Too many games, so little time...

Everyone, including myself, would consider me cheap. With one exception... Video games.

I buy games all the friggin' time. I'll buy something new just to try it. I waste the cost of the game, new or used. I play it for a few hours to get a feel for it, and then I'm over it. I can't seem to find a game that can pull me in unless it's a difficult game and short enough to beat in about 30 hours. After that I buy something new.

What can I do to keep myself from spending so much $$$???

Demos do not cover the bases. They lead you to the climax and then end. I can't help but feel let down at this point.

MMOs are worse. I spend $50 for a new game, $15 for a few months and then I'm on to the next one. I feel like I'm running in circles.

 

._.

-Monitors this thread-

I got the same problem Like half my games are bought, played for a few hours and then left there to rot... Some aren't even touched after buying xD

 

I find that games in the 90's were more enjoyable and had MUCH MORE replay value. Games today are 'short-term experiences'. I bet all the CEO's of every game company is secretly conspiring so they can make fools like us buy endless amounts of games

 

I have that issue all too often.

I have a hard time disagreeing.

 

What game(s) can you not beat in ~30 hours aside from MMOs, some RPGs and a few RTS?

 

I have a few games from the summer sale that I still haven't played for more than 10 or so minutes (Dead Space, Dragon Age, Red Faction: Guerrilla, L4D2 just to name a few). I have a problem where I buy it, try it immediately, then go back to playing CS: Source or BFBC2

 

Find yourself an in-depth game with multiplayer and you can ease up on buying games pretty quickly OP. I tend to hop from major game releases - this whole year was pretty much L4D2 > GalCiv2 > GTA4 > Sins of a solar emp > RE5 > Civ5. Covers a good amount of genre bases, and even after you beat the campaigns/stories you are free to do multiplayer. I'm pretty much expecting Civ5 to keep me sated until Xmas

 

Steam single handedly upped my "games to play" backlog by 500%

summer and winter sales (mainly last years winter sale)

 

Save money.

But don't save just for the sake of saving. Make it seem like you're saving up for something big and much desired. Convince yourself of it.

 

See me and my gaming habit:

HTWingnut's Games - GameSpot

My problem is I play a great game and then look for another similar one to satisfy the sensation again, but usually I come up empty. Or places like gog.com (RIP - hope not ), Steam, or D2D have deals I can't refuse, and a lot of times buy a game that I already own on CD or DVD just to have it digitally. But usually won't spend more than $5 for that.

 

Either get one of those arcadish games with lots of stuff to do (prototype and such) or one with really good co-op (right now I'm playing SC Conviction with a friend).

 

Have you played - Baldurs Gate 2, Dragon Age, Oblivion, Mass Effect 1/2.

These kept me interested by far the longest and were worth the money.

 

if you're trying to kick the habbit of spending so many hours, one thing i find which worked (to some extent anyways) is upping the difficulty... make it so hard you can't clock it in a few hours

you fight the frustration and either become victorious (in which case you defnately earned it this time round) or give up to fight another day....

hehe i remember playing baldur's gate over dialup with a friend, took us months to clock coop (and a small fortune in phone bills)

and yes, i too have a huge backlog of steam games to play in spare time. yet somehow i'm impatient for stuff like diablo 3 and deus ex....

 

I've spent so much money on old games I already played and own/owned on Steam deals, just to have them digitally, I do consider myself as a collector though, and secretly I wish more back catalogues will appear on steam so I can add all the great classics in there, that are now missing from my steam collection hehehe
Unfortunatly I never seem to play them again, or maybe just for a few hrs (with a few exceptions, I never seem to get enough of half life 2 and the original FEAR, I replayed those so much...)
Another thing is that you pay premium ($50) for a big company title like Modern warfare 2 and then play it for +-10hrs (yeah, its single player is extremely short) and then you buy something cheap on steam like shadowgrounds ($6) and play that for 40hrs .... some money is beter spent than other ...

 

I have the same problem as the OP and others. I probably have a total of 300 games maybe more across all platforms.

I would say 85% of the games in my catalog are been there done that. When I first bought them I thought cool a new game to look forward to and many purchases were impulse buys. It was also a peer thing where I would read on a forum how cool the game was so i'd buy it only to find out eh it's OK so i'd set it aside and move on to the next thing. I've never had any problems with buying games because I can afford it and I hate TV and Movies. I'm more of an interaction person. I can't stand watching something and not pressing a button. I'm sort of like a gerbil on amphetamines.

There's very little creativity in today's games only because there are so many games released in a year (maybe hundreds in not thousands) that it's hard to not see the same thing over and over. Eventually a good one will fall through the cracks that's a must play.

 

Yeah, it's like you want to play them all to find that diamond in the rough. I've been pleasantly surprised on a few occasions. Riddick: Butcher Bay was one of them. Picked it up new as it had little fanfare at the time but it was a great fun game. Plus I find some games a lot of fun that others think are ho-hum.

 

Yeah there are games that just pull me in for mindless hours. Lately I have gotten into Dash-Time Management games that cost like $2.99. Hotel Dash, Hotdog Hotshot, Pizza Chef 2, First Class flurry to name a few.

Yesterday I bought for the cheap on Ebay MotoGP 09/10 (Xbox 360) $9.99 New and Import Tuner $8.99 for under $9 and i've read good things about Just Cause 2 (Xbox 360) so I bought that too on Ebay. I have a $20 off coupon for Red Dead Redemption (360) which is on must must play list. But like others have said I bought games on impulse that are still in the wrapper.

 

Same here. I'll actually buy games off steam... make sure they load and not even play them once. This month alone I've bought Prince of Persia and Dirt 2 and played them for a combined total of 1 hour maybe less.

Then I'll get a game like Just Cause 2, I've already logged 10 hours blowing up stuff and haven't even completed 5% of the game missions. Go figure.

 

LOL, sounds like me.

I'll buy Forza 2 or Forza 3 and drive the same track for a few hours and move on to another game LOL.

 

You guys all need serious help...

xD

 

I finish all the games I buy, not necessarily the multi-player though. Only multi-player games I play are usually multi-player only like TF2, Killing Floor etc.

Anyways, I think I'll put in a good amount of time for Darksiders when it is released and Civilization V.

After years of playing games, I know what I like and I know what to avoid. I love MMOs, but they consume too much time, so I avoid those. And I know my favorite games currently are action games (ME2, The Witcher, Batman etc) and I do like strategy games, but not online. So I may try SC2 for campaign only, but prefer games with deeper, more involving single player like Civilization V.

So I'd say, I don't have problem with too many games. I avoid majority of games to begin with

 

Me too, i bought the star wars collection and didnt play 1 game yet

I have so much else i wanna do before playing games right now.

When i test a new game i sually play it an hour and than delete it, they just get so boring...

Theere are just a handful of games in my life that i bothered to finish

 

Ever since my runescape addiction (terrible game don't know why I bothered playing) I've completely avoided MMOs; however, it's going to be hard when swtor comes out.

Sticking with good games like Counterstrike, Halo, Half Life, Call of Duty, and other classics is how I roll.

My pc sucks too so there's really not much room for me to mess around anyway xD.

 

so true... but I don't buy them and let them stay in the wrapper.... I just don't buy them. The last game I bought and played religiously was the original Modern Warfare.

 

So, I have decided that I am not spending any more money on NEW games.
This is what I will try and see if it works:

-Keep 1 MMO subbed for in-depth multiplayer

-I have dusted off several FPS games to keep me from buying Halo Reach (doubt it will work, but I'm crossing my fingers)

-I have Steam games that I downloaded and installed (every one of them, in case I get bored with one or another right away)

-I got some free games for my phone so that I don't spend time searching for something new to play when I cannot play PC/console

-I told myself that SC2 will still be a good game in a few years when the expansions have come and gone and the battle chest comes out

With all this in place I feel like I have a barrier for most of my gaming "needs" except for a few. The following games are going to be difficult to avoid.

CoD: BO, Diablo 3, and Gears of War 3. If I can prevent myself from buying these games when they are new, then I can say that I cured the addiction. This doesn't mean that I will not buy them later in life. This just means that I will wait until I have completed my current list of games and also wait until they are added to the $20-$30 bin.

For all of this to work successfully I have decided not to read posts that hype up new games. I also have decided to avoid web sites like IGN.

Remember, the goal here is to stop spending so much money on new games. Wish me luck 'cause I'm going to need it

 

Your goals sound too lofty - you need to start smaller. Let yourself buy games that you know you'll play, but hold yourself back if you're not sure. Another good trick (that I use) is only buying games that are on a significant sale, or cost little to start with. The only publisher I've bought full-price games from in the last few years is Telltale Games, and I feel like I'm supporting a good thing there. If you know you're going to play a game, wait until it's on a decent sale (think 2/3 or less of MSRP) before buying it, you've got plenty of games to play in the meantime. And if you don't know if you'll play it, don't buy it unless it's dirt cheap, and even then think twice.

It's important when trying to moderate yourself on something that you don't starve yourself - cigarette smokers rarely quit cold-turkey, but a lot of people succeed by stepping back slowly - it's only in situations like an alcoholic in AA that cold-turkey has a decent success rate - you have to hit rock bottom (in your case, go into heavy debt on video game purchases...) for cold-turkey to be particularly effective.

 

Stop buying games. It will make you happier and save money. guaranteed.

 

This is true. You can buy them later when they hit the bargain bin.

 

I have the exact same problem. Some of the games i just bought to have them on steam even though i already have them.. And i also bought so much games that I already have on another steam account thinking that'll ill need a seperate account for my laptop.. Thank god i think im getting better now.. Only game i bought this month was RUSE and im loving it!
And btw downloading bunch of mods helped me alot fixing this problem of buying like every single new games.

 

I think playing so many games takes up too much time, especially when you work and try to be social as well.

 

Not really as I run a small business and i'm very sociable. Even though I have a bag load of games and some that are unopened I always play in short burst, on average 15-30 minutes max. I use it to unwind and my library of games is such that i'll find something to my liking. I can also afford my hobby as well.

But not all gamers are the stereotypical locked in the basement and never see a soul for months at a time. I know you didn't imply that but there are some gamers who still have social skills and can keep gaming in balance.

 

Of course

I am a gamer myself but latly ive been playing less and less because my business as a webmaster takes up too much time and if i just sit at my PC all day i tend to get depressed. So since i cant cut down on my business i gotta cut down on my gaming

 

And that's the way it should be. It appears you have your priorities in check.

 

I agree with the earlier post describing that games from the 90-ies were much more enjoyable and had higher replay value.
I'm not a multiplayer type of guy, and prefer single-player games with great stories (such as KOTOR, ME, etc.).
I tried playing some MMORPG's but truth be told, the novelty of it fades out after about a week of playing because it comes down to the same old type of thing (little to no story, the only point is to upgrade your character to insane levels, kill/shoot bad guys/monsters, collect items, etc.), and it's boring.

I love Star Trek, but the MMO was a let-down to say the least.
The older ST games are pretty good.
BOTF, ST: A Final Unity, DS9: Harbinger, Bridge Commander, Armada 1 (2 was also good, though mildly lacking in some aspects), Elite Force 1&2.

There is a point and click adventure game called: The Dig from the 90-ies.
That one was great.
Read the book as well.

Anyway ... I think we really need less generics and more variety in games.
Shooters can be mind-numbing for the most part.

I'd personally love for a game to combine multiple aspects from adventure, simulation, FPS (well, third person perspective works better for me) and strategy.
ME came very close in incorporating most of those aspects which is why I like it.

 

It's hard to do that in this day and age. Gaming today is mainstream, even considered cool at times. You also have more hardware today than was out in the 80's and 90's and today's games cost tons more to make so the publishers are looking for the cash cows to milk to ensure a higher percentage of return on their investment.

 

I must say though, games that are developed and released by Valve have A LOT of playback value..

There's just so many updates and mods out there that there's always something fresh and new.

 

Im useless at completing games too. Ive only completed the half life 2 series, Mafia II and GTA san andreas. Every other game i have bought has not been completed simply due to the fasct that ive got stuck at some point and just given up or in the case of gta 4 modding the game so that i could just mess around on all the islands.

This is the reason why i much prefer games like garrys mod and counter strike source now because of the hundreds of different ways in which you can play these games so effectively its like buying lots of different games. In fact i have started playing san andreas again recently online with the SAMP mod which gives it an awesome multiplayer mode.

 

Do GTA 4 have those same cool online modes as samp? I tried GTA 4 only once online and it was a deathmath. VERY BORING!