Post Insomnia Report

I've been avoiding this thread, and I think one guess can why... :)
First off, my apologies for not being a better host and supporting those in need of crisis intervention during Insomnia aka the great assault against willpower. In fact, I could have needed help myself but I -thought- I had a handle on myself when in reality I'm just as susceptible as anyone to the temptations, otherwise making a thread like this would be like a teetotaler starting a AA group or a bald person opening a hair studio.

Over the last couple weeks, I was improving in my resolve. Not by hiding from temptations, on the contrary I exposed myself to every sale here on GOG and also on Steam and Humble and I was able to calmly resist everything without my toes twitching. There were a couple close calls where I almost caved in but I was able to successfully resist all of the following:

1.) Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds (the only game on my wishlist that incessantly tempts me even at full price)
2.) Sokobond (so tempting, a relaxing puzzle game just what I'd like at this very moment, argh)
3.) Bastion (not my type of game usually but this looks ever so sweet, super tempting)
4.) Majesty Gold (simply can't believe I missed this game back in the day, must get my hands on this)
5.) Toonstruck (only had the demo back in the day, it's a classic adventure so I must have it eventually)
6.) Din's Curse (I'm curious about this game, didn't like DROX Operative that much but this interests me)
7.) Pier Solar and the Great Architects (looks very nice, been a while since I played a JRPG that wasn't old)
8.) F.E.A.R.Platinum (had this on my radar for years, plus it's been a while since I've played any modern FPS)
9.) Hitman Blood Money (deep sale on Steam)
10.) Lumino City (managed to resist because my computer might not run this properly, also I can't afford an extra gift code which I would have to buy according to my rules)
11.) Vangers (rather original and obscure game, I remember playing the demo back in the day but never had the full version)
12.) DROD Bundle (wow what an amazing offer, I've had this on my wishlist and I would immediately buy this if I didn't have the rule that I must buy an extra copy for a giveaway, $10 I could probably spare but not $20)

How did I manage to resist all these great offers? Well, sadly it wasn't so much that I utilized the light side of the Force, I used the Dark side instead. My main weapon against sales are jaded feelings and apathy. Apathy is bad. Depression can kill, apathy on the other hand is potentially worse because it means you're dead already. It's effective for resisting temptations because you can tell yourself "meh, I won't enjoy this anyway, I don't enjoy anything and have no energy anyways so why bother" -> works surprisingly well but obviously not a permanent solution and not a good strategy, for anyone in any situation. Apathy is dangerous because it does more harm on the long run than it preserves you from harm on the short run.

There was one game in the Insomnia sale that I saw not once, not twice, but thrice. And the number of times I saw it was three. The first time I resisted with ease, the second time I started to falter and the third time I spake woe is me and I failed and bought it, plus a gift copy of course. Which I will soon give away, however I first want to play it so that I will know what the game is like and therefor will be better able to pick a deserving winner.

I will not yet disclose which game it was that broke the camel's neck.

PS: Replies to the many interesting posts will come in time, I don't have enough energy to address everything but as I pointed out earlier, lots of good discussions going on among you people!

If you're talking about game bundles, that certainly falls under games buying, so you're in the right place. If you're talking about bundles in general, we agreed earlier than any content buying is fair game, so you're also in the right place. So welcome.

And stop buying those bundles!
If you're playing it, that's okay. A game played is a game not bought for nothing. Sure it might come at the expense of another game in the backlog, but it's still much better than just adding to the backlog directly.

Thanks for the helpful suggestion.

A lot of the games I have on Steam are ones bought in bundles, many of which may be fairly sub-standard filler games or ones that I am probably not interested in or ones that are very similar to others I already have. If they weren't there, I wouldn't miss them. However, I do feel like I need to give them a try because 'you never know', they might actually be great.

What I have done with my Steam Library to make it look a bit less daunting is create a couple of categories called COMPLETED and RETIRED and add those respective games to the categories, then hide them all. (It's great you can add games to multiple categories and hide them now)

On my GOG library, I 'hide' the games I have completed or have tried and disliked, and also the ones I already have on Steam. That's reduced it to 34 games from 97, all of which I definitely want to play. GOG is not the problem really, as all the games I've bought have been individual purchases I've usually thought long and hard about. Though early on I did buy that mega D&D RPG bundle on a whim when it was cheap and have as yet to play a single one of them!

Recently I made a definitive list of all the games I have in my main Steam account that I REALLY REALLY want to play and it was about 50 games. The sad thing is I also have about a dozen of those on my other Steam account too. You know things are bad when you have two accounts containing the same games! (Well, three if you include those I also have on GOG!)

To be honest, if I lost both Steam accounts, I'd have enough in my GOG account and on PS3 to keep me busy for ages. Plenty of games in my library I'd love to replay too, and several unpurchased or unreleased games on my wishlist too. The trouble is some of my fave PC games are Steam only (Skyrim, Civ V, Half-Life 2, etc) and I like the way Steam records gameplay times - and have even got sucked into the whole achievements and trading cards and badges nonsense.

Perhaps what I'll do is play the games on that definitive list that I don't have elsewhere, and then think about it all again when I've done that... and try not to buy any more games in the meantime!

I've got another suggestion that might or might not help depending on the person... If you like RPGs and haven't already played it, wait for Skyrim to go on mega sale and grab a copy and start playing it. As long as you don't mind getting hopelessly addicted to a game and watching weeks of your life vanish, it will keep you from even looking at your web browser for a long time let alone a sale page. If you don't like RPGs that might not work though. Also having game-playing addiction problems, Skyrim would be a bad idea so don't do that. :) Sure is a good way to blackout for a month or two though. :)

Been there, done that, got the chainmail T-shirt. Over 200 hours and counting. Unfortunately probably every 5th game I buy is an RPG or derivative thereof, so it doesn't help get rid of my backlog.

The other downside with Skyrim is that its a Steam exclusive on PC, so if you haven't got Steam already, you'll soon be sucked into sales and backlog HELL ;)

I'm 380 hours in on Skyrim in about 6 weeks here, then finally took a break now for about 2.5 weeks without giving in to temptation. :)

380 hours in 6 weeks? Dedication! I actually played it over a period of 2.5 years, across 2 different systems... I started on PS3 but after about 30 hours play got fed up of the slow load times and sub-standard graphics, so got it for PC and managed to transfer my save over. But then I kept getting sidetracked by other stuff and it was slow going.

FinalIy, about this time last year, I called it a day on my ridiculously god-like character after completing the main quest, Dragonborn, most city quests, all of the Thieves Guild and the Stormcloack faction. But I fire it up now and then for a short half-hearted play with a new character - a simple Bosmer hunter who keeps getting his arse kicked. To be honest, I'm mostly just waiting for Skywind to be finished, so I can replay Morrowind in a more modern stylee.

I do love Skyrim, but there are so many others like it that I want to replay too - Gothic 3, Risen, Two Worlds, Divinity 2 and both Witchers of course, and I have Witcher 3 on pre-order too. But I also have a couple of dozen other RPGs I haven't played once!

I made it through the sale!

Unfortunately I bought half a PS3 and Dragon's Dogma, so it's not really a success.

Grand total of dollars I've been using are staggering.

Four years ago I didn't even think about buying legitimate copy of games. Now different.

Back in the day, game copies were ridiculously expensive, even on Steam, prior to bundles era. Mind you, I am not American or working in America or working on American companies and thus I'm not paid in USD. Paying in USD means we have to pay with currency exchange rate. Being in Asia, where currencies are incredibly weak against USD, it's somewhat a big burden. So yeah, it was a big issue, not to mention I personally had a much lower paying job.

Now fast forward to today, I have a much better paying job. Not THAT high, but much better. Added with the fact that we have game bundles right and left (hello Humble, Indiegala, Bundlestars and Groupees - my main sources of game copies), I've been raking in games at incredible rate, most notably on Steam. On Steam alone I've amassed 1600+ games, on Origins 30 or so, on uPlay 5 or so, on GOG 30 or so. Very staggering. And yes, I continue paying minimal to 75% off, no more 50% or full price. Thanks to cheaper and cheaper digital purchases and also that now Steam supports my region by offering cheaper regional pricing and in Rupiah, it's more than easy to buy new games even those that I don't play! That's just.... wow... consumerism at its finest.

Sooooooo with that in mind, I'm joining the group. I have to confess, though, I just bought Indie Gala Monday 50. :(

GULP! You do realise that's one third of their ENTIRE catalogue? I only have a quarter of what you have on Steam and it does my head in...

Dragonborn is awesomely good - the best expansion I've played on an Elder Scrolls game. Actually, probably any game ever. It has a real Morrowind flavour to it, and the companion you get is great - he has very dry humour and is really handy in a battle.

It might be better for you to wait for another sale and get the full Legendary Edition of Skyrim rather than buy the DLCs individually - even on sale prices it usually works out cheaper.

While not addressing the OP regarding games buying addiction, here's a suggestion for a system I worked out for people like me who feel overwhelmed by the number of games they already own (and who feel like they have to play them all). This is primarily about sorting your Steam Library to make it seem less daunting, but advice could be adapted for other uses.

Firstly, I sort all the games in my Steam Library into genre categories, such as ACTION, ADVENTURE, INDIE, RPG, STRATEGY etc.

I also put all the games I have already played into two other Categories called COMPLETED and RETIRED, and hide all those games. (Note: Did you know you can now assign games to multiple categories in Steam? And select multiple games to assign to categories all at the same time using normal system multi-selection keys? Now you do!)

Now, what I've done is select the top 3 games in each category that I want to play, and download and install them all. Then I set Steam to only list the installed games. I have 10 categories, so my list is showing 30 games. That's certainly less scary to look at than 440 games!

I set games I'm currently playing to 'Favourites' so they appear at the top of the list. I'll limit myself to having 3 games on the go at a time, from different categories - so I might be flitting between an action game, an RPG and a strategy game. Of course, you might have a better attention span than me and only play one game at a time ;)

Then when I've finished a game, I'll uninstall it, add it to the COMPLETED or RETIRED category and hide it.

BUT, I won't replace it until I've finished all the other games in the same category. Or maybe even all the other games I have installed. This will hopefully give a feeling of progress and achievement at clearing my backlog.

Okay, I hope this advice helps you deal with the scariness of your ever-expanding digital-download game collection without resorting to drastic measures like I was considering such as giving accounts away or (shock horror!) giving up gaming entirely!

To address the original purpose of this thread... whilst I'm using this system and still have a backlog I'm not going to be buying any more games whatsoever - even if a game I want comes up on a sale or whatever, or a new game I'm looking forward to gets released. Chances are those games will come up in a sale again, and a new game can wait until I'm ready for it... by which time it may be cheaper or in a sale itself (or the longer-term post-release reviews might highlight that its not worth my while anyway!)

I knew about multiple categories but did not know about applying to multiple games using selection however I did complain out loud several times that you couldn't do that when I very well may have been able to and just didn't realize it. ;)

Looks like you have a good system. In my case, having moved mostly to gaming on Android, the PC backlog is of less relevance to me, which is also why it's kind of silly of me to buy more PC games (but also why it's a little easier for me now to resist buying them). I do have priority lists, in my mind and sometimes on computerised notes, but I stick mainly to the adventure and RPG genres, and my usable backlog consists of Android versions of PC games plus PC adventure games that can be played on Android (such as The Blackwell Epiphany I'm currently playing), so it's reasonably manageable.

By the way, it's unfortunate that your system only works on Steam. One of the benefits of Steam over other services, I guess.

Didn't know that. Thanks. Although the games in my main account are already sorted (into finished, adventure, RPG and the rest). I guess I could add 'retired'.

As mentioned here, I have relapsed a 2nd time. This time I managed to stay clean 26 days, the longest ever. First time was only 13 days so it looks like an improvement.
Since GOG decided to have 2 games on sale simultaneously during Insomnia, the risk of seeing something you wanted and couldn't resist was 100% larger, successful marketing trick I'd say.

On March 8, I bought Battle Worlds: Kronos and if you want a free GOG copy of the game, feel free to participate in the ongoing giveaway:

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/battle_worlds_kronos_giveaway