You have no newer games in your wishlist, or at least stuff you never played?? Aside from Gabriel Knight and Grim Fandango, I kicked off all the games I already played off my list. In the case of Gabriel Knight, I want to buy the remake to support the developer and contribute to a possible Gabriel Knight 4 that way, however the full price is clearly well above what I'm willing to pay despite all the good intentions. Thing is, there is no guarantee of Gabriel Knight 4 (and it being good if they make it) even if I threw thousands of $$ at the developer.

It's good to hear you learned from the winter sale, I learned too but the learning effect somehow didn't last :/


Welcome then, MrAlphaNumeric! Anyone in need of help is welcome here. Lots and lots of different strategies and tips outlined by all the various members here. You can also use the thread to pep talk yourself into some kind of action, or non-action in the case of shopping. It doesn't really work for me, this summer sale is my worst string of relapses since starting therapy but I'm nonetheless in much more control now than in the last big sales where I bought way more stuff and spent more money despite the fact that I am spending more on gifts now than on stuff for myself.



I still lol at the ™ thing every time. I tend to call a spade a spade so I'm having trouble with smart marketing, pretty sure I'd be less poor if I started to ™ a little more in RL.
No idea what the TBBBBoB thread is about but if it involves gifting then it can't be a bad thing.


That's how they catch you. And then you're hooked and unlock the junkie level achievement!


Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, are we :)

Tora tora tora! ...and then one gets nuked :'(
One has to be careful. Everything in moderation is key. Come back and let the group therapize you properly!


Welcome Itlodea, it doesn't sound like you're in trouble as long as you can afford it financially and feel no regrets (unless you're in the denial phase where you still feel good about it).
Seems still within reason from the sound of things and with 400 games you're surely far above average but I've seen way "worse" cases. Enjoy your games, but don't forget this group is always here if you do suddenly need help.
This is not designed to stop people from buying games but to help them gain better control of their habits and ensure that one is a happy member on the long term, and long term includes buying things again -within reason- once one has recovered from shopaholicism. Not buying anything isn't the goal per se, it's one method of shock therapy.

(and currently not working in my case and same with many other members)


We are h4r4 for you! Spill the b4ans, we're all on the same ocean - just sinking at different speeds.


Perhaps you'd enjoy Halfway, it sounds just like what you might like! It's nowhere as aggravating as TFTD. I currently don't have the stomach for TFTD either, just no thanks. Halfway is a fresh breeze and a wonderfully causal game in comparison. Still puts up decent resistance on hard mode though so it's a full recommendation from me for burnt out XCOM fans of ye olden days who want something more simple and fun.

I can't resist, it's the first page I check every day.
You can't tell me to simply not look at the cake, I know the cake is there. Always there!

Methinks not counting Kickstarter pledges is slightly cheating but I'm still in awe of such self-control. You seem to like games more than I do currently and yet I find it harder to resist buying them. Imbalance in the Force :/
I haven't played anything for two weeks now, hoping to get around to playing Sokobond or something short-session compatible like that from my newest trespasses.

Yeah right, that's like saying you'll do the studying after finals. No can do! The future is now.

But honestly, I'm thinking the exact same thing - knowing that I'm 100% BSing myself and I think you know it, too.

Don't despair, I've finally reduced both my Steam and GOG wishlists, drastically so and that's a good start. Started my wiping most of the lengthy RPGs and strategy games off my lists because even though I like that stuff I have no energy for it so it just translates to unplayed backlog (Hearts of Iron III is my current best example, it's sitting around and I have no motivation to dive into it at present).
Keep purging the wishlist but don't overdo it, keep some things on it that you know you'll immediately install even if they were for free. I reduced my GOG list from 76 titles to 15, it grew to 16 today thanks to Amikrog but overall the list got a lot smaller for sure.
I found it hard to remove games like Serpent in the Staglands etc from my list but I asked myself, do I really really wantto play that right now? If not, then off the list it goes.

My fingers are also moving on their own, hence my comparison to Out of Body experiences above, wasn't a joke. I rarely joke actually. My boss just told me the other day that he thinks I'm kinda serious and I seriously think he's right to some degree.

Good question. :-) Well, I think I'll reach it, not today though but certainly before the end of the week (if GOG continues discounting wishlisted stuff of mine!). According to the attachement, as of the time of this post I spent $36.66 from the start of the sale (those last 3 digits of the amount though...brr!), so I'm rather close, but still not as close as you. Anyways, I'll see how this goes and if I'll need to get stuff I haven't got till now just to reach the $50 mark. At least, after reaching that mark, I won't have more incentive to spend so I'll probably cut down on purchasing stuff afterwards.
As for my interest in Xenonauts, funny thing is I haven't even played the original X-COM games, but the screenshots in the game's page appeal to me and this game seemed overall to me as interesting to get. :-)

edit-an update-After the Wolf Among Us was released, I got that too (had a decent discount and I was interested in its premise too), and I'm now closer to getting Xenonauts. The temptation to get titles I didn't get before is becoming stronger...

I hardly play on the PC, which helps. Most of what I bought was the base level Android bundles at Humble. Even with mobile games I'm holding on buying because I don't want to buy stuff I'm pretty sure I won't play. Really, it's down to resisting the temptation to build a collection (that is, building it further than just getting free stuff does). Doesn't always work, but it mostly does.

I'm counting Kickstarter differently, because it fits a different thought pattern. I rarely pledge for a game copy, I mostly just support projects I like at the $1 level. Last month the most I paid to a project was $3 for Little Free Library Big Book Access Campaign. I do have game level pledges for Yooka-Laylee and The Bards Tale IV.

Edit: My five year old asked me the other day for "more games on the TV", which is likely to tempt me to buy more kid friendly PC games if I find them.

DAY1:
"Xenonauts? Nice, but luckly I'll never spend 50$ in this promo lol."
DAY7
*sadly watches his wallet's grave*

The Dark Side of the Force beckons you to unlock Xenonauts. You're almost there.

*in Palpatine voice* Do it!

:)

Just when I have a nice bump in my bank account working my ass off last month almost daily overtime, its mostly gone.

I check my games own before this sales and after and know I am in chronic condition.

Should have refrain from checking GoG until I have my extra cash locked in a Fix deposit or something.

Somehow I managed to resist the urge to buy a game for the first week of this summer sale. However, the temptation was too great to overcome, and I'm now at 3 games and counting. If this sale had lasted but one week, I would have been in the clear. But alas, the relentless onslaught of tremendous deals has broken my financial trepidation and left me withering under the constant barrage of sparkly explosions from the dreaded video game artillery.

Well, I say upon thee what I said to blotunga who made the same claim, if you can't stop right now then you're only postponing the therapy to a later time. Not buying anything when there's no big sale is much easier, if one could not buy things during a big sale then that would be great self control!
Resisting under temptation is the true test, but hey let's give each other the benefit of the doubt, maybe we can indeed take a break after this sale. I certianly intend to, my goal is to beat my own record of 26 days of no game purchasing. I reached that number 3 times and never made it beyond it. Seems to be my magic limit and I plan to break it by holding out longer. I would have held if this summer sale hadn't intercepted my clean streak but as I just pointed out, that can't serve as an excuse.

I'm not getting any XCOM vibes off this Xenonauts thing, seems soulless to me but I could be wrong so I'm still aiming to get it, or maybe that's another excuse just so I can spend more and contunie to serial relapse. Well, only one more game and I'm there.

Aww, that's cute! My parents were anti-TV and anti-video games (on any platform). I became a PC gamer partly due to the fact that I wasn't allowed to buy a console or even a Gameboy even with my own money.PC was ideal for covert gaming on dad's office PC :)
In hindsight, I'm grateful to my parents and I think if I ever had kids I'd not give them any games or any TV and let them play with physical toys (LEGO ftw) and run around outside instead, same as my own early childhood. But I wouldn't forbid it either, that only makes it more interesting and is counter productive.


Truer word never have been spoken.

:'D


I'm only 5 bucks away from the $50 mark so one more $4.99 game from my wishlist and I'm there. Problem is, I don't know which game to get! My candidates are: Door Kickers, The Banner Saga, Pilot Brothers and Toonstruck. All games I want to an equal degree. Had I not spent so much on gift codes (decidedly more than half of my expenses here), I would have been able to pick up all four games. Maybe my altruism penalty system doesn not work after all, I'm always questioning it :/

At present, I can only afford to pick up one of those 4 games and maybe that's not a bad thing, that will force me to make a decision. Not easy at all. I'm leaning towards The Banner Saga but Pilot Brothers looks awfully tempting as well. Oh, life and its choices!


Hmm, I thought about that but can't do it, also I think that's just avoidance tactics which don't truly solve the problem, only postponing the inevitable. We must face our demons and strike upon them with great resistance!


Only 3 games? Yoda level self-control, I am amazed! But be careful of the "ah well now that I relapsed it doesn't matter anyway" phenomenon, that's what happened to me. I broke my clean streak with Alcatraz 1952 and thought, damn now I have to start all over, might as well chain a couple failures together to contain the damage. Not good thinking on my part but that's what went down.

I was briefly tempted to pick up Wasteland 2 after it showed back up in the flash sales since I'm getting a new laptop soon, but I thought maybe I should wait for a better discount. And it's a really big download anyway...

EDIT: It can just stay on my wishlist for the time being

I know. Tell me about it. It's just there a few games in the Steam account I'm getting rid of that I do want to play, but not yet - Sam & Max series was one of them. The Steam account has a LOT of games I'll never play - many of which were in big bundles that I bought for just a few games.

What will really fry your noodle though is that I actually have ANOTHER Steam account... I set it up just for software apps I wanted (game dev, 3D modelling, music production etc) to keep it seperate from my gaming account, but also now have 30 games on that, a few of which I already have on my other account (though bought them all in dirt cheap sales as they included DLC I didn't have)

I really do have a problem, don't I?

I have bought 0 games. And that Descent/Freespace pack makes me drool all over the place. But I will resist. I must resist.

That said, I've been getting pricing glitches and the front page showed Pillars was 60% off. I almost lost control at that point. :)

I have resisted so far too! I only got the free game offered today and another game from a trade. But so many great deals/packs and even glitches! try to break my resistance. I must resist no matter what! :)

How do you guys do it? What sorcery, what's the trick? Please do share!

Here's my final assessment, and OP has been accordingly updated - giveaways will follow:

My parents had no problem with video games, although it wasn't a big problem in general back when I was a kid. As a teenager it was also kind of a social hobby, going to friends who had gaming hardware (Spectrum, C64) and playing at their house. I was also always into programming (and a bit of art on the Amiga), so the home computers weren't just for gaming.

It's kind of different now. Gaming devices are everywhere from an early age. Even out babysitter lets the kids play on her smartphone. My kids play on my old tablet, and we have a Wii, Xbox 360 and HTPC hooked to the TV. That said, the consoles and HTPC are hardly used for gaming, only the tablet gets regular use.

But really, games take a small percentage of their waking hours, although that might change when they grow up. It's hard to tell at this point. Frankly I'd prefer them to game over watching TV, which they do quite a bit. But they still get to play both board games, construction games and outside. I think that it's more important to get your kids to make friends and be with their friends, and to encourage their interests and give them new interests to explore, rather than to prevent them from doing certain things.
So just file them under a "not going to play" category and forget about them. Steam categories are good for this kind of thing.

The important first step is to recognise you have a problem. :)