Oh, I was being quite literal there, but I would say that if you continue to find yourself being coerced into purchasing games you don't like then maybe make a deal breaker list. If a game falls into one of those categories, then you don't buy it no matter how awesome it is for every other reason.

I've been doing this in the past with grand strategy games. I never liked them, never played them, yet I have stuff like Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings present in my library. Guess the price was low enough? My cousin likes these games and whenever I see them played, it just looks incredibly boring to me.

Same with the isometric RPG games. I own a ton of them, like Age of Decadence, Planescape Torment, Divinity Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity etc. And I still haven't played a single one of them. Got them hoping my future tastes will change enough to give them a try, but still hasn't happened and I have no idea if it ever will. The only one I finished from this genre is Icewind Dale 1 and I quit Baldur's Gate 1 right before entering the city of Baldur's Gate.

My gaming tastes are pretty rigid. Never really liked 4X games, grand strategy games or pure adventure games.

You must mean the multiplayer. Because APM is pretty low on the list in the campaigns. You can mostly just turtle with minimal APM, build up a 200/200 army supply and attack move the enemy base and win. SC 1 is by far less "clickfesty" than SC2. SC 2 is the game that actively punishes you for being too passive/slow, especially in the campaigns with many of the missions imposing some sort of time limit on you. Not to mention that SC2 forces a higher game speed on you based on the difficulty you pick, along with stricter time limits, more frequent and stronger enemy attacks etc.

Haven't played a second of multiplayer in either of them.

I'm not opposed to difficulty, it just has to be a game type I enjoy a lot. I play stealth games and CRPGs on high difficulty settings for example. I just don't like 3rd person hack n' slash that much, so Dark Souls being that + difficult + checkpoint saves makes me grimace.

Have you tried pushing yourself to actually enjoy the games you purchase? Maybe you have ADHD and keep switching from game to game, never quite sticking to them? Maybe you instinctively like to collect games.

Hell, I bought Midnight Club LA on Xbox because I played that game when I was younger and had left over credit when I bought Mercenaries and Unreal Championship 2. I enjoy those from time to time on my own time, even if I ignore the myriad of other games I've bought long ago and never even booted up.

It's kind of the opposite, I always want to complete games and usually play one at a time until I do so. With games I love this is of course no problem, but with games I don't... it can make it feel like a real slog. If I was more comfortable quitting games halfway through and moving on it would be easier. I know from achievement stats that is what most people do.

Yeah... you completely missed my point! lol

It was never about how well-off of you are. But rather to put things into perspective.

When I did my lot, I realised three things:

Booze costs me too much
Being known by name by talent at *cough* adult *cough* clubs because of daily visits is expensive
Video games are expensive

So that lead to me reducing all three. Honestly, best decision I made.

It's not about how much money you do, or don't have. It's about just seeing the numbers as that puts it into a better perspective than simply clicking add to cart.

Failing that, the other and obvious option is simple:

Self control. Control yourself man! Get a grip! :-D

Although, discovering new games may not be such a bad thing overall. There are plenty of games I enjoy simply because I purchased them for their Linux support rather than the type of game they are. I wouldn't have purchased them otherwise, but I'm glad I did.

I have the same issue with grand strategy games. The only ones I seem to enjoy are the ones with features like CK2, letting you create your factions. It's probably why I love Romance of the Three Kingdoms games so much. I'm starting to realize I no longer like retro shooters. But I feel odd about it because I love Duke Nukem 3D and enjoyed Forgive Me Father. That could be because of the excellent metal OST.

I never seem to finish my retro shooters or play them for long. It's one of the main reasons I have not bought serious sam 4 or Shadow Warriors 3.

The best way to stop is to think about all the backlog you must finish before you die. haha

Heh, I sure do.
Some classics I "just HAVE to own, they are classics!"

Others like some modern speed jump & runs (Sunblaze) look just like the old ones which I enjoyed, and even if knowing that they probably are not, I keep hoping and buy something that later I probably won't play anyway.

Same for topdown/iso RPGs or RPGs in general. While over the years I really enjoyed some of them, most of them don't really interest me, but I tend to buy the ones that look promising anyway ("who knows, one day I might get into them"), even if usually only when heavily discounted.

Ah, indeed. I have come to see Starcraft as a pure multiplayer game.

It is pretty much a national cyber-game of south Korea. And when SC2 came out the writing was on the wall where Blizzard is headed - a required RealID registration, a battle.net client, in order to start playing you need to authenticate. No LAN, but it has achievements, and social media integration. Since you need to login only once 3 months in order to play, technically, it's not ''always online DRM'' *honk* *honk*.

I actually forgot SC1 has a single-player campaign, lol.

on-topic: I did a cursory glance at my library and I noticed something - from the genres I tend to shy away from (platformers, racing games, fighting games) - I only have 2-3 purchased. The rest have been giveaways.

Since demo's are coming back in vogue - one could try the specific game of a genre before buying.
If a demo is not available... yarr... that is indeed a problem... yarr...

Of course Mr.Moneybags here can afford to purchase games. ;-P
That was a bit ''on the nose'' in case the smiley is not clear enough. ;)

Ask yourself how many times you have bought a game outside your preferred genres. Check how many of them you have actually enjoyed. Then, check how many you haven't even tried. If the number is depressingly low in either/both cases, then you should consider going scorched earth on those genres.

Sometimes I like try out games outside my comfort zone. I usually buy them when they have been a big discount or delisting is imminent. Once in a while I get hits like Brigador.

That said, even with genres that I favor, I unable to keep up with all of them. I love fighting games, but end up skipping more than half them.

My Achilles' heel would be Real-time Strategy.
I think the last time I enjoyd playing an RTS was Warcraft II - so, quite a while ago.

However, even years after that I bought RTS games occasionally, if they looked good (stupid, I know...but there was always that "ooh, this must play amazing with all these miniature units in this marvellous miniature world..." - thinking) and were cheap enough to "risk it".

I am happy to declare that I overcame this weakness some time ago.
Now, I still look in amazement at the screenshots and watch the trailers, but I don't put those games on my wishlist, and I certainly don't buy them anymore - no matter the price.

And it's not that I don't want to play them still, it's just that I suck at playing them...
Turn-based is fine. But Real-time...nope.

I just don't like being rushed by a game. I rather take my time. That goes for all my favourite genres.
And over the years I learned to watch out for the telltale signs of game elements that I don't like (RT, Countdowns, Timers, Turn limits, etc) and stay away from games which feature those elements.

Now, could I tell you how I have achieved this wisdom? No.
It just made "click" someday, and I decided to not fall for any of these games again.
So far it works.

Some of it is just effective marketing, but some of it is probably in our own minds.

I mentioned something similar yesterday - I keep getting suckered in to buying roguelikes/roguelites, even though I don't really enjoy 80% of the genre.

But I did absolutely love Rogue Legacy, and have enjoyed a few others, which keeps suckering me back to thinking I just <might> love XYZ game too. I think for me to enjoy them, they really need to either a) absolutely nail my view of great core gameplay, and/or b) have good and interesting (to me) persistent systems around the death loop. Preferably both.

"Against the Storm" (which doc is currently giving away) I quite liked the core gameplay, but the persistent systems ended up being not only underwhelming but a bit confusing. Good enough in the end to reward the dev with my Christmas sale money, but not compelling enough to gift the game my time.

So I have bought quite a few games in this genre over the years, mostly on sale, some of which didn't last more than 30 minutes. Many I've kept anyway, because I was the problem, but others I've returned because the game clearly couldn't deliver what it had promised imo.

If you're not enjoying something, then general wisdom dictates you disengage and focus on other things. Or engage with the things you aren't enjoying differently. What games/genres exactly are you having trouble with?