Addiction, Guilt and Budget Gaming

I have a confession to make: I'm addicted to buying games.  It doesn't matter if it's the hottest new thing at full price or a hidden gem I've unearthed from the dregs of the bargain bin, nothing makes me happy like popping a new disc into my Xbox or clicking the "Download Now" button on Steam.

Nor does it seem to matter to me if the game is actually any good or not.  I simply have a fascination with new gaming experiences... How are the presentation, the graphics, the controls, and the music?  What sets this game apart from it's competition?  Is it full of bugs or polished to a high sheen?  These are the questions I'm silently asking myself any time I try a new game.

Sadly, I am not a rich man.  Each purchase I make must be carefully weighed against pressing, real life concerns.  Do I buy this game, or put gas in my car, food on my table, or pay my internet bill?  Sometimes the choice is easy;  if I don't pay my internet bill, I won't be able to download any more games or play online.  Other times, it's not so cut and dry.  When Steam slashes the price of a title I've had my eye on for some time by 85%, it can be quite difficult to resist the urge.  "It's only $3.89!" I rationalize to myself... Never mind that $3.89 could buy me a jar of peanut butter and loaf of bread to feed myself for a few days.  I think I remember seeing half a package of crackers in the back of the cupboard, I can live off of that for a week, right?

Most of the time I'm able to make the mature decision.  I will regularly wait six months to a year for the price to drop on a triple-A game that I fancy.  It's not as if I have a lack of new games to play - I have a back-log of no less than a dozen games waiting to be finished at any given time.  And it's not as if any of these games are going to disappear.  Once a game is released, it exists pretty much forever in one form or another.  I'm still getting around to PC titles that are ten years old or more, games that slipped through the cracks or that I want to revisit.  Thank god for GoG!


So I bide my time and remind myself that just because I don't buy the flavor of the week the day it comes out doesn't mean I'll never get to play it.  Hopefully no one will buy it and it will hit the bargain bin next month...

Before I close out this article, I want to touch on what seems to be an odd phenomenon to me.  I have a subscription to Xbox Live, and have for many years.  But I rarely use it, and this leads to some bizarre feelings of guilt.  That's right, I sometimes feel guilty for not playing video games!  So I brow-beat myself into playing a game online that I'm not really interested in playing online.  "If I don't play the multi-player now, the player base will move on in a couple of months," I tell myself.  Or "I'm wasting my $60 a year by not utilizing the online features of this game!"

What the eff is wrong with me?  Shouldn't I be able to play the games I want, the way that I want to play them?  Why won't I just let my Live subscription expire?  Does anyone else experience this?

I'm sure that I'm exactly where Microsoft wants me: paying them for a service and bandwidth that I rarely have the motivation to use.

That's all for today, so until next time... Game On!