I have told myself that I won't buy games on GOG which should have achievements but don't have them here (since achievements generally don't work here that makes almost any modern game uninteresting to me). See? Achievements are useful. :P
I Have no Problem and I Must Buy

I ended up buying the Cryptic Bundle that I said I'd buy.

I want to buy more games, but there isn't anymore interesting discounted games I want to get :( or bundles :(

I used to carry my first desktop PC to friend's places for null modem / LAN sessions. Laptops were unaffordable back then, especially if one expected any newer games to run on them.
Never saw gaming as a social hobby though, even when I hosted Worms 2 sessions with 4 players on one PC which is a tremendously insane amount of fun. I didn't really socialize with other gamers outside gaming, now that I think about it I didn't do this socialize thing much at all, if I didn't spend time by myself I met up with people to do specific things (play LEGO, play with toy guns and run around, and of course playing video games once those were available). Simply socializing as in "hanging out" (aka doing nothing) wasn't part of the program for me. I still dislike simply hanging out unless it's someone I haven't seen in a long time in which case just talking and a cup of tea is fun too but I still prefer to do something specific in which case I categorize it under activities but wouldn't call it socializing. I guess that makes me "antisocial" to some degree and I have no qualms about it since I know it has nothing whatsoever to do with being a good/bad person. If I had kids I wouldn't force them to "socialize" unless they felt like it or the activity in question required more than one person.
Also, never card about online multiplayer much as the expressions on people's faces are priceless and must be seen!

I think this whole thing with encouraging kids to "go and make friends" is overrated, as if spending time by yourself was some kind of deficiency in need of fixing. I was perfectly fine spending most of my time by myself focused on specific things or playing with one friend at a time. Always had at least one good friend and that was fine to me. I never hung out in groups (unless for multiplayer gaming) or had a "clique" or some such, that seemed to me like something bored and insecure kids would need who didn't have any real hobbies. Of course it doesn't have to be that way but that's what I observed as a kid and still observe for the most part as an adult. There's nothing wrong with socializing but it's not something I regard as being necessary to tell kids to do if they won't do it on their own. The again, I'm not a parent so I'm not in the position where I'd need to think about what ideal parenting is and isn't. Just saying that if I was your kid and you told me to go and make friends, I'd tell you to scram :)



Ha! I felt like I saved 10 cents too on my first purchase in this sale since I had the same regional credit to my account but we both know it's just a psychological trick to mitigate our guilt about spending and that we paid 10 cents too much on a previous purchase.

I loved the old XCOM but I'm not feeling any XCOM vibes from Xenonauts so kinda worried I won't like the game. Still going to give it a fair chance though. Chances that you like the game are indeed higher though because you won't compare it to the old games.

Good mind trick! I do the same by adding the total sum of money spent on games and considering that a "flat rate" instead of thinking oh I wonder if that game was worth $5 or this game worth $10 and so on. I treat all game expenses together like an annual gym membership but sometimes this mind trick doesn't work and I'm regretting individual purchases.
Also, looking at $1.50 or $2 at a time hurts less than looking at a total sum of several hundred $$ one has spent in a year on games. Either way, I'm hoping that I'll soon stop buying games and from then on I'll just play and feed off the big backlog like a bear in winter of his fat. Only to wake up and hunt fresh meat when something like Armikrog should go on sale but never for a scrawny squirrel (=low priority wishlisted games).

I respect that a lot, if I was from a country with weak currency I'd most definitely resort to buying less and possibly start pirating again just like I did when I was young. Which is why I never blame people resorting to piracy, I don't condone it but it's not my place to criticize people doing things I might do myself in their shoes.
But since I'm addicted to buying games (more than playing them in some cases), that's the best remedy against piracy - albeit the reason for starting this therapy thread :)


I can easily list you a hundred things that are more productive than playing games. As mentioned earlier on in this thread, I regard playing games as a complete waste of time, nothing bad if that's what one wants to do but even if I'm aware of this I still can't stop buying games and that means I have an addiction problem, more precisely shopaholicism. Fortunately, it's "only" games and not expensive purses or guns or collector's stamps or whatnot.


GAS... haha :D


Charity = excellent idea!

Sadly I am too jaded, cynical and worst of all selfish to support any charity despite the fact that I spend decidedly more on game gift codes than for myself. It would be better if I donated the money for charity instead of gift codes and even though I am considered poor in my country (I do have a job though as well as my own little business), I have enough to eat and I have an apartment of my own so it's not like I couldn't spare some small amount of $$ here and there.
Spent about $35-40 on gift codes in the summer sale (on GOG for the most part, very little on Steam) and this money could have been donated to the victims of the Nepal earthquake instead :(

I don't believe in regular foreign aid and would cut it entirely but in case of natural disaster I believe all countries who can afford to do so have a duty to help, with money and materials. Also, I believe that if all countries would resort to more fair trade and less land grabbing / exploitation then foreign aid would not be necessary in the first place. Especially considering most foreign aid goes to corrupt governments and their arms budgets anyway.

Excluding aforementioned natural catastrophes of course which can hit anyone anytime. People from my country donate a massive amount of money compared to its little size and low number of inhabitants and I feel a bit crappy for not being as generous. I'm only in favor of private donations though and don't think the state has any business at all to make giveaways with its people's money. Again, if it's a natural disaster things are different.


Very good! The Steam sale wasn't as exciting anyway, I only bought two games there so far. Pilot Brothers was 80% off so I shamefully betrayed GOG and bought the game from Steam despite my intention to never do such a thing. The second game I bought from Steam was World War 1, it's just like Blitzkrieg but with a WW1 theme, looks like a potential hidden gem and isn't available here.

Only tempted by Cultures 8th Wonder of the World & Northland which are 80% as well, those two games are available here on GOG too so I'm reluctant to pull the trigger on the Steam sale plus they are very time consuming games. Not ideal for me at the moment.


Amen and ditto to everything you said except that I failed at buying nothing. I can't not buy anything so I'm not cured yet :/

Kudos for staying strong!

Happy for you but keep in mind to pass on the kindness you received to another stranger in the future. Gifting can be as much fun as being gifted - something I was surprised to find out a year ago or so when I first starting making giveaways.
Watch MacGyver season 5 episode 11 ("The Madonna") to see what I mean, one of my favorite episodes incidentally.

Battle Reals was a nice gift from GOG, that game was on my medium priority wishlist but I don't know when I'll find the time to play it, same for Xenonauts which was less of a gift - more like an award for buying a lot.

Are you cured? Well, maybe and maybe not. Only time can tell! I recommend making a list like mine in this post where you mercilessly keep track of all your trespasses and how long you stayed clean at a time. My current goal is to stay clean for more than 26 days, preferably longer.

Bundles are a two-edged sword. They cost little money for many games but can quickly inflate your backlog so I stay clear of bundles. I'm not a collector after all, I only want stuff I intend to play at some point. If I was an efficient shopper I'd just keep the games I need from bundles and give away all the others but I'm not an efficient shopper at all.

I don't have OCD in RL but I think many of us here on GOG have at least a little bit of OCD when it comes to games, myself included. Both in terms of acquiring games and when playing them (must complete all levels yadda yadda).

I have this weird idea about playing all the essential classics and then leaving gaming forevermore, as in permanently. Interestingly, the essential classics I haven't yet played or finished are sitting on my shelf the longest and I deviated from my initial goal so much that I'm now even buying and playing indie puzzle platformers and such :O

Apparently, I can only underdo or overdo things.

Welcome revainedmortal, you came to the right place :)

Have you tried visualization techniques? As in try to visualize yourself playing the game you're intending to buy and ask yourself, what are you feeling? Are you seeing yourself having fun, are you really going to enjoy that game or is it just a straw a little frog grasps onto?
Sometimes, this technique works. I was able to hold off on the Paradox bundle that way, realizing that I simply have no time and patience for these games in present times and in the foreseeable future.

I still fail plenty of times though and no tricks seem to work. Have made some improvements though by applying this visualization technique to my wishlist, killing off most of the time-consuming strategy and RPG titles on it. I love those games but if I won't play them anytime soon due to lack of motivation/energy/time/patience, then it's no use to buy those things

I had the same idea: It does not work!

You see, games are like the Hydra in Greek mythology. Cut off one head, two new heads grow. In the time I finish one game from my backlog, two new games are released and I keep discovering older games I didn't even know about, for example World War 1 buy DarkFox (published by 1C Company).

It never ends. You can't cut off all heads! Also, the more games I bought, the more I added to my wishlist.

One trick is to remove games from the wishlist but that only works on Steam for me, here on GOG I can't -not- see sales even if I kick the games off my wishlist. I kicked Pacific General off my wishlist but if there's a sale, who knows? I might buy it, because the Hydra head is still there, hasn't been burned off really.

You can kill fire with fire but you can't "buy out" your buying addiction. Only thing you can eliminate or at least reduce is your desire to own more and more. By hard therapy! There's no shortcut really, or at least not that I'm aware of.
Beware of radical methods, you might rebound stronger than before. I'm trying to ease out of it slowly, although I reduced my wishlist on GOG radically from 76 to 10 and on steam from ca. 60 to 4 games.

Same here, that's why eliminating the wishlist isn't a cure-all remedy. Just bought Conquest: Frontier Wars today which wasn't even on my wishlist. Plus I haven't finished any strategy games in months (aside from replaying Halfway in hard mode), no time or energy even though it's my favorite genre.
I recommend starting to track your activities precisely and carefully analyze your purchasing behavior and patterns, that's a good first step.

I love Toki Tori but I still haven't finished even the normal levels yet. At some point, levels started feeling like a chore rather than a challenge, not that they are too hard but too time consuming and I prefer shorter levels. hard is ok but long not so much. So I kinda burned out on the game, still have it installed though and won't buy the 2nd game unless I finish the first one.

Funny thing about A Bird Story, I used the same reasoning to hold back on that one. Haven't even installed To The Moon yet. My interest in that game is rather small, just curious because everyone says the game made them cry and such a response seems quite an accomplishment for a game so I want to see what it's all about. Unlike movies, no video game has ever made me feel emotional (except for me feeling sorry for the Swampling in Simon the Sorcerer who cries a one-pixel tear, I have a soft spot for the underdogs) and I find it a bit hard to imagine that there are games that can do that. I think my attitude to games is generally more "4th wall broken" than with movies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Insanity_defense :P

You must kill the barbarian queen or else the barbarian horde will attack every year anew!

Half a month and no ice cream.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy

Aha! I see you browsing through the colorful promo pictures on the main page, feeling that yearning to click on something, anything, just for those happy two seconds when your shelf sports a new game.

You are possibly a true shopaholic and you came to the right place. Maybe try out-of-body visualization where you observe yourself closely, if only to realize that you are buying for the sake of buying. You might think it's just that none of your wishlisted games are on sale right now but if your experiencing withdrawal symptoms from not buying anything even after a day or two then it looks more like shopaholicism than game addiction so this is the right thread for you. I might be mistaken but only you can find out for sure.

Have been clean for two months now.

Having friends you can share things with does correlate with better emotional well being. My goal as a parent is that my children will be happy and if possible be a good influence on the world around them.

You don't encourage kids to "go and make friends". When they are very little, you need to learn who they play with and try to arrange for the kids to play together. My wife is good at that. In general, the way I see parenting, it's learning what your kids like, presenting opportunities for them to learn new things, and then helping them develop in the directions they like. (Easier said than done, of course.) Doesn't need to be forceful. When you send a kid to a course, they also get to share an experience with other kids. You might ask them if they played/worked with anyone, etc., just to get a feel. Anyway, it's tricky, and I'm winging it like any parent (and not doing a perfect job, I'm sure), while trying to keep sane.

I think (though haven't experienced that yet) that at an older age kids pretty much carry on from earlier interactions, and tend to resent interference more. Certainly at no point do you tell them "go and make friends". If they're not equipped to do that, they won't. All you can do is try to smooth the way.
Considering that I made the decision before making the act, I don't think you could catalogue it as that. :) I merely postponed the purchase. I did re-evaluate it before buying, but I had already manipulated myself into feeling that I want and "deserve" this a week ago. And this thread is partly to blame. I mean, can't have all you people buying all those games all the time. I felt left behind.

There are a few things I can address.

First, buying with USD is not even a wise move. 1 USD now approx 13.300 Rupiah. You're killing your own wallet if you buy with US Prices with USD.

Moreso, buying YS etc from Steam would be much cheaper for us. It is regional priced and you can pay in IDR. Getting Steam Wallet Code in USD would yield a higher conversion rate.

For download size problem, you can grab pirated physical copy and play. It's legal since you own the game license already (whether it's Steam or GOG doesn't matter).

And lastly, donating for charities is not a responsibility. It's a good move to help people, but not donating isn't a sin also.

That is why I don't spend much in this sale. Using paypal with get charged for ~13.750. Nice isn't it ?

For me, Steam is only an alternative for games that will never be on GOG (I expect some games might never made here). I don't even bother Steam sale right now. GOG now is the only my main game library with Desura being predicted to be close -not yet though.

I don't mind paying a bit higher here on GOG with downloadable DRM-Free installer is a guarantee.

"Grab" a physical copy for how much ? it might make the even more expensive to buy again a pirated copy after buy it legally. I think it was around 40.000/piece of DVD for a game. For 8 GB sized game, it would be around 2 - 3 pieces of DVD. That is 80.000 - 120.000 Rupiah which is ~ US $7 - $11. You know, I can buy another game legally with that kind of money. Or even buy another internet quota to download game with big download size.

and I don't want to rent either, it just annoying to go back and forth to the rental shop.

I might have download problem, but I still have some games with big download size; which I downloaded them by (ab)using internet connection in my friend office. But, I cannot go there everyday, so now I mostly stick with game that have relatively small download size. I could force my download for 6 GB size of game (Jade Empire for example), but I cannot do that often. Above 6 GB is still a frontier for me.

Maybe after I could afford a better internet ,I would break my download barrier.

I never write anything about charity as a responsibility, and a must do or it is a sin. Which part of my post implies that ? I only suggest charity can be a way to reduce OP's impulsive buying behavior. It worked for me, so I suggested that. That's it. Please don't assume abruptly like that.

I think I might have chimed in on this thread before (or similar). My method, which seems to work, is to just set a very low price for games I think I might like to buy and stick to it. It also helps if you have a huge backlog of games you haven't played yet. Anyways, I hope that helps at least a few individuals out there in cyberland struggling with this particular vice. :-)

Hmm. Yeah. Different country, different conditions. Your Swiss Franc is almost the same level with US$. No wonder it is easier to spend on games. I don't know If you have stated on this thread, but have you tried to seek professional help ? I mean it will cost more than "self and community help" here, but it might help you better; especially if you think that your addiction is at worst.

Hmm. Well, do that private donations then. It's all up to you. I am just suggesting you spend to a charity if you have urge to buy games impulsively again. It helped me before, that is why I suggested it to you. Doesn't matter where you donate the money -well of course to something that you trust and make you comfortable to donate there.

Good luck.

I don't know, but if you are worried about cost, you should

1. Get cheaper games.
2. Use the excess money to get a better connection.

What's the use of buying more expensive games but as a result you can't even download the games? Doesn't seem logical.

And "Sometimes I thought of : "It is better if I use this amount of money for charity". " implies donating is a better way to spend the money, which in fact it's not. Donating is out of your good will, not a reason to avoid something. If donating as a reason to avoid something, that donation isn't honest anymore.

Also, there's a service of digital copy downloads. Only pay like... 10.000 rupiah or less for each DVD.40.000 is too much, perhaps blatant rip-off.

It's not even an assumption, your wording was too ambiguous.

Great Gogmix. I like it!
But didn't get the whole 0.99 cents deal; care to elaborate a little more on this one?
Thanks!

I'm usually good at not buying games full price, unless it's something I've been eagerly awaiting. I won't buy games for months, but sales are my undoing. I have this thought, "it'll never be this low again!" Bought 10 games for $30 yesterday, and I still have 6 more sale days (on steam) to go. -_-