I keep buying games when I know I'm not even going to play them

[WCP]

I have this new problem where I'm buying games because they are great deals, but then they are just sitting around on my hard drive unplayed. Amazon had Mass Effect 2 for $5, so I couldn't help myself. Then because I know that I really should try to persevere thru Mass Effect 1, I had to get that for $5 off Steam when I heard it was going for $5. I've bought many other games for really cheap like Darkstalkers, Red Faction Guerrilla and Batman Arkham Asylum.


The problem is, I just don't really know when I'm going to actually start playing some of these games. I've already got such a huge backlog as it is, and I can only really keep track of about 3 games at a time. Anymore than that, and I won't be able to progress in any of them. Right now, I've mostly been playing Fallout 3 and Bioshock 1, and I just started Akham Asylum.

Still, I keep seeing these amazing games for only 5 bucks on Steam or GamersGate or Amazon downloads or Origin, or some place like that. It's almost like I'm collecting these virtual games (most are via download), and just letting them sit on my hard drive. I do have good intentions. When I buy the games, I buy them with the thought that I will definitely play them at some point. I hope I do, but I've already got some games on my backlog that seem to have just been forgotten about. These are just PC games too, I still have other Xbox 360 and PS3 games to play. I just can't find enough hours in the day to keep up with everything. Having a wife, 2 kids, mortgage, full-time job, etc, etc, doesn't help anything.

I wish I had the ability to just pause time to get my gaming in, and then restart time back up, and continue with the day to day grind...

[retroman]

I do the same thing all the time...Still have a few not even opened yet..

[Jorpho]

Someday, I will no longer be able to delude myself into thinking that I might yet one day get around to playing all the games I have purchased. But that day has not come yet.

But hey, at least the games are cheap, right? I don't drink beer, and a lot of the games I purchase are probably cheaper than what I see most people spend on beer. And they're probably better for my health, too.


I wish I had the ability to just pause time to get my gaming in, and then restart time back up, and continue with the day to day grind...Sometimes I cannot help but see it as going into some kind of time-debt: when I purchase more stuff than I currently have time to experience.

But hey, fifteen or twenty years ago, I remember reading an article about how dreadful it was that people were beginning to have more stuff recorded on VHS off the TV than they would have time to watch during their lifetimes (i.e. at typical rates).

And so I continue to advocate DVD-rental-by-mail, whereby I cannot get another DVD on-hand until I finish watching the ones that have already been sent to me.

[kupomogli]

Even though right now you're collecting more games than you can play, just think of it as saving up for your retirement. You probably won't have anything to worry about other than your wife so you'll have all the free time you need.

[WCP]

Even though right now you're collecting more games than you can play, just think of it as saving up for your retirement. You probably won't have anything to worry about other than your wife so you'll have all the free time you need.


Yeah, but 20 years from now am I really going to want to play Red Faction Guerrilla or Far Cry 2, two games I totally ignore that are sitting on my extended backlog list?

[Edmond Dantes]

Yeah, but 20 years from now am I really going to want to play Red Faction Guerrilla or Far Cry 2, two games I totally ignore that are sitting on my extended backlog list?

I had the original System Shock sitting around in a drawer for ten years before I decided to play it.

When I did, it was a blast, and I was glad I kept it instead of selling it, like I had been tempted to do so many times.

That being said, I've decided that next year I'm going to cut back on purchasing games so I'll have a chance to catch up with my new acquisitions.

[j_factor]

Yeah, but 20 years from now am I really going to want to play Red Faction Guerrilla or Far Cry 2, two games I totally ignore that are sitting on my extended backlog list?

Perhaps those are examples of games you shouldn't have bought, while for other games, yes you would.

[WCP]

Perhaps those are examples of games you shouldn't have bought, while for other games, yes you would.

Obviously, I like old games, otherwise I would have never discovered a place like DP, but at the same time, if all I'm doing is playing the great old games of the past, then I'm missing out on everything that is going on in the present. Lately, I've been playing almost 85 percent Modern, with about 15 percent Retro. In other words, I haven't really been playing old games very often. Old 3D games are even less of an interest for me. If I'm playing an older game, 9 times out of 10 it's from the 2D era of gaming before the arrival of Playstation and polygonal gaming. I wonder if I'll have any interest in playing a 3D game from 2011 when I can play some amazing hologram type system that beams a 3D image onto the floor of my living room, like a poor man's holodeck, lol.

[Aussie2B]

Someday, I will no longer be able to delude myself into thinking that I might yet one day get around to playing all the games I have purchased. But that day has not come yet.

Haha, that's a great way of putting it. So true, so true.

[The 1 2 P]

I think most of us bargin hunters suffer from this. I'm not going to really bring up all of my backlog but for this gen I've been mostly playing 360 games. Meanwhile, my PS3, Wii, DS and PSP collections have all slowly been building up to dangerous levels. To be honest, I don't even have enough time ot play all my 360 games.

My one saving grace is something that I mentioned in the other thread about owning entire series and never have played any of them: as long as I get the games for cheap($10 and below) then I'm really not wasting money. And like the OP said, some deals are just too hard to pass up. I know that next month Xbox Live will have a ton of cheap stuff for atleast 12 days straight around xmas time(it's their tradition). And here in the present they are about to put the Mortal Kombat collection on sale for 50% off as a Cyber Monday deal. Like I already said, it's hard passing up those $5 deals.

[DuckTalesNES]

I worry less about the money than the time commitment. One nice thing is when you buy games that cheaply, if you sell them later you won't really be that far behind.

Lately I'm coming to terms with the idea that I just can't keep up with all of the franchises out anymore. If I haven't started playing assassins creed yet, am I really going to put the time commitment in to playing 4 games in the series to get caught up? Regardless of how good people tell me the games are, sometimes you got to just move forward.

[Darren870]

Another thing to point out is that by the time you get to playing the games it will be cheaper then what you bought it for.

Just something to keep in mind when looking for "deals". When I sold my collection a lot of my xbox and ps2 games had the receipts in them. I looked how much I paid for the deal and how much I was selling it for and I lost quite a bit of money on games I never even opened.

[theclaw]

This is just one part of why I'm considering a move to the PC. Steam games will stay nestled clean in my library. Taking neither shelf space or getting disc scratches. And I can't go sell them away en masse in a blaze of OCD-ness, which helps too.

[Oobgarm]

As it stands right now, nearly 35% of my games are unplayed or only popped in for 15 minutes at best.

Thanks, gaming ADD.

[portnoyd]

Thanks, gaming ADD.

Welcome to our pleasure and our curse, OP.

[duffmanth]

This is why I only buy 2 games at a time max, even if they're a deal. I'll never have the time to have half a dozen games on the go at any given time.

[Mr Mort]

Someday, I will no longer be able to delude myself into thinking that I might yet one day get around to playing all the games I have purchased. But that day has not come yet.

Well said, I feel very much the same way.

I'm suffering from the same affliction. I keep buying games I know I'm not going to get around to playing. I must have over 150 games I've never even opened yet, much less played.

It's very much an issue about time, or a lack thereof. Having a wife and baby now, I get to play games for about 4 or 5 hours a week if I'm lucky. Needless to say, this makes playing RPG's impossible, and games like L.A. Noire, and Assassin's creed take me about 4 or 5 months or so to complete. I can only play through one, maybe two games at a time. Still though, I love gaming, and game collecting, so I keep on buying games, trying to wait until they drop in price to do so.

My hope/delusion is that when I'm 55 or so, and my kid is out of the house, I'll start playing all the time, relentlessly, enjoying it all the while. In the meantime, I'll keep slowly savoring my games in short play sessions here or there, still enjoying it all the while.

[AceAerosmith]

I have a shit-ton (that is a real measurement, metric system, I think) of sealed games for just about every system I own and at no point do I feel I'll never get to them. I still buy a game if it goes on sale for super cheap knowing that I'll eventually get around to it. I plan on playing games until death. So, I'll get to them sometime or I'll just have my collection torched with my dead carcass. (Bullshit, if I let the wife just "give" them away.)

[Jorpho]

Having a wife and baby now, I get to play games for about 4 or 5 hours a week if I'm lucky.Ahh, there's the rub. At this rate it still seems that the probability that I might yet one day get around to playing all the games I have purchased is greater than the probability that I will enter into a committed relationship. :D

[old man]

I had this problem years ago. Only I would go out and buy a new game every week. I would play it a few times then set it to the side or trade it in and buy another one. It was kind of rediculous. I realize now I was just depressed (shitty job, etc.). Life got a lot easier when I decided I didn't need the latest system or FPS.

[Rickstilwell1]

In need of money I have recently started to force myself to stop collecting and start building a virtual repository that includes scans of all the boxes, manuals, cartridges, discs, paperwork; the gameplay videos of me completing the game from start to finish on original hardware, and the rom or disc copy if available. I want to use all this content minus the roms of course for a website.

I'm just going to keep the systems needed to play games at any time and work away at my backlog till it disappears. I have just gotten to the point where it has become way too much to handle. And if I really need that quick replay of Mario, Sonic, Donkey Kong or whatever else - that's what the Everdrive and Powerpak are for. I love Suikoden II for Playstation but I can still play it on my PSP and PC if I just have to get the heap of cash back out of it.

[Trebuken]

Things that help me:

1. You do not have to complete the game.
2. You do not have to play it on the toughest difficulty or even the default one. It's up to you. So what if it is easy. (I never turn down the difficulty anymore - games seem to be getting easier).
3. Games don't go out of date. I myself just played Deus Ex in the last year (The original). It was still awesome.
4. I like having a selection of games to choose from at my side. I don't want to have to simply commit to the next game I buy.
5. If you shop wisely and buy at the right price you will probably be able to get most of your money back.
6. Only pay full price for games that are truely worth it, or you can't wait to play (or to support the developer, which oddly I think of now that I am getting older). For Example; If you only want to play Call Of Duty's single-player, it is not worth $59.99. It's too short.
7. I always say that game collecting is as enjoyable as actually playing the games.

[otaku]

send the games my way I'll play them :)

[goatdan]

I totally had this same issue, and for me when I looked at, say, my 40 GameCube games and I had played 5 of them, I felt overwhelmed. I got to a point that I actually realized that I was stressed out by having too many games to play because I would look at them and go, "Oh no." and then not play anything. I had the same thing with movies and TV shows on DVD. I had like 25 of them or more that I hadn't even touched, and this was after a long time... When I had free time to play a game or watch a movie, I felt stressed that I had to get something done or else I would never catch up...

But, when I was at a store, and there was a game on clearance that I had heard about and was really interested in, I would pick it up. I found myself never playing the games that I couldn't progress in (like arcade compilations and so on) because although I love that type of game, I couldn't feel like I accomplished anything by playing them.

About two years ago, I sat down and went through everything that I had. All of the games that I wanted to play went on lists, as did the DVDs and so one. My list was over 200 items, but what I did was I sorted it for myself so I had one game for each console that I played at at time. Then, little by little, I chipped away at it -- I didn't play every game for long, if I didn't like it, I sold it. And if I went to a store, I would have the list in my pocket so I could say, "How many 360 games haven't I played? Where would this one fall? Never mind, I don't need it."

I've purchased VERY few games in the last two years, but my list is under 30 items now, and I am finding that I find it much more enjoyable to think about what I'm going to play. I look at my list and not the games themselves to prioritize what I am going to play, and I have sold many, many games that I played or didn't like to make space.

It's been great, and I've saved a LOT of money by doing it. I also can find myself now pulling out an arcade-y title (NBA Jam for the PS3 recently) and playing it for a while without feeling like it was a waste. If you're feeling the same thing, I'd suggest doing this too :)

[substantial_snake]

I occasionally fall into this trap and it always makes me laugh knowing my younger self would have been yelling to me to play my damn games.

I've pretty much instituted a "I'm 12 year old again" policy when it comes to new purchases. That pretty much falls to trade in/sell X amount of games before I pick up a new one. This both encourages me to really play through a game and enjoy it for what it is before getting rid of it while still saving cash on random game purchases. It works pretty well with the only exceptions falling under new retro releases and the occasional retro game. I find it lets me enjoy games more while cutting down on my overall costs.

[GameNinja]

I wonder how many other people bought Mass Effect when it was for sale on Steam thinking "5$ for Mass Effect? I can't pass that up!" and have it sitting there unplayed. I know I am one of them. :(

[Chadt74]

My issue is that I want to play the games I buy but do not have enough time and recently I purchased a lot of games for effectively $3 a game or less (Xbox360 & PS3). So they are cheap and I want to play them, but I do now have a huge back log. Not sure what to do, but I do enjoy choosing my next game.

[jdc]

And this is one of the greatest things about having a 10 yr old son who has grown up with videogames. If there are games in our backlog that I don't get around to, eventually he will. To ensure this, I raised him to accept all generations of console as equal.

[kevifray]

there is worse habits than that, and i'm sure you'll go back to them soon!

[videogameking26]

Same thing here man, got so many great deals I couldn't pass it up and have quite a few still in shrinkwrap, for example out of my 230 360 games have about 30 still in wrap and another 30 I've popped in to get a feel for them and moved on to something else.....have a real problem for that as another example bought Man vs Wild on release and played first area and really enjoyed it but then shelved it to move on to another, again another prime example as I was loving AC: Brotherhood and made it to 5th mission and then just shelved it for another game, just bought Revelations off Best Buy on Black Friday for $35 so will have to go back to finish it, that is what happen when I bought Brotherhood and to go back and finish AC II because I did the samething like Brotherhood....err trying to keep my mind on one game as currently working on Sonic Generations but just qit playing Rayman: Origins as I'm clsoe to end so need to go back to it soon....anyone else do this?.

[BHvrd]

This is just one part of why I'm considering a move to the PC. Steam games will stay nestled clean in my library. Taking neither shelf space or getting disc scratches. And I can't go sell them away en masse in a blaze of OCD-ness, which helps too.

Well you could always sell your steam account *poke* *poke*. lol.