As a further slimming down of hobbies (in a attempt to save money), I’ve decided to take a deeper look at my largest “hobby”; which is console and PC gaming. To provide further context, when I have life issues going on and am having a bad day; I can normally load up a game and escape into it’s content until I get pulled away to do something else.
Over the years, I’ve spent a considerable amount of money on not only games; but game consoles and parts for my PC in it’s various iterations; to which the amount I’ve spent over the course of my working life would easily amount to the cost of a new car. When a new gaming console is announced, my wife shakes her head because she knows at some point I’ll ask to buy it.
So what do you do when presented with the unique situation of wanting to be able to play Game X with friends; yet want to save money? Amongst one group of friends, I’m the one most likely to buy multiple copies of a single game.
Before our diagnosis, I would get chewed on a frequent basis out over spending too much money on games; and we would sometimes get into some pretty sticky situations over this. Now, I normally will buy one game at the beginning of the month; and only buying more than one after everything is taken care of and we have spare money at the end of the month. (Side note: I suffer from mental health issues, which can sometimes manifest in episodes of mania; which leads to the excessive spending).
It also helps that I have largely reduced the amount of systems that I will buy for, from four to two. It also largely depends on the genre of game, for example, the first person shooter genre; I’ll typically buy those on PC to play because I have a decent PC to use; and the user experience will generally be better. Everything else, I’ll typically buy for console; prioritizing Nintendo consoles.
Now about the sheer amount of games that are coming out on a monthly basis …