Yay, I did find something for Blaugust Reborn’s “Topic Brainstorming Week” because it’s something I’d love to know if people are willing to talk about it.
How do you choose which games to get? Are you grabbing anything that comes out and looks interesting? At launch or at the first sale? Do you preorder? Do you buy Humble Bundles and then never play them? Do you gravitate towards or away from F2P titles? Or do you not care and decide case by case for these?
I think I’m not part of the majority of people who spend a decent chunk of their time playing games: I have just shy of 100 games on Steam, and as you can see in my yearly gaming expense reports I don’t buy many games, and when I buy one and only play it for a few hours I’m kinda let down. That’s why I’m usually debating with myself for months whether to get a game or not. Impulse buys aren’t really my thing.
Friends have told me I’m kinda tightfisted, but in reality I’d much rather gift a game for a few bucks to someone when I know they will play it than buy a cheaper one on sale for myself if I’m not sure I’ll play it. Or even worse, if I love the art style or something but know I will stop after a few hours. And no, I also don’t usually buy and try to evaluate it in 2 hours to return it…
PS: Blaugust has started and this is my fourth post.
I think the answer to all of the above is “yes.” My steam library says I have 193 games. Some of that is intentional, some of it is Humble Bloat. Last time I ran the stats I had played less than half of them. Around 40ish percent I think.
I tend toward sale/bundle buying though. I don’t really do the preorder thing. I’ve preordered two games in the last five years and I strongly disliked one of them.
Last time I looked somewhere between a third and a half of my money spent on steam was gift purcahses.
I tend to only buy games that get highly rated by people or sites I trust. I don’t often buy them on release, mainly because there is always a backlog (that will never get played!). Sometimes I believe the hype and jump in on release – Destiny 2 springs to mind, and that was a mistake.
The only game on the horizon where I think I’ll buy immediately is Red Dead Redemption 2, otherwise it’s mainly cherry picking back catalogue Steam and GoG sales, or working through the queue.
I never buy second hand if I can help it, as I like supporting the developers.
Yeah I only buy second hand console games for SNES and Game Boy where there’s not really any stock left after 25 years 😉 Might have bought one or two XBox 360 games at GameStop, but I’m not even sure – I don’t own a lot of 360 games and I don’t really play them often.