I was getting worried over how many games I was buying, knowing that I will probably never play all of them. But then a strange thing began to happen, I stopped playing games. Yah, I know... what da eff? Now I play them sporadically, usually a binge on one game to finish it, then a week or two will go by and I do other things. My buying has dropped off to almost nothing as well.

Just knowing I have them collected and saved elsewhere makes me happy. also thanks to GoG who made sure they were playable, so I can go back and enjoy them whenever I want in the future. So many of these titles were lost and only in my warm memories of youthful play, now I have a hard working copy to peek into. I still have boxed copies of games from that time, but most are unplayable so that collecting avenue for me has lost its appeal.

Sure I'll buy the next blockbuster that tickles my fancy, but I think I am done for the older games, having bought up most that I was interested in and learned the hard lesson that buying a title on deep sale that you really are not into in the first place wont make you want to play it later. (yah, im looking at you RPG bundle pack)

so perhaps my addiction buster was just binging till I puked?

I had a compulsive buying problem when I was in middle school and high school. Since it was retail-only it's only about 300 games, and I've sold 30 already...but I still want to get my money's worth so I won't sell a game until I've beaten it. Back then I would rush out to the game store as soon as I scraped together $60 (or $30 if it was for the Game Boy), to the point where I'd go out researching games around my birthday and Christmas well after I got into other hobbies just out of habit. The real problem now is that I really, really suck at games, and most of my 'beating' involves blitzing through with walkthroughs right there next to me, especially with point-n-clicks.

I only really get tempted to buy things when they're 80% off or higher, and the only bundle thing that got me was the Nordic deal. I said to myself that if my mom spent more money on me for Christmas when I was a baby and she was living paycheck to paycheck, then I'd get it, and then when I asked her and she wanted to know the details of the sale, she just shouted, "Buy that crap, you dolt! It takes up no physical space and I would probably buy bulk handbags if that sale were offered to me in handbag form!" Whenever I get tempted by a really awesome deal otherwise and it's just one game, I just gift it at checkout and figure if I decide a few months later that I really just wanted the satisfaction of paying under two dollars for something usually marked a lot higher, I'll set it aside for a giveaway.

The only real threat to my backlog is the free stuff. Since I'm so bad at gaming, the number of freebies I snap up usually exceeds the number of games I'm physically able to beat over the course of a year. GOG gives away a lot of free stuff, and not grabbing a free game while it's free is like the digital equivalent of going to Costco and passing up the free samples. So my goal here is to beat more games than I acquire through any means, and I guess never ask my mom for bundle advice again. :P

I found myself buying games that I don't play on steam, gamersgate (and sometimes on gog) back then, so I forced myself just to purchase games that don't require internet drm, don't buy digital games anew, then games that I'm going to at least spend 40 hours and that behaviour stops compulsive buying for me at least.

Although I still import games that cost $100 or more per title all the time...

Setting a price cap makes sense but it's part of the problem in my case because whenever a game's price sinks below the chosen max price, I feel that near unquenchable drive to pull the trigger on the purchase. Even if it's a low priority game that I likely won't play until many months after the purchase.

I'm under the impression that you've been to neither place. At least I know 50% of the equation. And having your tongue stuck to a frost-covered metal barrier in the middle of winter after nightfall in the isn't quite as comical as you might think, becosh it quickry getsh reary shcary and a shensh of Doom deshendsh on you.

Yeah well, sorry if I don't belong to the pure master race of DRM-free users who instead of stinky farts emit colorful rainbows smelling of roses and butterfly essence, Kim style.
Remember to loosen up when you fall off the high horse so as to soften the fall. Trust me it helps, I have fallen off a horse going at considerable speed and relaxing, letting go of the notion that I can stay on and accepting the fall prevented injury and hurt.

Also, there was lots of sand on the ground so I before taking too much credit I must point out that I mostly just got lucky.
And it was my own stupidity that caused the problem in the first place because I mixed up the controls for "gas and brakes", being a mountain person with no real horse riding skills. It can still serve as a cautionary tale though.

If that wasn't enough and they still want to send me down to Hell, I'll point out that I always carry out my landlady's trash.

So much for the respect of the youngins...

Your squeaky clean image is starting to look highly suspicious. Not the tiniest bad deed has been unleashed upon this Earth by your person, not to our knowledge. Either you're truly a paragon of all that is righteous in this world, a pristine example of the forces of Good, a divine mahatma whose light shines brightest of all and is a beacon of hope in these dreary times of Darkness, or you're hiding secrets from us.

Dark secrets!

For the grave sin of preordering, you shall do penance by completing three games, reading aloud two manuals and writing one review. You shall also not eat the flesh of rabbits for two fortnights, drink no red wine for the same period of time and shall also not lay eyes on lewd material on the internet for the entire duration of your penance.

Interesting approach. During my 10 year absence from gaming, I usually just binged on one or two games a year over the Christmas holidays and that was it. Didn't buy a single game between 2002-2013.

Boxed games have largely lost their appeal to me, I only kept a handful (C&C 1, Baldur's gate 2, Diablo 2 and a couple more). Like many members here, I made a "Great Purge" when I ran out of space while still living at my parent's house as a teenager and I threw away most game boxes. Including some very neat ones like Daggerfall and Crusader and even *sniff* Little Big Adventure. That was heartless but I really had no more space! I did keep the CDs for a couple more years and I still have Little Big Adventure but got rid of most games, giving them away to friends for free.

Ha, I almost bought the complete Ultima series but then I realized, I didn't even completely finish any of those games back in the day where I had more patience for these types of games, so realistically I'd not play through the entire Ultima series now. Nostalgia makes you want to buy all those games but nostalgia isn't enough to get you through even one of those titles. You can't really speedrun that stuff.

I bought only very few games during middle school / high school, maybe a handful per year at the very most, I'd estimate one game every 3 months or so. The rest was copied or borrowed from other people at school. Since I went to a small school with only about 200 students, I knew pretty much every single gamer. That was back in the day when gamers where still an identifiable demographic. Before classes started, I sometimes went to classroom A to get a game and trade it for a game I got from classroom C, it was quite complicated but if everyone buys just a couple games then you can lend and borrow for nearly all eternity without anyone having to break the bank.

Good idea about purchasing as gift code rather than directly adding to the shelf, and thanks for the laugh with the handbags story!

I don't see free games as a threat, if it's stuff I know I won't play due to hardware restrictions then I don't even redeem it, Witcher 2 for example.

If you set the prices low enough it only happens very occasionally.

Well that depends on your definition of what Hell is. I have certainly been in situations I would consider Hellish and that made me feel like Hell. Would that count? If so, then I have only to visit the land of the Swiss to find out which is the coldest place. :-)

I read recently that parts of the US were colder than the surface of Mars last week, and Mars is often held as a Hellish planet.

You know I was only playing about the Steam thing, I don't see any problem with people using what they want. I would never wish to cause any bad feeling to someone who uses Steam and I apologise if my joking ever has that effect.

I have fallen of a horse a few times, and been thrown off. Usually landing on grass or mud. I have never been a big fan of riding horses, I don't mind them and they are beautiful animals, but I am not overly keen on riding them, possibly due to me getting thrown off when I was younger. I do ride them now and then with friends, but that's about it.

I'm sure the charity work will be more then enough, but I'm sure your other helpful tasks will help ensure you escape the grasp of Lucifer. Failing that, your GOG cohorts will ride to your aid and help you fight you way back to the land of GOG.

Does the amount of respect depend on the amount of years between the two people?

Is it so hard to believe that I have not been a bad person? I would not say I am squeakily clean, nor would I say a paragon of all that is righteous, but I do not really think I have ever gone out of my way to perform any bad deeds. Life is too short to spend doing unkind things to people. You should not mistake playful banter on a forum as something more sinister. In fact, if I had been there when you had your tongue stuck, I would have been worried about you and trying to help get you free, rather than joke about it (when I read the part about there still been bits of tongue stuck there the next day I thought awww poor awalterj, not ha ha ha).

As for the secrets, well who doesn't have secrets, especially on an internet forum? There is only one person in the whole world who knows me inside and out, someone I can honestly say I have no secrets from whatsoever. On the forum there are some things that only a few people on the forum know about, even fewer in any detail. And there are only one or two people on the forum who know something else, and only one of them in any detail.

Oddly enough, I wasn't much of a game swapper back then, except with my cousin and a couple of guys from the next town over. Usually I'd just go to people's houses when I wanted to play a game I didn't have. I was pretty meticulous with the cases, too, so when I did trade I stuck the whole thing in a padded tupperware. Looking back I'm sure the rest of the gang didn't want anyone breaking their games, either. Back then the lot of us really didn't have too much to lose carrying tupperwares full of games and manga around the school, but since manga ran a lot cheaper we were more open to trading it and buying strategically so no two people had to pay for the same series.

I figure PC technology will just keep on progressing to get more powerful and more portable without losing backwards compatibility. If I can't run Witcher 2 now, I'll be able to do it in 5-10 years, especially at the rate I'm going with this. :P

Why yes, yes it is! I am a happy addict! lol~ Of course it could be because my whole outlook on life is optimistic, but I'm not sure that's it ;D

Every time I get a new game, I feel soooo happy, especially if it's one I've really been wanting. More than once I've literally done a happy dance after getting blindsided by a gift. Getting games (or anything, really!) at the very best price possible makes me really happy, too. Part of that is necessity, and the other part is my thrifty nature. I do the very best I can to support my family (hubby is disabled and the kids are both autistic,) and every dime I save goes towards that goal.

Reflecting upon this topic brings up something I already knew about myself -- for I like to know what makes me tick -- and I wonder if it's the same for anyone else: I love doing anything creative. Taking pictures, scrapbooking, crochet, sewing, cooking, drawing, computer graphics, sandbox-type building... but I can only concentrate on one at a time. Well, the cooking can be any time, of course, but the rest... I put everything I had into crocheting after I learned how. I've made countless baby blankets and throws, but then I discovered scrapbooking, and I put crochet aside. Next was playing Zoo Tycoon, which I did for about a year, and then I was creating for ZT (computer graphics and coding.) The ZT obsession lasted for about 7 years, when I finally had to stop because I was literally hurting my body with the repetitive motions of coding and holding my arms up for hours at a time to get the details on my graphics juuuust right. It was a permanent injury, and I still have to be careful not to hold either of my arms up for too long ^_^; ... but I digress! When I discovered casual games, I left the ZT community, the reason being twofold: First is that if I'm there, I'll be too tempted to start creating again, and second is that I just couldn't concentrate on ZT anymore, because I had something shiny new to play with *_*

The casual games scene can only hold your interest for so long, though, as the stories start getting repetitive and uninspiring after a while. That's when I finally started playing some of my Good Old Games, the true adventures (as opposed to the adventure-lites available in the casual games circle.) It was only a few months after I started playing these that I discovered the GOG forums, thanks to the Pot of Gold promo last March. We all know what happened then :p

To continue the trend, those of you who are Steam friends (and several that are not!) have seen me wax poetic about Tomb Raider (2013). An action-adventure, oh my gosh! A shiny new genre for me to explore! *_* Not that I've stopped playing other game types, but I DID play through Tomb Raider three times back-to-back, despite having many games in my backlog. lol~

So, for those who didn't feel like reading the wall of text, my point is that I can only focus myself on one interest at a time, and I wonder if anyone else does the same. :)

I'm rather the opposite.

It's rare that a game grabs me completely and I always juggle several games. I feel that might make me take longer to finish them.

I didn't mean that ONE game grabs my interest, I meant gaming in general.

Oh, sorry.

But did you meant "interest" as in a genre inside gaming or gaming as a whole competing with other "interests" (like reading or movies)

What I mean is that I don't spend any of my free time doing other things I'm interested in (like crochet or drawing) -- just gaming in general. I can stop to watch a movie here and there, but once I start reading, I'll put aside my gaming until I finish a book or series! I once spent a month obsessively reading every book in The Hollows series by Kim Harrison! Reading is my greatest obsession -- I have trouble doing anything else when I'm into a good book!

Ok, I have to admit I bought the first game this year. I could not resist to pre-order Grim Fandango. And that while I still have the original disk. But since my acient pc for old games is having some problems and will probably stop working soon it seemed like a good option.

Often watching YouTube videos of the interesting bits will cure my desire to play a game. No point in paying for something I've already experienced.

This may be backfiring in the case of Dragon Age Inquisition, though.
Channeling instincts correctly is a big part of dealing with this, I agree.

At different points I've collected free games or game mods. That helps keep the cost down. Also, sometimes getting deep into a single game helps a lot. Dwarf Fortress was good because it was a different experience every time through.

Avoid free online games like the plague, though. They're often completely designed around being addictive. There are some games designed to not be that way, but most are just not good options for sticking with a budget.