PixlBit

I feel like I should steal your plan xD

 Seems great, hopefully it works. I should reign in my gametime too. Not necessarily from a money standpoint but from a time standpoint. I feel guilty sometimes, like I could be doing so much more but instead mostly work, play games, and occasionally hang out with friends/spend time with the gf. 

 It's a great passtime, but it is expensive (especially in aus) and a huge timesink. I mean two of the main ways we dictate the quality of a game is how many hours it packs in and how addictive it is. I can't be the only person who doesn't find that to be a good sign.

Yea, I constantly wonder at the people who tackle a Fallout or Elder Scrolls game, or those MMO players. A guy on Playstation's blogcast says he's logged 4000 hours in Final Fantasy XIV. Wow. How does he manage to have time for anything else? 

I'm probably about a 20 hour a week player, which I think is not excessive, but I'm trying to imagine other things to do on the weekend, and if the opportunity arrises, do them. I already feel, after I just bought Doom for $2 with some trades and a Gamestop one-day special, that I'm starting to focus on just one game at a time. I like that feeling. It frees my mind up and makes me a little less obsessed with trying to find the next game to buy. 

I need this plan but as Blake mentioned it's the timesink thing especially for a guy who plays RPGs almost exclusively. I've sunk 122 hours into DQ VII and I'm not finished yet.

I keep saying "I'll play a short game next" and then I don't. :)

I'm continually amazed at how many RPGs you get through and the amount of time that goes into some of them 

My plan before this was to play all the short games first. That was fun for a while, but I kept adding more games to the list. Also, I feel like I'm playing a lot of older games and not getting to the new ones. I'm still not sure what to do about the older stuff and my backlog. Maybe I'll trade it all. . . Not!

I need to do the opposite - I need to play more games.  I'm so focused on writing and stuff I have a hard time putting it down and just.. relaxing. I wish I could play more games, cause I feel like I'm missing out on some great experiences, but it's just hard for me to change my focus. 

Writing's good. I keep trying to get inspired but I never seem to catch fire. Actually, it's more of an issue of whether I think I could make a run at a career or not. Writing's a lot of hard work. It's a commitment. 

it is a commitment, and it is a lot of hard work. I just don't know any other way to live. 

That's cool. I find it always difficulty to get over that first resistance. I took up blogging to help with that. I should do more, but working 40 hours a week really changes things. You kind of want to get away from working on anything after that. I don't know how people do serious projects along side a full time job. It's crazy. 

it all depends on how dedicated you are.  My sister for instance works ten hours a day at a hospital and writes in her car at lunch.  Now SHE is hardcore.  

Seems that's the kind of thing you have to do in this society. My friend Andrew went all the way to Mexico to live cheaply so he could write all day. I'm kind of envious of him at the moment. 

that's pretty cool man.  I respect that a lot.  

Seems pretty ambitious and I wish you the best of luck. I've kept my game buying pretty low for a couple of months now, though we've started to pick up a few things as the holidays approach. My wife is playing Dishonored 2 as I write this, for instance, and we're both getting the new Pokemon next week.

I'm already being tempted with the news that Titanfall 2 isn't doing well and is already going for $35 in some places. Will it never end?

I just look at my backlog of unplayed games and ask myself if I need to add another game to Mt Backlog. That usually does the trick. I've also been making myself finish one that I've abandoned and one that I haven't touched before I allow myself to buy a new game. Of course that doesn't stop me from grabbing the free titles from Games With Gold. I rationalize that one with "but they're free!". Although, many of them don't interest me, so I don't bother.

There's always something more to add to the backlog. But I guess I'll ignore that for the time being and focus on new things. Too many choices there, and too many temptations to buy cheap games. Five cheap games add up to one new one. Thus I haven't really saved anything. It's good you seem to have control of it all. 

My mom and step-dad taught me how to budget at an early age. Right now, the budget is tight, so I have to reduce the non-essentials, which is what new games are when I already own so many.

I'm pretty good most of the time, but I've binged a little too much this year I think. I have to change my thinking about games, hence the resolution. Gotta avoid those darn sales. You would think they would save you money, but they just get to you spend more. 

I caught on to that tactic a long time ago.

I know that tactic in other areas, like food, but with games I get stupid in my enthusiasm and can't acknowledge the trick being played on me. I think I may have a grasp on it now though. Curbing my enthusiasm for this stuff enough to be sensible is not easy. 

The biggest thing that helps me with that is the lack of space I have on my hard drives. I have to really, really want something bad enough to give it much coveted space.