Ha. I used to be rolling in dough. No longer. Now I am ultra-cheap. Fortunately, I built up a large enough collection during the salad days to keep me playing for a few years, I think. That doesn't mean that I don't long to play Doom 3. But I've been around long enough to internalize this (near) fact: All Games Become Cheap One Day. I think that I bought one new game and fewer than a dozen used games last year.

To adapt the stoner's credo: Games will get you through the times of no money better than money will get you through the times of no games.

Being a graduate student, my major luxury is ingredients for cooking nice meals (not poor enough to have to go all-ramen all-the-time yet). But there is one weakness, one Achilles' Heel that could send me to the grocery store only to return with Bumble Bee, Maruchan and Miller High Life: giant robots with guns--online!