I did like, I treasured it immensely.
These days, I only buy new games very rarely, when I’m reasonably sure that it’s something that I’m going to like, and I often end up playing the same game for years.
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Even a bigger deal when you realize spending $50 in 1985 is like spending $110 in current dollars. Most Squaresoft games were $80 (~$175 adjusted for inflation).
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I shoveled snow an entire afternoon once in the early-80s and earned $40, a colossal sum at the time. It went toward Star Raiders, an Atari 800 game that was simply flying around in outer-space, first person 3D-view-style, occasionally shooting enemies. Good times.
I often think back to how expensive those games were. Games have basically retained the same price point over time, $40-$50.
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