I'm glad sale is over. Now I can actually play some games. And I'm also proud to say that I didn't get anything on Steam nor plan to during this sale. I do have a couple of games on my list to pick up, but I'll wait for "complete" editions and/or a better price.

Bought 8 games from the sale, got 2 user gifts, 3 gog gifts, spent about 26 euros...
I actually wish had bought more both for myself and others...
Very ambivalent about this. I do have untouched games from other sales though...
Well I guess 26 euros is an okay amount for 2 weeks of shopping.
You only get 3 bottles of wine from the wine shop or 4 pints of beer in a bar in Finland for that.
But still. Wanted to do more.

Well, I bought 4 games on GOG and 2 games on Steam during the summer sales, all at a total cost of around 29 dollars. The Norwegian Krone is still very weak (and predicted to drop further in value), so paying in dollars and euros quickly gets expensive! This will help me buy less games :P

That is enough for 2 cheap bottles of wine over here, or 3 pints of beer in a bar. I guess alcohol is expensive all over Scandinavia :|

Well maybe it's a good thing too, having something to limit your over-enthusiasm :)

We should toast for this mutual distress over expensive alcohol in Scandinavia! :p

The thought of making one big purchasing assault / clearance and "get it over with" has crossed my mind several times but this is not an RTS mission /multiplayer match where you can beat the opponent that way. The enemy is ever replenishing (new releases etc) whereas your time and resources are limited. You can't drink yourself sober.

That could keep you busy for quite a while, with mods and all you wouldn't need to go online or be seen anywhere around here for weeks. You wouldn't do anything productive during that time but you would be in no danger of buying games, either.

We are indeed numerous and many of us are self aware like Ken Jeong.
Self awareness is only one step but it's an important step nonetheless as it is often the first step. By sharing our observations with others we become even more self aware and then we (hopefully) do something about it, before we become unpopular in Korea.

A mistake most of us have made. It's an uncomfortable truth that no matter how madly popular and high rated a game is, there's zero guarantee that you'll like it.
I recently installed The Last Express, a game that is universally appraised by just about everyone and their grandma. I played the demo back in the day but didn't have the full version so I bought it again a while ago. I remember liking the demo, at least in regards to the classy audio and visuals. But in terms of gameplay, I just can't stand this game. I realized that I abhor first person adventures, not just some but pretty much all of them. Talking about the ones where you can't walk around freely, that is so terribly awkward that I can't enjoy those games regardless of what everyone else says. Myst, Riven, Last Express, and so on...it's just not for me. I prefer third person perspective, pure 2D or 3D on prerendered background but having to awkwardly look around in FPP, no thanks! Full 3D is ok in my book.

Other times, one ends up buying a classic one enjoyed in the old days but doesn't enjoy anymore. I really liked Total Annihilation when it came out, when I got it on GOG 1,5 years ago I installed it and couldn't feel it so I quit after a couple missions. Same for many other games I bought here. After many mistakes I'm starting to get a very accurate intuition for what I'll enjoy and what not but I still make purchases I know I'll regret. Recent example is Conquest: Frontier Wars. A game I missed out on back in the day and would have loved then - but now I can't enjoy it. Tried a couple missions and have no motivation to continue.

Another one is Knights & Merchants. Seems like a decent Settler clone but the game is so slow that it's unplayable. Back in the early to mid 90s I might have had the patience for that kinda stuff, nowadays: Just no. Zero chance in hell. Uninstalled after half an hour.
Playing Alien Nations right now and it's looking a little better but the game is super slow as well, probably not going to take it very far as it seems like a waste of time. Not getting that cozy Settler feeling here, either.

Prospective action makes more sense and I'm kinda surprised that it actually works. It seems irrational and counter-intuitive but the calculations I made show that it does work. At least in my case, can't make any guarantees for anyone but it's worth trying.

Amen to that. Although I don't even have that many games so managing my collection is simple, most of it is here on GOG (248 games) and 60 on Steam. I wish there were more categories to sort games more efficiently here, on Steam one can manually create categories like "abandoned" and it makes it easier to keep a good overview.

Even more amen to that paragraph. I have lost a lot of time researching games I planned to buy. Spent at least 1,5 hours researching about Door Kickers before I decided that what I first believed to be exactly my kinda game was perhaps not for me after all, at least not at this time.
Also stared at the Steam 85% sale of Age of Empires 2 HD for way too long before I landed a successful "saving roll" and did -not- buy it. I realized that this version has no LAN support and is therefor completely worthless to me. The singleplayer campaigns aren't even that great, this game was the most fun for LAN / null modem and I spent way more time playing multiplayer than singleplayer back in the day. Matches took up to 4 hours, epic memories. But best left in the past, no need to jump into this game again even if it is one of my all-time favorites and my number one favorite RTS for local multiplayer. Never had much or any interest in online multiplayer.

My sentiment exactly - except that I am depending on steep sales as I have to buy everything twice according to my rule with the extra gift copy. An 80% sale is therefor only a 40% sale to me, makes sales far less attractive.

It mainly is simple instant gratification, kinda like playing action RPGs of the Diablo variety. One click -> kill & loot.
There is a deeper layer to all this though, kinda like the underground layer for the water pipes in Sim City 2000, and that deeper layer is for everyone to figure out themselves and is beyond the scope of this thread. I'm not a psychiatrist or psychic guru (if at all then only in a tongue-in-cheek kinda way, nothing more) so what we address in this thread is the front end of things - that does not mean there is no back end.

Nah...only 16% of my game purchasing expenses went towards buying real gifts (the non penalty kind). You can't count the penalty gifts as real gifts, making others happy is a wonderful side benefit but the main goal is tackling the purchasing addiction. It's therefor not true altruism and I don't feel addicted to making gifts. I make giveaways for entertainment/gaining insight purposes first and foremost, if it was just about gifting or quickly gaining popularity I'd make all my giveaways raffle-drawn, not just a few of them. It would be way less work. Raffle-drawn giveaways are perfectly ok though, sometimes one just doesn't have time to host giveaways in any more depth than that. I have considered just dumping all my gift codes into one random giveaway but since codes don't expire, I can take things slowly and make giveaways whenever I have time to at least interact a little bit, even if I can't reply to every participant.

16% of the total expenses are altruistic though, for ninja gifts that I make without any benefit for myself and with no expectation to get anything back, either. I feel no compulsion to make gifts though, probably too self-centered for that. Not self-centered as in egotistical but self-centered as in introverted, that is a very different thing. Self-centered people can often be more reliable in helping others and more genuine about it than so called social extroverted people. Why? Mainly because introverts don't derive (fancy word for leech off) energy from other people and therefor will often stay and help even if you're down in the dumps and aren't a source of shining energy.

26 Euros for two weeks of wide range sales, that's not bad at all. Seems well within reason. If it's more than you actually wanted to spend then you still have an addiction though, and need therapy :P

In Switzerland, 26 Euros will get you lunch and a non-alcoholic beverage at a simple restaurant. Needless to say, I don't eat at restaurants unless it's a supermarket cafeteria but even there you'd spend close to 20 Euros which i can't afford, either. For Swiss GOG members who are software engineers at a company or some such, buying games here is like buying peanuts (literally) but if you don't have that fat Swiss IT etc salary, you can't play kid in Candyland around the GOG store either. Not everyone in 1st world countries is rich or even well-to-do, even if just about everyone from poorer countries is convinced that we're all filthy rich. Same for perceptions about Finland, I guess.

The amount I should be spending here is exactly $0, not one cent more. Not exaggerating in any way.

Yep, very accurate. Therefor: therapy!

Coming out of lurking to post this. I lost a small fortune during the recent GOG sale. I'm notorious for buying games the day they came out or shortly afterwards for whatever reason whether they might end be Limited Edition, hard to find or on sale or just plain a deal such as this recent sale.

Recently I took a moment to kick back and think things over. I have a ton of games from every system I own that need to be beaten. I have the same game on multiple consoles even, such as I bought Hitman on here and already own Hitman on XBox. Years ago I said to myself that it makes no sense that I'm spending a fortune on games when I haven't beaten what I own already. So I decided that until I beat some other games I won't buy any more. That worked for an entire summer until I beat Max Payne 3 then I went right on back to spending. Nevertheless I think it's a good practice to have and I might just try to stick to it again this time with all the games I got in the sale. I'm nowhere near beating any of them so it might keep some change in my pocket for a few months.

I think Chronic is more suitable word. Seeing Jarchand confession I will make another confession myself, I also bought over 100+ game in the summer sale. I believe before the summer sale I think my library number at 897 games, after it become 1027.

As for have not finish a single game, I have a collecter mania that I want to collect / experience everything in the game. I beat Recettear an item shop tale but have not crafted every item, so would grind periodically in the New Game+ for the crafting materials.

I have not collected all powerful cards in YugiOh Power of Choas so is still grinding periodically.

I play Paper Sorcerer and after learning there is Kickstarter Exclusive Characters I spend hacking it out. After successful I feel my mental reserve and goodwill spent and decided to wait for some time to recover before continue. I then learn that Steam version of it is updated this May but the GoG version still stay last year, so will wait for update again.

I am now quite advance on Valdis Story but feel my stats / skill allocation is not correct and I miss stats and skill rewards because I did not beat the bosses with S rank, so replay from scratch again.

I think my greed to collect everything is how sales trapped me. "For one, two, dollars I can add this game to my digital library!!!" "For a quarter of the original price, I can add this highly recommended game to my library!!!"

I don't think there is, in most cases. Most people react the same way to sales, to x.99 prices, to "buy x get y" deals. That's why we see these. Stores wouldn't do sales if people (on average) didn't buy more a result. Tendencies to collect aren't out of the normal either. Sure, when anything is taken to the extreme it's a problem, but for most people buying more games than they need is not a real problem; it's not an addiction that threatens their life or finances.

So I don't think there's necessarily any deep psychological problem. Sure, people might have psychological problems, and they might affect this, but the underlying issue is much simpler: that we feel the need to play the games.

If you collect stamps or trading cards you're perfectly fine having them just sit around. There's no problem with that. You could spend the same as you spend on games and not feel guilt. The problem starts when you collect something that you buy to experience, and when that experience can take dozens of hours for $5, getting that experience becomes a serious problem.

It's this problem that makes people come here, not the actual purchasing, but the conflict between a growing collection and the inability to consume it. Again, I don't think there's any deep problem needed to explain it. It's all natural tendencies which are just exaggerated by the deep discounts and long playing times of games.


Sure, you have different excuses for it, but in the end you still buy more gifts than you buy games for yourself. You could have set a strict budget for gaming or done something else, but you chose to be flexible and "punish" yourself by buying gifts. You presumably chose this course of action because you do enjoy giving things away. So this way when you buy you get both the thrill of buying and of giving something away, double the thrill. I'm not saying that you're addicted yet, but if you consider yourself addicted to buying games and you spend more money on gifts than on games, that's something worth thinking about.

You know one thing that's helping me to stop buying games recently:

The fact that I just bought a new laptop (and hard drive!), thus realizing that I had already spent a fair amount of money, motivating me to radically wind down my game instabuys.

My laptop died a few weeks ago, and during the Summer sale, so that made me pretty much sit out the rest of the sale. Why? So I could make sure I had enough money to buy a new laptop. (well, "new", as I never buy them brand new, I get them used or refurbished on eBay, it saves me money)

Why?





So I can still play all the games I bought, of course! Hey, to "stop buying games" is one thing, but...... the games that one already bought aren't gonna play themselves you know :P

I was just thinking how things were (at least from my perspective) in the late 80's till late 90's...
Anyone who would be even like me who has some 180 'units' in the gog library would already be considered a nutter!
You know, having over a hundred game boxes somewhere around the apartment, lots of them never even been opened, still in their plastic wrappers with price tag and everything.
I'd have a friend come over and say like, "Let's go eat a burger and then hang out in the town," and I'd be like, "I don't have much spare money right now..." and my friend be like quiet for a while and take in all those game boxes with a glance, and he'd be like, "You're a fucking nutter, man! What happened to you!?" and he'd leave shaking his head :)

But somehow now it's all alright, since the prices have come down so much and the boxes are mostly virtual (for me they are all virtual.) :D

I just bought the entry level tier of the Humble Weekly Bundle: Eye Candy 3, because Tengami looks like a game I might play with my kids.

Far as I remember it, it wasn't that different. People had lots of games copied from friends or BBS's, or from magazine coverdiscs, which they didn't play. I sure have some of those cover CD's from those days that I haven't touched yet. It wasn't as bad as today, but it was still possible to accumulate a backlog.

Hm. Maybe you are right... not too different. Some people were collecting lots of games, most of them which they never played through, at least until a lot later. But at least I remember people giving serious effort to games that were bought. But yeah, I don't have any statistics to impart with...

For me buying a laptop had the opposite effect... It can run The Witcher 3?! Why shouldn't it?:P