Wait…
what…
you’re supposed to PLAY these games???
I thought we were just supposed to collect them all, like we do with Pokemon.
Crap.
I think I mentioned this before, but reviewing my list of Steam games to make sure I listed each of the summer sale games I bought revealed games I don’t remember buying and have never played. It’s a sickness, folks.
Fozzle
1963
I was not so lucky. I came away with a pretty broken pocket book.
4 copies of CoH so my son could play with this friends…
Both NV DLCs, at that price a “Just in case” purchase.
NWN2: Platinum, OMG no more discs, and all in one installs.
Empire/Napolean Total War: What was that, 8 SKUs for how much?!?
Divinity II: DK - Everyone says this one is the best. giving it a whirl
Audiosurf, it’s like amplitude but for a dollar? ok =)
Tomb Raider: Anniversary - Nostalgia with more pixels.
Cities XL - To remind myself how good SimCity 4 was apparently
Risen: Very competent, very cheap.
Mount & Blade pack - Holy wow how did I miss this game for so long?
Amnesia - A scary game that is ACTUALLY scary!
Braid - Not much of a platform fan, but hey… at that price…
Dungeons - just had to. I miss me some Dungeon Keeper
Dungeons DLC - because… at this point whats one more friggin dollar?!?
Railroad Tycoons collection: I think this was the beginning of the end right here…
Hydrophobia Prophecy - pure impulse buy. water pretty…
So I spent well over a hundred bucks, 3 dollars at a time, but there is just so much gaming goodness in this list! Now I need to check how many vacation days I have left…
I’ve had a fun evening with almost all of them this week, but out of the whole mess, M&B:Warbands keeps bringing me back.
I have a hard time passing things up if they’re under $5 or $10. At that price point I’ll take a shot where I might not have before. There are games I own from previous sales that I haven’t yet installed, but I figure I can sit on them for a while if I only paid three or four dollars.
Pogo
1965
I know you’re joking, but I think there’s quite a number of buyers out there (and on here) who are treating it like a game of collection because of a perceived value in the sale, even if the game(s) will never be played.
The sickness is talking about it every time there’s a new Steam sale! I know geeks like to run things into the ground but I think we all understand how this works now. Well, except Pogo.
I wish people spent more time talking about the science of working through backlogs. It’s a hard problem and there are ways to approach it. Instead we get the same cycle of guilt (with a wink), “confusion,” and explanation.
RickH
1967
The full damage:
Terraria
Section 8 Prejudice
Sam & Max Complete
Duke Nukem Forever (I couldn’t help it)
Audiosurf
Risen
Sanctum
Zombie Driver
Hoard
Magicka
Bad Company 2 Vietnam
Less than buying 2 games at full retail price with lots of “why not” indie buys. Great sale.
nomaar
1968
When it comes to Steam sales, I always invoke the Starbucks rule. If the game is at or below the price of a venti latti and a cookie–that’s $6-$7 that I regularly piss away without blinking–then I make the purchase guilt free.
No one cares anymore. We get it.
Unless it’s something i’m crazy looking forward to, which is a very short list (currently: Diablo3, maybe Madden 12), I don’t buy anything unless it’s on a stupid good sale anymore.
IE, I probably won’t spend more than $50 on games from now 'til the winter sale – the dozen-ish games I just bought will easily keep me happy from now 'til then.
Jeez, who pissed in your cheerios this morning?
Hehe sorry, just trying to nip it in the bud so we can talk about how to play these games. I’ll stop bullying nerds now!
Crater
1973
I would totally buy that game if it were five dollars or less.
If they were boxed games in a bin at some store I probably wouldn’t buy half as many, because I hate clutter. That it’s just a list on my computer and not a bunch of boxes sitting on a bookshelf makes a huge difference for me personally.
For me, these sales are an opportunity to have more stuff to choose from when I want something different to play. If I feel like trying a new shooter or RPG in a month or two, I can go click on one and install it.
…and like Talisker mentioned above, I make relatively few Day One purchases anymore. The last few years I have been sticking to sales on Steam, and that’s about it.
nomaar
1975
The satisfaction comes from knowing they’re there if you want to play them. Actually playing them is irrelevant.
’
No better time than the present. My backlog is now larger than it’s ever been by probably 300%. It wasn’t just the Steam Summer Sale, but in fact I still have many games from the Steam Holiday Sale that I’ve yet to play because for the first 3 months of this year I was neck deep in work projects and had very little downtime. Add to that more than a dozen retail box games I’ve received free or cheap from other sources, and it’s a whole lot of gaming in my future.
So how to approach this? I WANT to play everything. Realistically it’s going to take a long time, but I’m not currently involved in any MMO games and I have around 7-10 hours a week on average to devote to gaming. I need a plan. I think I will start by making a list of games waiting to be played or partially completed. I’d try to somehow “rank” them, but I’m smart enough to realize they’re all games I want to play, so ranking is irrelevant.
I’m still toying with the idea of starting a blog or a thread to track my progress through the backlog. Making a list would help with that as well, plus give readers of such an endeavor a sense of the scope of my challenge. =)
I always pair something “light” with something that requires some “thinking” e.g. a modern shooter / action game and a RTS / RPG.
That way if I had a hard day at work or am too tired after sports for the “thinking” I can still get some progress.
On normal nights I can tackle the “heavier” one.
I would totally read that blog by the way if it’s regularly updated. :)
You know, sometimes I feel a little guilty vis a vis the industry and developers for waiting till a game is ridiculously cheap during these sales to buy it (for instance, DA:O Ultimate for $10.20, or ME2 for 6.80, or MoW:AS for 8 and some), but then I remember a few things:
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With digital distribution, I can’t resell a game at all. Thus its value to me is reduced vs. something I can resell when I’m done with it. And I should add that part of that bargain should be that that game is mine in perpetuity (which some DRM schemes do their best to make impossible).
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Also with digital goods, from the publishers’ and vendors’ perspective, and this is important, there’s no scarcity. They literally can never run out of copies, and the marginal cost per copy to the publisher approaches the cost of generating a new CD key with every license sold–there’s acually that incentive to sell as many copies as possible, and little disincentive to do so. They have their sunk costs, sure, but the situation with boxed copies reaching the bargain bin back in the day was much more dire for them, because every one sold there for 5 bucks cost just as much as the ones that sold on the first day at 50 (although maybe it was the retailer who ate that loss), and more importantly, was one fewer that they could sell at a higher price.
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As I read somewhere else, this way I the customer get to support the industry more broadly and try way more stuff out (especially indie titles) than I’d get the chance to buying just a few games a year.
I have a giant backlog (seriously, several hundred games worth) and that’s just games. But you know what? I don’t feel particularly guilty about it. I hop between games all the time and I wind up with a great overview of the gaming space. I rarely spend much on any individual purchase (only in the last year have I preordered to speak of and even then I’m usually getting discounts), and I have games to suit pretty nearly any impulse. It’s nice.
Of course, I have no family to support and no debt.
I geeked out and made a list this year just to prove what I suspected: it won’t help the bottom line on its own. Since January 1st, I’ve finished 29 games/mods and booted a few off the list, but my total games to play has only gone down by 6.
Clearly that’s an input problem. I keep adding more games. I’d like to find out whether it’s new releases (including stuff that’s recently hit bargain price) or old games that intrigue me from reading QT3.
I’d try to somehow “rank” them, but I’m smart enough to realize they’re all games I want to play, so ranking is irrelevant.
Don’t write this off yet. I’ve got 30 games on my lower tier list I’m close to purging. I haven’t pulled the trigger yet (just a few games here and there) but that would make a big impact. It helps to put them in a separate category. Over time your interest will fade and the game’s relevance goes down. Then you’ll laugh when you compare them to the classics you haven’t played yet. But I’ll probably give them each of them a few hours though, like an extended demo.
The problem with Steam is you can’t remove them from the list, so they’re always looking at you. They’ll never been out of sight and out of mind.
