Topic: I am a two year old gamer

[Stogi]

Well let's just say it's very unlikely for me to buy a game that isn't a couple years old. (I gotta have my Fifa afterall)


I realized it with Skyward Sword. I was so hyped for that game, but then I just forgot about it. Life goes on.

Two years later, blankly perusing craigslist, I found it for 5 bucks along with several other games as cheap or cheaper. It was very easy to buy. I played it and I loved it and then I didn't care to play anything else.

In other words, my buying full priced or even half priced games are done. I just don't see myself doing it anymore despite how good a game is. Gaming has taken a backseat in my life except for the few times I get to play some form of drinking game involving a 64 or Fifa.


The upside is that if I do get the itch to play something, all the games I've skipped are right there waiting for me. Even the multiplayer games have their following online so I'm never without the online community either. Hell I still break out the first Modern Warfare (I still think it's the best) and there's plenty of assholes waiting to be shot.


Maybe when things calm down, I'll take more time playing games but as it is right now, I'm a two year old gamer.

[BlackNMild2k1]

I should be too, but I'm more of a Day 1 collector, with intentions to play, but never actually get around to it until several week/months later and by then, I only play for a few hours and never pick it up again, because it's already lost it's appeal to me gamer.

Whooo that's a mouthful. probably wouldn't fit in the title of my own thread either, so i'll just leave it in yours

[Khushrenada]

Welcome to the club man. It started in the Gamecube days when I'd see games like Super Mario Sunshine that I bought at full price day selling for $10.00 a few years later because it was a player's select title and bemoaned how I could have bought it cheaper. Plus, I started having more cash to buy games so I'd go to EB games a lot and with their edge card offering another 10% off used games, I started buying used titles at saving more money. Then, I discovered Kijiji and could find people selling their used games at fantastically low prices. When I saw people selling their Wii's with a stack of good first party games for $100 dollars or around that price, it made me wonder if I shouldn't just start skipping a generation and then pick everything up for it at the end when people can longer get top dollar for it and just get it all cheap and play it through while the next generation happens.

Even better, a grocery store chain here in Canada called Superstore also has a gas station. So when I fill up with gas, I'll get a $2.00 off coupon to use in the store that will expire in a couple months. Well, in a couple months time of filling up my car, I'll have a bunch of these coupons and then use them all up on a game purchase. Just a couple weeks ago, I went in to use them up at the store happened to be having a sale on Pikmin 3 so that it was only $39.99. Using those coupons, I got it brand new for $23.00. Cha-ching! I'll take that. Already, I see the price of Batman: Arkham Origins has dropped $10.00. Soon, I expect it to sell at places for $19.99 much like the Wii version of Arkham City eventually did.

Once you realize that waiting it out on a game means you can save so much money and yet you still get to play it and it is the same whether you play it now or 1, 2, 10 years later, then it is incredibly hard to ever go back to buying a game full priced. You start to open your eyes to all the ways you work out deals even or watch for price drops. Even with these forums and the amazing deals threads, I've been able to pick up games on the cheap and that's when I'll finally get a game.

There is still a rare exception. Xenoblade, for instance, I wasn't able to get at a low cost because of the scarcity of supply and the retailers who carried it. But it is sitting on the shelf still sealed since I've had no time to play it and because of that, it's price on the online market such as Ebay would allow me to easily make back that money and more so buying it full price almost feels like I got it at a great deal.

It has gotten so bad that I've bought a game for $15.00 dollars that was once $35 dollars at least and then later I see it selling for $7.00 dollars and lament that I bought it too soon and could have gotten a better deal for it. So, even if I never do play all the games I bought, at least I can rest easy knowing that it didn't cost me too much.

[Stogi]

You know when it comes to non-Nintendo games, getting a PSPlus account has been vital to this strategy as I don't even have to look anywhere else for something to play. I've been completely content with downloading free-ish year old games from time to time.

I've also thought about skipping generations but since generation length is on the rise, I feel it could backfire. So I tend to wait for a bundle or limited edition before I buy. The values there in old games after a while as the library would have been built up by then.

But there's another factor that proved negative to simply waiting a generation and that's old games also have that nostalgia factor where used copies become rare and thus more expensive. So there is a bit of a gap between simply old and rare.

Plus there's hacks. As new consoles become more sophisticated, I feel like hacks will increasingly become relevant and owning an old version of a console is vital. I for one forgot how closed a PS3 could be after simply trying to copy a movie file to a friends PS3, not to mention being unable to plug a smartphone into it to simply charge.

Speaking of which, and I'm just rambling now. Have you seen the resale value for a hacked system? It's at least 3 times the value of a regular used system. That could definitely prove useful when deciding whether to purchase a new generations of systems.

But lastly, and I know this post is all over the place but deep down I think my reason to ignore new and pursue old has less to do with money than convenience. I simply enjoy forgetting or ignoring a new game only for it to grab my attention years later in a very convenient form.

[Stratos]

I'm noticing a similar behavior. Though I still like to buy new, I buy long after launch typically when the prices have gone down significantly. Unless I really want the game at launch I will not pay $60 for a game. I don't even like paying $40-50.


I may have stated this elsewhere, but I treat Amazon like a stock market of sorts. I have all the games that interest me on wish lists and I check it most every day. I watch the price fluctuations. When it gets low enough I snap up a copy. I also try to get a feel for the long-term value of a game. If I see that it may become a collector's item I will snap up a copy when it gets to the lowest price I think it will reach before becoming scarce.


I don't end up getting around to playing many of them right away because of my heavy work schedule, but I like to collect them. Save them for a rainy day or when life settles down a bit more. I view them as an investment in fun for later. And I buy games on a limited budget so it is not like this is a large part of my world. I also hope to explore them with my children some day when I have some. So a number of these are still wrapped waiting to be experienced. But I don't regret buying most of them (maybe some I bought at too high of a price). I'll get to them eventually and they won't be any less fun then than they are now.