Hey, that's one of the earliest books I read in English with my dad as a kid. Some other ones I remember well is the Nutcracker with awesome illustrations by Maurice Sendak, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle and of course the Jungle Book, also by Kipling.

That actually sounds believable but wait... that's heresy! Only Jesus can do that so now at last we have something to send you to the 6th circle with the heretics, unless it's really true in which case you're off the hook and trentonIf could be sent all the way to the 9th circle for being a counterfeiter or sorcerer.

Heaven is probably an empty place.

All of us have better things to do, some of us are just better at procrastination than others and feeding trolls is a wonderfully classic trap one falls into when looking for ways to procrastinate. It's like feeding pigeons...everyone knows it shouldn't be done because pigeons shit all over the treasured achievements of mankind but then there appears a bag of old bread, magically out of nowhere.

It's funny that people assume other people behave worse on the internet, I think I'm actually nicer online in terms of what I say because in RL you can use body language and tone of voice to say meaner things and -most often- perfectly get away with it because there's an entire other layer to non-verbally communicate that one isn't really evil while as online one can quickly create the accidental appearance of being evil even if one isn't. Hence humans should express a healthy distrust of the written word, wherever they find it. But not strike upon it with great vengeance - Books of Trolls, 7:11

I would like to emphasize that I only place a voluntary limit on myself in terms of self-parody, to preserve at least minimal self-dignity. There can however not be any limit on parody of public things outside the self. Especially things like politics and religion that expect compulsory respect and, once entering public space, shall be given no quarter and no mercy from satirical persecution and ridicule.

There's no clear overlap between simple matters of privacy vs things of a darker nature, naturally. I'm trying to address intrinsic character flaws / extrinsic factors in the context of e.g. game purchasing addiction rather than simple private but not dark stuff. Game purchasing addiction itself isn't too darkly dark but dark nonetheless and it's just one angle to look at things, especially if it's connected to other issues. Which it virtually always is.
There's no need for anyone to cough up personal private things but if you don't openly share about character flaws then we can't fix the problems you don't have. An antimony! Don't you see the impeccable logic?

On the long run, nothing of worth is gained. However, do we know whether we have caused hardship and if yes, to what extent? One can observe many people creating hurt and/or hardship for others without even noticing. Does evil even know it is evil, or is it not the very nature of pure evil to be unaware of its own nature? You can cause calamity entirely without evil intent of course but I think virtually everyone is guilty of having done true evil, even if only small true evil.

Here's a little story about such an ever so small evil, I've done way worse things but I'd rather only confess to a small evil rather than a larger one if it's just about making a point.
Posting this in the Frozen Synapse giveaway thread as I promised to share a "tactical" story there, it was the topic of the giveaway and as the host I felt obliged to share something personal as well. So now it's an "evil tactical" story:

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/frozen_synapse_giveaway_drmfree/post14

You have an Android backlog? It will follow you everywhere, there is no escape now. I bought an 7" cheap Android tablet a while ago but I hardly ever take it along with me, I'm sort if a low tech person not for being hip but because I'm a minimalist and try to not carry any equipment that isn't super essential though a smart phone would really be of great help. Satellite internet would be even better but I've somehow managed without all that stuff, on many trips abroad not even bringing a cell phone or camera. Android tablet are probably quite fun for playing games when you commute but I wish I had picked a 10" one instead, 7" is too small for using a browser and writing emails etc.

You mean like, with real money kinda assets? :O
I guess I'm not highballer enough for that considering I had to impose a ban on myself to stop buying even cheap $5-$10 games.

If you're starting to hallucinate, you're particularly affected!

I think we need to come up with some kind of emergency contingency plan for when we are in imminent danger of relapsing. I almost bought Galactic Battlegrounds today and could only hold back due to my self-imposed system where I would have to give away the exact game I'm committing the relapse with. Although I enjoy giving away games, I simply can't afford to, hell I can't afford to buy them for myself. One game wouldn't be the end but if I start making exceptions, there will be no end to things. I wishlisted the bulk of the LucasArts catalog so my wishlist grew to 48 games. Considering most of the purchases I made so far aren't even from the wishlist, I must be very careful and stick to complete abstinence for now. And finish more games, of course.

Just stumbled across this thread. I know that feel, awalterj.

I own more games than I could possible finish in a liftime. Let alone Steam my library fills +500 games. I'm a collector of retail boxes so I prefer to buy them. But I like the comfortness of having them in my Steam library so I buy them twice. Often I want them in my GOG library, too, Especially if those games are from indie developers I want to support or it is one of those great titles of my childhood (like Rayman 2). If there's a sale, there was a buy. I thought "sooner or later you WILL play it, so grab it while it's cheap!". I cought myself buying games only in sales. Maybe I will play them but before finishing one, there are three new other games and I often cannot decide what to play. So I'm ending up switching back and forth or not playing at all.

But now since I'm unemployed I don't have the money anymore but plenty of time to finish my bought ones. I think there's nothing wrong to buy one game once in a while let's say a month or so. But there was a time I bought a game every two days. Or even more often.

Now I try to start with one game and finish and only buy a new one after I finished at least 10 of my old ones or even more. There is a challenge going on at NeoGAF's to complete 52 games a year. That's one game a week and it actually helped that I actually finished four games by now. I think I've completed like 10 games tops back in entire 2014.... I've already picked another game I try to keep playing until the credits roll and I'm pretty sure that I'm able to stick to it.

Even if money was a non issue I plan to stay away from online multiplayer games, not seeing the people I'm playing against is just weird. Plus it's too stressful anyway imho. Spent many many hours doing very tense multiplayer battles over null modem and LAN but that was 15+ years ago. I might try a multiplayer game again in RL but preferably with laid back people who aren't of the angry 14-year old kid type.

My thoughts exactly but that's the addiction speaking and we knows it :)

Let's not celebrate our falling downs but our standing ups. I've already failed once but have been clean for 10 days now so things aren't too bad. Before, I used to buy one game every two days!

(edit: clean for 12 days actually)

You'll never be done, you know it. It will never end! But nice shelf, very very nice.

Luck isn't enough. Many will need therapy, group therapy.

GOG HQ: "There is a great disturbance on the forums."

Judas: "I have felt it"

GOG HQ: "We have a new enemy: awalterj!"

Judas: "Yes, my master."

GOG HQ: "He could destroy our business."

Judas: "He's just a random member…"

GOG HQ: "He must not become free of his purchasing addiction"

Judas: "If he could be turned, he would become a powerful customer (again)"

GOG HQ: "Yes...yesss…he would be a great investor. Can it be done?"

Judas: "He will buy from us, or die."

:O

Allow me clarify: "mesa broke. mesa no galactic credits!!"

High Five! It's too much though, unless you can finish a game every two days. My purchasing rate was 0,55 games per day vs a completion rate of only 0,1 games per day.

We must have similar brains to some extent, I considered the exact same option of 10:1 but decided to go all-abstinence for now. So far it's kind of working, I look at th mainpage every day and today I felt, for the first time, that I don't absolutely have to buy Galactic Battlegrounds because I don't really need it now, I will eventually buy it but there is no hurry whatsoever.

Community challenges are one way to motivate yourself, it doesn't work for me as I only play for relaxation/procrastination and the added factor of challenges doesn't motivate me the least bit, on the contrary. If it works for you then that's a perfectly good option though, I hope you can keep it up

Then you clearly know what you must do, right? Take loans that you will never be able to fully pay back.
You finished a game every ten days? Damn! I could never work that fast.

Ahem, my rate of purchasing is about 1.3 on GOG alone, ignoring kickstarter, humble bundle, steam, developers direct...... As far as I can remember, I complete a grand total of 3 games last year. There are games that I enjoyed for hours, but do not managed to complete them for life reason and these do not amount more than 10.

I seriously need to stop as my bank account is showing warning symptoms, I resisted the second wave of star wars release but dread my next payday in 5 more days to come.

Begone, oh evil loan shark! I'd rather be broke than be in debt.

That was the result from 2014 but I played mostly shorter games, lots of point & click adventures including super short ones like The Shivah and GOMO and only a few heavy hitters time-wise: mainly Stronghold Crusader, Diablo 2 and Titan Quest. Virtually everything else was under 20 hours per game. I neither have the time nor the energy for longer RPGs and I abandoned quite a number of games when they felt too grindy, e.g. Septerra Core which is quite a nice game but all those battles felt super tedious. Not sure if I'll ever finish it, howlongtobeat.com lists 50 hours for an average playthorugh and I'm most often way slower so that's just too much time I neither have nor want to spend. Fortunately, I'm not obsessive compulsive like some players are that absolutely feel the need to finish and complete every game. I just don't see the point. Only if it's an adventure game, those I hate to abandon.

So you must own more than 700 games on GOG alone if I calculate correctly? That's a whole lot, seriously. I think it's ok for you to write off a game you've tried but didn't like as "finished" and move on, otherwise you'll never ever reduce that mountain of unplayed games nor will you enjoy yourself. I only have around 300 games or so on all platforms but even with that amount I have decided to only finish the ones I enjoy, even if I will try and play every single one. There's absolutely no sense in trying to finish everything, a completely and utterly useless achievement that no one under the sun cares about. All that matters is your fun. I try not to give up too quickly when a game gets hard (currently struggling with the hard levels in Rush, a puzzle game) but when it becomes too much unfun, I'll quit. I quit games even when I'm 95% done if the final 5% annoy me. I never finished Torchlight even though I was almost finished. The game pissed me off and I uninstalled it, never to install it again. I consider all my gaming expenses as a kind of flatrate, so I don't try to get $5 out of a $5 game or $20 out of $20 game, that would only lead to robotic grinding. It's a bit unfortunate that I'm not genius enough to blast my way through games like Prelogate without getting stuck but at a certain point I'll probably give up on such games because pushing on isn't fun enough and I don't want this pastime to turn into a grind. I don't consider gaming a real hobby like sports, for some gaming is a real hobby but I can't see it as such anymore. Just willful wasting of time, so I might as well enjoy it and limit the grind to hobbies where I'm willing to endure that for the sake of greater rewards. There are no true rewards in gaming for me, none whatsoever. So I have no choice but to keep it fun and that means sacrificing those games that aren't fun to the mountain of abandonedness.

The 3 finished games I listed I did not complete everything, I deem it finished when I had experience all enjoyment the game has to offer.

Like Etherlords 1 I hardly touch the second fraction campaign but deem it finished because I think I had all the enjoyment the game has to offer. Etherlord 2 is much better than one and I would like to finish it someday, but taking a break from it becomes a half year break, maybe longer. I had not derived all the juicy entertainment from it so I deem it not finished.

Paper Sorcerer has lots of entertainment remaining, but after I find that there are kickstarter exclusive that make me unable to complete the experiance. I then search high and low on how to crack it back. After the omniscient Internet fail in providing an answer, I am all gung ho to hack / mod it back the kickstarter exclusive with some degree of success. But after this I am a bit tired mentaly and want to take a break of it, which turns into a long break indeed.

Things always happen, like prototype and supreme commander, it make my laptop cough up blue screen of death due to overheat. I had to literally blow my fan at the exhust to keep it running. I then think to buy a cooler system to play them, my laptop specs is fine, i7, 8GB ram, 2GB Geforce Video Card NVIDIA GT 840M. I can keep them running as long as I keep blowing my fan to my laptop exhaust. Then becomes wait to buy a desktop, then becomes see what window 10 is up to or build own desktop with win 7......

Things like that happens and currently I am playing recettearr an item shop tale that I played a few years ago and vow to finish it this time......I must have hundreds of hours in it but its longivity couple with my play style make it outlived my 2 PC so I have to replay it from start a few times as my saves are gone.

It mainly follows me around the house, which is how I like it. Better than the PC backlog, which has followed me through several moves. Every time I think I manage to escape it, there it is, sitting on my physical and virtual shelves.

It's more a matter of resolution than size, I'd say. My Nexus 7 with keyboard is of course not as good as a laptop but it's usable. Hey, I wrote on a Psion Series 5mx, so a 7" screen is very spacious by comparison. Still, I plan to buy an 8.4" Galaxy Tab S, and it's just a tad larger and it's actually lighter than the Nexus 7. Probably the maximum size I'm willing to live with. Anyway, if you bought an el-cheapo tablet with a 800x480 screen, then that won't be that good for much.

I fell off the wagon and bought two Nintendo 3ds games I really wanted. I couldn't help myself.

Oh, well I need to go through a few titles and sell them off on Amazon or give them to my family since I don't want to play them anymore. Problem solved.

And I'm am slowly getting through my recent purchases of DVDs, Anime , and all my game purchases. I need to see if my Mom wants to check out some of the games and play along. Forget my Dad, he does not like games.

Now if I could just stop watching Gotham on Fox.

Never mind, I'll just start watching the Walking Dead on Netflix. I don't have to do viewing parties with my sister the other Walking Dead fan. Bye, Gotham, it was nice knowing you.

If that is an accomplishment; I hate to tell you dude, but you need some more Padawan training :)

Still haven't really bought myself a game since December. W00000t!

:O This is incredible. No irony. I mean it.

Man, between the Jedi Knight release and S.P.A.Z. being at my impulse-buy price ($1.99) you aren't making this easy, GOG ...