Indeed, that's why I largely stopped buying games. I realized that I had so many games that I wasn't likely to finish all the ones I had. So, until I've played most of them, I won't be buying any more.

I don't have a family but I'm working multiple part-time jobs so I can at least partially relate. I don't "manage" because that would require a certain type of dicipline I suspect I don't have. Instead, I sacrifice. Everyone has 24 hours so to open up free time for one thing we must sacrifice another thing. Not easy, but simple! Perhaps write down a priority list on paper and you might figure out that if you scrap one of your TV shows, that's 1 hour more gaming time per week etc.
As a somewhat incorrigible hermit, I don't need to scrap social time so I can't give much advice on how to get more me-time when there are other people around because there aren't any people around! I'll go on installation sprees and then hop around until I get to a game that grips me right off the bat and play the living daylights out of it. Allnighters possible. Happened so with Defense Grid, I even bought all the DLC - the only game I ever bought DLCs for. Not anymore. Compulsion isn't fun and when I play, I only play for fun. Most games in my collection end up unfinished. Rushing can be fun but only if you're rushing due to excitement, not if you're rushing in order to quickly "finish".

This year, my total gaming time so far has been exactly 0 hours and 0 minutes. Apparently, I'm an unbalanced person who can't half-ass things properly the way they need to be half-assed. I suspect that the secret to Life is to master half-assing things whereas I still believe in old fashioned all or nothing. Currently, I don't miss gaming. It didn't give me any real fulfillment anyway. Fun, yes, but that's not enough. So without games --> more energy for other things!

This is exactly what i did. But I list all the games i will be buying on my notepad instead xD

I don't bother making a list. If I don't want it badly enough to buy when I have time, then I probably didn't want it badly enough to play anyways.

I believe in countering bullshit with silliness :-)

That's what I did 25 years ago when I has stopped pirating and didn't have the money to buy all the games I wanted to have. Make a list and prioritise over and over... I could afford maybe one game every two months back then - but I had the time to play them all.

Nowadays I can afford to buy any game I'd like to have, but don't really have the time to play them. So I rarely buy games at full price, but I often buy when discounts are "too good to pass". And esp. oldie releases here I sometimes buy at once even if I don't think I will play those games for real. I think there are two reason for this: First, it's similar to finding some book at the antiquarian's that is just cool to have (happens to me sometimes) and second it feels like "rewarding" GOG for the effort bringing those classics here - maybe a little silly since my $6-10 won't really make a difference. In short, there are some games where buying them actually makes me happy - not necessarily playing them.

What I noticed is that the less time I have to play games, the more I'm tempted to buy them. It's like a compensatory action. Of course I only do this with oldies and discounted games - I couldn't justify spending $90 for PoE Royal Edition just for thrills...
What I noticed though is that (for the fun of spending money on games) it doesn't really matter if I buy the games for myself, or as gifts for the cherished forum inmates. So in the last months my spending has shifted more towards the gifting than further "developing" my library.

Very interesting thread!

To share my story; I don't have a family yet, but I already thought about how much gaming time I'll have when the times comes. Of course, that applies to all my other hobbies as well.

Regarding the backlog, there was a time where it made me anxious; lots of games in my retail collection that I wanted to replay, plus all those I' ve already bought on GOG, and all of them stared at me laughing & yelling when I couldn't find the time to play them or didn't want to sacrifice time that I could spend on my other activities or social needs.

Until one point where I thought that it's a hobby after all, not a full-time job with a deadline. And to make it easier, recently I decided to stop buying games until I play all the major time consuming games I've already bought (mainly cRPGs), unless something good gets released and I want to support the dev, such as STASIS or UnderRail. Or until the next major GOG sale where I'll "forget" all that I wrote just before! :P


This is something I noticed myself too! When I was younger, there was a saying; "buy less, to play more". (there was also a variation of it about pirating stuff but I don't remember how it went). Anyway, before joining GOG, I used to play my retail collection of favourite games over & over again and I didn't feel like I wanted to buy new games all the time because I was already happy with what i had and especially after I got screwed by the DRM of a game I bought (which led to never buying anything again that's not on GOG).

"And remember: A game worth playing is a game worth buying" - That slogan was in the Razor-1911-intros. And it's probably the reason I got thinking and then gave up pirating.

Nice point, although one could ask "what's the definition of worth playing " and "if the game isn't good/ isn't worth of your time, do you have the right to pirate it?". A little stretched you might say, because if something isn't worth of your time, why care about it anyway?

But how can you know if a game is worth playing before actually playing it? Reviews are a good start. Demo on the other hand is much better because not only you get to see the game first-hand but also, most of the times, you can evaluate yourself if your machine can tun it. If you can find a demo nowadays that is...

Having said all that, I heard also that if someone wants to pirate stuff, they'll do no matter what, so I guess that's where Razor's slogan aiming for.

ps. maybe a little offtopic, my apologies. :P

I play games on saturdays. Monday to friday is work time and the afternoons are for the wifey and cat. Nights are for drinking to get some sleep.. Friday night i go out drinking. Saturdays are hangover + gaming days. Sunday is for work around the home + gaming + wife time (depends if anything needs doing and wife needs attention or not)