Epic Default Productions

For those who didn’t read my 2008 awards, I made a new year’s resolution last year to have a $0 gaming budget. That started out meaning that I would sell my Wii and old games and use that money to buy any new games. But after July, it meant buying absolutely NO new games for the rest of the year.

How did it turn out? Well my wallet was happy.  I’m not sure on the exact amount, but I was able to come out slightly ahead money wise in the world of gaming, and I was able to take a good long look at all of the games that I currently own and what they really mean.

And what they mean to me now is a money sink. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy playing games. I always have and I always will. But look at GameStop for my example. That game that I paid $50 (now $60 and still climbing) for when it was brand new one year ago can be bought for half that if not less.

And another thing I noticed was that most of the games that I paid so much for were played once and then hidden away in some keepsake box. The reasoning behind this to me has now become unclear. Why am I keeping all of these games and am I the only one?

I decided to check this out with some games from my collection. First off, most of the older PC games were almost unplayable due to the fact that they were not able to handle widescreen resolutions. (Can you even buy a 4:3 monitor anymore?) Luckily, some people out there offer some solutions.

The consoles are slightly better. The games are still able to be played. But as soon as you reach multiplayer, you are a lone tree in a very large desert. It takes a mega-blockbuster like Halo or a simple and fun game to play like Uno in order to find crowds months after a game has come out. Now most people would have no problem with nobody to play against… that is unless the game has a large chunk of its achievement points based on the multiplayer. And you’ve got a thing about achievement points.

So, in my final hundred words, what am I trying to get at? It is that most gamers are only about the bleeding edge. And being on the bleeding edge is always costly. How much was the cost of the iPhone 3 months after its release? And myself, I’m starting to get sick of the bleeding edge.

There are so many good games that I already own. So since times are hard and I’m feeling guilty of the whole idea of play once and done, I have decided to continue my new year’s resolution. This year, I’m not going to buy any new games this year until I’m done playing all the games I already own.

Let’s see how long this lasts.