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General discussion (archive)Avoiding Digital Clutter and Purchasing Games Responsibily (52 posts)(52 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted July 08, 2011
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Lorfean: My "ultimate goal", I guess you could say, is to end up with a collection of games that I all liked well enough to finish. And I am not one to waste time on finishing games just for the sake of finishing them -- my time is valuable. if I don't like a game I don't play it -- so, since I started using it, I have applied this method in reverse a few times as well, asking digital distributors to remove certain games from my library that I simply knew I would never finish. It may seem a bit rigid, but the method has worked well for me so far...
Interesting, I've often considered paring down my huge backlog to a working library of 25 games or so. This is easy for physical games but digital ones seemed more problematic. Could you tell us which digital distributors have been cooperative with this request? :)
Posted July 08, 2011
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Lorfean: My "ultimate goal", I guess you could say, is to end up with a collection of games that I all liked well enough to finish. And I am not one to waste time on finishing games just for the sake of finishing them -- my time is valuable. if I don't like a game I don't play it -- so, since I started using it, I have applied this method in reverse a few times as well, asking digital distributors to remove certain games from my library that I simply knew I would never finish. It may seem a bit rigid, but the method has worked well for me so far...
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Snickersnack: Interesting, I've often considered paring down my huge backlog to a working library of 25 games or so. This is easy for physical games but digital ones seemed more problematic. Could you tell us which digital distributors have been cooperative with this request? :)
The guys here at GOG.com have been :-) And from what I've read, Steam is as well, but I haven't tried it with them yet (I just created a custom category named "junk" where I put games I'm never gonna play and hid that category, so I don't see them at all).
Post edited July 08, 2011 by Lorfean
Posted July 08, 2011
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stoicsentry: Where do you live that you are spending only 2.50 for a beer at the bar WHEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!! TELL MEEEEEEEE
Pint night down the street from me has Widmere Hef on tap for 2.50 USD per pint every Tuesday (all night). It's possible, if not normal.
Posted July 08, 2011
I'm a collector by nature, i collect and stash stuff, even USELESS stuff i know deep down i might not ever use or have need of. But when it comes to video games, i BUY what i intend to play at some point or another (now whether said point is tonight or 3 years from now is a different story).

I think it's kind-of umm.....stupid? yeah, stupid...if you buy something you don't ever intend to play, listen or view as far as video games, music and movies go. I know i myself would never buy a Madden game, even if it was on sale for 0.01, because i would never play it.

So yeah, my 2 cents :)
Posted July 08, 2011
Thanks for the responses. I don't mean to attack what anyone's doing, if you want to buy, and you like buying, and having a bunch of games doesn't bother you in the slightest, then go for it!

Others have mentioned finances, and while that's a part of it, its just a small part.The money matters to me, but even moreso is the fact that it just clutters things up for me. Maybe it's just a little bit of OCD kicking in, but I can't stand having things that I don't use cluttering things I want to use.

It's like that PS2 collector with all those games. If I was hanging out with that guy and could play any game from that huge library, I wouldn't care about any. It would be too overwhelming to me. Give me one random PS2 game though, and I could probably play the hell out of it.

If some people are comfortable with having everything in front of them and can sort thru it and it's something useful or entertaining to them, by all means, go for it. For me though, it really has wore me down over time to have so much useless clutter I don't want to sort thru to get to the good things, is basically what I'm getting at.
Posted July 08, 2011
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GOCARDSGO32: Thanks for the responses. I don't mean to attack what anyone's doing, if you want to buy, and you like buying, and having a bunch of games doesn't bother you in the slightest, then go for it!

Others have mentioned finances, and while that's a part of it, its just a small part.The money matters to me, but even moreso is the fact that it just clutters things up for me. Maybe it's just a little bit of OCD kicking in, but I can't stand having things that I don't use cluttering things I want to use.

It's like that PS2 collector with all those games. If I was hanging out with that guy and could play any game from that huge library, I wouldn't care about any. It would be too overwhelming to me. Give me one random PS2 game though, and I could probably play the hell out of it.

If some people are comfortable with having everything in front of them and can sort thru it and it's something useful or entertaining to them, by all means, go for it. For me though, it really has wore me down over time to have so much useless clutter I don't want to sort thru to get to the good things, is basically what I'm getting at.
Well, in terms of clutter...

I got several shelves that holds the games I purchased physically since I was 14, in part thanks to the latest trend of selling the game DVDs in mini-boxed set containers and games spanning multiple CDs prior to DVDs.

Then, I got 2 drawers filled with game manuals.

And then, I have an entire closet filled with old game boxes (from back in the day when they where all games were sold in big boxes).

I couldn't have kept this up for much longer. I welcome the 'clutter' of virtual games :).

I think abusive consumerism might be a more defensible point, especially if you go across several digital distributors and combine it with abusive consumerism in other areas.
Post edited July 08, 2011 by Magnitus
Posted July 09, 2011
Right now I may have about a hundred games installed of which I may have completed a meager ten or so. It's very apparent that my library keeps growing faster than I'm able to complete games, and it does stress me a little bit. I definitely noticed the trend of me buying more than I need (ha! like any of us NEED games), and on occasion I end up purchasing one title or another that, while they may have looked promising/good at first, I never even give the light of the day after initially dipping my toes into it.

Either way, I'm not completely surprised by the fact. I was kind of expecting for something like that to happen when I finally switched back to Windows a few months ago. I really like Macs, but damn they provide some seriously subpar gaming experience - I'm surprised I've suppressed the urge for these last seven years - that is until I turned my latest iMac into a Win7 machine. Buying that OEM copy was definitely better than replacing my iMac with another computer when this one is already more than capable enough for my needs. But I digress...

Anyway, I am trying to curb my purchasing more, and I am trying my hardest to cut down on excessive spending. I noticed that I did take better care during these sales as I've spent more time considering each purchase, passing up quite a few, which I may not have done about a month ago. Not sure whether that'll last though. It's happened before that I've lapsed in such situations. My work against impulse purchases still needs a bit of work.
Posted July 09, 2011
Really I think the only game in my unfinished backlogt where I don't think I got my money's worth was Foreign Legions Buckets of Blood. I paid $1.25 for it, played it for 10 minutes and decided it sucked and I have no interest in ever playing it again.
It's true that I have a massive backlog (150+ ) of unfinished games, so it might sound like I have wasted a lot of money. But the thing is , even though I haven't finished all of them ( and never will), I still have spent( or will spend) at least a few hours on each of them . I agree with Zolgar and the whole $2 an hour for entertainment, that's about what I spend and think that's worth it.
Maybe I think that's a good value s because I grew up during the arcade era of the 1980's, and $2 could be spent in less than 10 minutes on videogames, and an arcade machine itself was hundreds of dollars to own.
Post edited July 09, 2011 by CaptainGyro
Posted July 09, 2011
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mistermumbles: (ha! like any of us NEED games)
Well, we are not ants. We need some form of entertainment if not for our survival, then for our long term happiness.

And while the idea of going back to the days where folks would go to the central square to hear a bard's tales sound charming, the reality is that we as a collective grew up in the environment we are in and were wired from an early age to expect a certain degree of sophistication from our entertainment.

In terms of a good substitute for electronic gaming (that fulfill similar desires), I can only readily think of sports, board games and pen&paper role-playing games.
Post edited July 09, 2011 by Magnitus
Posted July 09, 2011
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CaptainGyro: Really I think the only game in my unfinished backlogt where I don't think I got my money's worth was Foreign Legions Buckets of Blood. I paid $1.25 for it, played it for 10 minutes and decided it sucked and I have no interest in ever playing it again.
It's true that I have a massive backlog (150+ ) of unfinished games, so it might sound like I have wasted a lot of money. But the thing is , even though I haven't finished all of them ( and never will), I still have spent( or will spend) at least a few hours on each of them . I agree with Zolgar and the whole $2 an hour for entertainment, that's about what I spend and think that's worth it.
Maybe I think that's a good value s because I grew up during the arcade era of the 1980's, and $2 could be spent in less than 10 minutes on videogames, and an arcade machine itself was hundreds of dollars to own.
And that $1.25 you 'wasted' is pretty well countered by some $5 game you got a good 20+ hours of fun out of, eh? :)

Sure, if we could avoid all the dogs, we'd be better off on our $/hr for entertainment, but we can't be sure if a game is a dog until we try it.
Posted July 09, 2011
I was really bored just now and did a quick add up/estimate of all my transactions on steam and gog ( i became a member of both at nearly the same time 23 months ago) . Rough estimates-$580 on 125 games
Posted July 09, 2011
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stoicsentry: Where do you live that you are spending only 2.50 for a beer at the bar WHEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!! TELL MEEEEEEEE
$2.5 will get you 2-3 beers here. :p
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GOCARDSGO32: Others have mentioned finances, and while that's a part of it, its just a small part.The money matters to me, but even moreso is the fact that it just clutters things up for me. Maybe it's just a little bit of OCD kicking in, but I can't stand having things that I don't use cluttering things I want to use.
Same thing here. Personally, I'm constantly throwing out stuff that I won't be needing in the near future (few years).

Keeping it nice and simple. :)

(in a few days, I'll throw a few games too, since I have digital versions of them, and don't really need nor like the boxes (PoP Trilogy, Crysis, AoE2, RoN and similar stuff)... Thinking about throwing away The Orange Box too, useless crap right now.
Post edited July 09, 2011 by KavazovAngel
Posted July 09, 2011
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stoicsentry: Where do you live that you are spending only 2.50 for a beer at the bar WHEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!! TELL MEEEEEEEE
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KavazovAngel: $2.5 will get you 2-3 beers here. :p
Ahh, but how much does the average working stiff make per hour?
Posted July 09, 2011
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KavazovAngel: $2.5 will get you 2-3 beers here. :p
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Zolgar: Ahh, but how much does the average working stiff make per hour?
Not enough.
Posted July 09, 2011
What you say is true, i've ended up buying quite a few games during this steam sale a couple of which i regret.

Thankfully i have had this sort of mentality and haven't bought anything over the past 2 days of sales and hopefully won't again, i really don't want to spend more than i can afford.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion (archive)Avoiding Digital Clutter and Purchasing Games Responsibily (52 posts)(52 posts)
(52 posts)