“Never Gonna Play It.”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 26, 2012

I spent less money this year on the annual holiday PC game portal sales than usual. Maybe it’s premature to say that, as some portals are still doing sales until the beginning of next year, but so far the year-end sales haven’t hurt my wallet as much as the past.

This wasn’t really a factor of the economy or anything. I’m just getting to the point that – between numerous sales and bundle deals and decades of building a gaming library, plus the demands of being an indie game developer on top of having an often time-intensive Day Job – I’ve hit something of a saturation point. While there may be a screaming deal on Titan Quest, I realized that I’m just never gonna get around to playing it.

It’s painful for me to recognize this. In spite of the passage of a couple of decades, I don’t feel that far removed from being the poor, starving college student with more time than money who could spend the better part of a Saturday delving through the depths of the Temple of Darkmoon or Castle Wolfenstein, or running missions across the galaxy in Frontier: Elite 2. Back then games were expensive, and time seemed… well, a lot more disposable.

Oh, I still devote a ton of time to playing games; I sometimes resent the Time Played counter in Steam for informing me just how many crazy hours I’ve devoted to a game, particularly one I’m supposed to be all snobbish about. “Oh, I left that one paused for several hours,” is my equivalent of saying, “I can quit anytime I want to.” But those hours are far more hard-won today than they used to be. And my backlog of games which I haven’t given a fair amount of effort to playing – even some that I’ve never even installed, usually via a bundle deal – keeps growing.

And if I’m perfectly honest with myself – I picked up a lot of games off the bargain bin in those poor starving student days that I never got around to playing very much, too.

In spite of my grousing, as I frequently say: This really is a good kind of problem to have, all things considered. And hey, my wallet definitely needed the break this holiday season!

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Califer said,

One of these days I’ll be retired. And when that day comes, I’ll have plenty of games to play.

(please please still work on whatever system I have when I get that old!)
Michael Anderson said,

Totally agree – I bought about a half-dozen games in total this year, because there are just too many unplayed games in my library. Of course, I always try to support the ‘humble bundles’ which always add a few games I don’t even install …

Yesterday I got all of those Amazon promo credit emails, and half of them expired yesterday as well! I just couldn’t be bothered at that point …
Michael Anderson said,

And … of course my backlog is increasing multi-dimensionally, as I have more and more unplayed games not just for PC, but also Mac, iOS and Android …
MalcolmM said,

I’m recently retired and I still don’t have time to clear out my Steam backlog.

So I’ve also been buying fewer games lately, not because of cost but because I won’t get a chance to play them before something more interesting comes along.

Also I’ve found that the last couple of Steam sales haven’t had as many 50+% discounts. I find it really easy to put off buying a game like XCOM when it is only 33% off on Steam. By the time I get around to playing it, the discount will probably be 75%.
Bad Sector said,

Me, on the other hand, somehow i managed to be mostly out of money (or had other more important stuff to do with my money) at the previous Steam Sales and only bought one or two games then.

Now however… somehow my Steam library doubled.

It reminds me when before the company closed for Christmas i said to my coworkers something “i don’t think i’ll buy anything, i can’t see something that interest me” and they laughed and looked at each other saying “yeah, that is what everyone says” 😛
Robert Boyd said,

You should play Titan Quest. Better than Torchlight 2 & Diablo 3 IMO.
Rampant Coyote said,

Hah! There you go, tempting me, making me question my decision.

Too many friggin’ games. Too little time.
McTeddy said,

Haha, I’m with Bad Sector. Throughout the entire year I bought something like 3 games… but steams winter sale lead me to buy 1 or 2 a day.

I’ll never PLAY them all… but at 1.99 it’s hard to say no.
Rampant Coyote said,

Hah, back in the day a halfway entertaining game in the arcade would give me about 10 minutes of play-time for that price. 🙂 So if it’s entertaining enough to be enjoyed for 20+ minutes, it’s a bargain. 🙂 At least that’s what I tell myself when I pick up yet another sub-$3 title. But there’s also part of me that remembers how the mountains of discounted game cartridges available was a harbinger of the video game crash of 1983 here in the U.S…
WhineAboutGames said,

I enjoyed Titan Quest. I never finished it though, since as I recall it very nearly set my graphics card on fire at the time (computer emergency shutdown).

I won’t buy any game on Steam that I’m not going to play immediately (well, I won’t buy any game there at all if I can help it, I own _one_ Steam title because I needed to have a paid game in the account) because I don’t feel I can trust anything DRMed to stick around for the length of time it might take for me to finally play it. I don’t feel so bad buying DS carts or GOG titles that may have a very long time to sit before they get dusted off.

Of course, as I blogged( http://whineaboutgames.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/silly-gamer-conversations.html ), I still wouldn’t buy The Witcher 2 at GOG because I have yet to play the first one.

However, you should still all rush over to our big Christmas sale before it runs out. 🙂 Buy Science Girls! Buy Loren The Amazon Princess! You know you want to!
McNutcase said,

This Steam sale, I only picked up games I expected to play. Did well at that, apart from, well, one of them… yes, I played it. Put a good hour in, over a couple of sessions, and then when I went back after a break it had quietly thrown away about a quarter hour of getting things done. The save system, to be brutally honest, didn’t save my progress. I wound up feeling betrayed, and have asked for my money back because had I known it would do that, I wouldn’t have bought it.
BigFish said,

Titan Quest was a fun game. I played through twice with different characters and enjoyed it quite a bit. unfortunately, I never had time to run each character through multiple times to open up the advanced skills.

Jay, I thought you mentioned the THQ humble bundle recently. That bundle includes Titan Quest if you did pick it up. Also, $25 gets you a huge selection of THQ games on steam with the publishers bundle. I think Darksiders 2 is $19 alone and that is included.