Managed not to cave in during the summer sale finale.

Last purchase on GOG was June 12. (If you count gift codes)
Last purchase for myself was June 7.
The only game I unlocked was SimCity 2000 SE. (still not taken)

So yeah, didn't do as bad as I could have. ;)

I can stop for a while now :(

:O

More than twice as long as my personal record, Sasuke-sama!

Fair enough, but I think it depends on the kid's nature and the kind of activity. I very much preferred to play LEGO (and indoor stuff in general) by myself because whenever I played with friends, they all lacked focus and patience and it wasn't possible to construct advanced things with them. Playing stories worked alright but construction, no dice. For that I could only rely on my brother who was 2 years older, very patient and technically more sophisticated than myself. He was the only person I liked to play LEGO with and we collaborated very well with making cities, multi-deck submarines and whatnot.


Perfectly worded, I agree with every single word here.

My parents did do exactly that so I'm glad they never forced me to partake in anything, they just paved the way when I showed interest and I brought my own motivation and persistence into things. Unless it was video games in which case they didn't show any support and even banned it but I can't hold that against them as they supported everything else.

Most often, I would choose solitary activities like drawing for which you need no other people, although I was occasionally joined by others when I drew. The most unlikely people would be fascinated by drawing and sometimes join me and collaborate on the same sheet of paper or wall but it was something I did first and foremost for myself regardless of what others thought. It is a nice perk though when parents, relatives, friends, peers and acquaintances as well as strangers compliment you on your work, at least as a kid one tends to enjoy compliments. It's a great confidence booster when you know that everyone (at the very least silently) respects you for your skills even if you don't belong to the so called popular cool people who only get empowered by perceived value, a value given without real merit.
As a grownup, self-criticism overrules positive feedback from others, at least in self-aware people so inner motivation becomes even more important and because the vast majority of people don't have that inner drive, most quit doing creative things or other endeavors due to self consciousness (which is the negative version of aforementioned self awareness).

Another one's failures here aren't supposed to be a carte blanche for making trespasses of our own due to some kind of inverted yolo look at my poop peer pressure but in a strange way this might be one secret reason why this thread has been allowed to exist in the first place. Everywhere else, especially on Steam, this thread would likely get nuked by the shortsighted administration, not realizing that the constant mentioning of sales in this thread can result in addicts still buying more games than if they suffer in solitude and use unsound avoidance tactics (staying away from forum and homepage, deleting all their games in a panic attack etc)

The point of this thread is to slowly phase out of addiction into normalized slower and controlled purchasing habits that are better for both the customer as well as the store because it means more genuinely happy customers that buy at a more predictable and consistent rate and enjoy what they buy rather than going crazy buying a couple dozen games at once and then disappearing and coming back half a year later to go crazy again and then suddenly burning out and leaving for good due to feeling overwhelmed. One can observe the same at gyms: People coming in to train like crazy and then they suddenly leave, whereas people who have a more consistent steady approach generally stay members for much longer and are likely to be happier, too.

One could ague that an online gaming store doesn't need long term happy customers because for every sucker who runs into the store and quickly buys a lot and then suddenly leaves due to unhappiness resulting from being overwhelmed by backlog or lack of non-sarcastic response to inane friend request threads, there is a new sucker to replace him/her. Rinse and repeat in an endless ocean of suckers despite heavy industrial overfishing (summer and fall sales on Steam and GOG etc). The supply of games is endless and the supply of suckers seems to be endless, as well.

But: At a certain point, saturation -might- occur, despite the seemingly endless supply. And then the store with the most loyal long term customers will prevail - which I hope is going to be GOG. Which is where this thread comes into play, as it can turn an unhappy and disloyal* customer into a happy and loyal one. It's just a theory and tangential to my own mission objective which is to overcome compulsive game purchasing while potentially helping others at no cost.


*includes myself as I just bought 2 games from Steam that are available here - Pilot Brothers and Broken Sword 5. I went to Steam for a steeper discount because due to my extra gift code rule according to which I have to buy everything twice, I couldn't afford to buy those two games here on GOG. If I didn't have the addiction and therefor no need for self-penalties like buying gift codes, I would have been able to buy everything here. But if I would buy everything I wanted, I'd make my backlog even worse and become slightly unhappier in the process. Plus I would spend more or less the same amount of money anyway. Life sure is tricky!




That certainly helps to minimize the damage financially, though I still think it's important to very carefully vet your wishlist. Which games do you -really- want? As in which games would you instantly move to the fast lane and download (and play!) even if they were for free. I have kicked a great many games off my list, just today I added Act of War because I thought that was exactly what I wanted but then I realized that I haven't finished any of the numerous RTS games I played in recent times. I quit them fairly early, rarely making it halfway through any campaign before I get bored and lose motivation. If I even find the time to get that far, at all. Strategy games are my favorite genre but I currently can't summon the motivation to play them, so off the list they go (some rare exception aside).


Despite me talking a lot in this thread, the whole thing isn't a main problem of mine - just the main problem in regards to gaming - and it's not serious enough to seek professional help for. Why? Because as I mentioned earlier in the thread, this purchasing addiction is only a side effect of other more relevant RL issues and I guarantee that this is the case for every single person posting here. No exceptions, if you'd dig deep enough. We might be qualified but clearly not -certified- to help each other for other issues (it would only summon the redundant and ever repetitive posters chanting "get professional help yadda yadda I care about you so get off the computer and go to the white coats with their juju potions!") so by attacking things from this secondary angle one can avoid redundant non-advice.

I've managed to avoid buying any games since the first F.E.A.R. was released here, whenever that was.

Use an old browser like me, then on regular occasions you physically won't be able to buy games! :D

(Or, on particularly bad days, access the site properly! :O)

As I said before, I think charity is a very good thing, essential even. So your idea is that if I can't reduce the damage to my own finances, I might as well divert the -benefit- to others which surely makes more sense then amassing more unplayed backlog that just sits around and benefits no one, including myself. Shifting the expenses to charity still doesn't fix the purchasing addiction though, it just diverts the flow.

Anyway, regarding charity I'm probably too selfish and nihilistic to partake. When I make gifts here, it's either part of this self-therapy method or because I think someone I'm on friendly terms with would enjoy a game and I want to make them happy. And because giving feels good (according to my theory, 100% of all people are in essence selfish so I shouldn't go around calling myself selfish, that will get misunderstood. Ah well, too late :D ).

Sometimes I make giveaways because I would like to bring attention to an underappreciated game or in the case of indie games help the developer so they'll make more games in the future which then again makes me happy. I don't really do anything for charity reasons though even if I believe charity is a noble thing. Also, I'm very suspicious of many charity organizations and I would have to carefully vet them before donating anything at all, checking to see how much overhead expense they have etc. Not as an excuse but because I have traveled a lot and seen a lot of scams and same as every halfway sane person I don't like to get scammed.

The most pure thing is still to do Good Samaritan deeds yourself, not just tossing money. There's always someone whom you can help, you don't have to send money to Africa or wherever to do charity. One could volunteer at a local retiree/disabled people center, so many things one can personally do without involving organizations and without using money. I do little deeds here and there, small things when there is an opportunity and at the moment that's all I find to be within my capabilities.

I must also add that due to preferring pragmatic rationality, I have zero religious beliefs so I don't believe in a divine duty for charity or rewards for it in a supposed afterlife. Charity for religious belief in later rewards is no noble reason at all imho, seems rather selfish. Although a charitable act where nothing is expected from the receiver is still good, regardless of the motivation.

I think both agylardi and you are right:

agylardi is right in that donating the money is a better way to spend it -if- is spent anyway. As I pointed out in my reply to agylardi there is a benefit to the receiver of charity whereas if I buy games that only sit around as backlog, that money didn't create any benefit at all.

However, you are also right because spending the money on charity does not take care of the addiction problem, it just gives it another outlet - people might even become addicted to gifting and that is equally or more harmful to finances.

You're also right about charity for the sake of avoidance not being honest which is why I make it obvious that my self-penalty extra gift copy giveaways are -not- charity and for the most part therapy related and for the fun I derive out of hosting a giveaway. I make no secret about that which means that there is no conflict with honesty in my case, I'm quite open about my motivations and blabber a lot about what I do and why I do or don't do things.

I do agree with you that charity for the sake of tax evasion is dishonest but if one is pragmatic I don't see that dishonesty as a problem as long as miserable people in need of charity get what they desperately need. I don't even mind when celebrities prance around bragging about their charities, if that gets normal people to sheepishly imitate their idols and give charity too then it's ok. Bread on the table is bread on the table.

Sounds like you are a milder case of addict but you're an addict nonetheless so welcome to this group! We all suffer at different levels of the same Hell :)

Thanks for your very honest post, much appreciated!

One of my teachers used to say "if less is more, you have to do more with less" and I think that is very relevant to purchasing games because buying less games can mean more happiness if you are playing and actually enjoying those fewer games more than the masses of games you'd buy in uncontrolled purchasing mode.

Same here, I almost bought it because I haven't played the game in ages. It was one of my very first adventures games as well. Fortunately, it was in a bundle and I dislike buying bundles so it wasn't hard to resist. It's rare that I want a whole bundle, in this sale the only one I would have bought 100% was the Retroventure one but I already played and finished all the games in that bundle so no danger there.

You might be empty but you're not alone! Ok, you are alone but we are all alone together so it could be worse :)

:O Some of those fellows appear to be beyond help. This goes to show that there is no limit and thinking "ok I'll just quickly buy everything I need and be over with it" is denial at its best. It never ends, unless we put a stop to it or at least shift gears. And for that, we need therapy. This therapy!

Ditto, very much ditto in fact...

If I spent all the time checking sales and fiddling around with my wishlist on playing then that would surely amount to at least one additional medium length game finished. I'm making improvements though, my wishlist hasn't been so small ever (currently 7 on GOG, 5 on Steam) and I don't plan on adding anything unless absolutely necessary. No casually adding stuff even if it's a high priority game. I must realize that I need nothing, zero games, so might as well pick the ones I intuitively assume will be most fun and not the ones I hear are great games. I have played games that were applauded as absolute 5 star games and I didn't enjoy them the least bit.

PS: I knew you as a regular but I didn't know it was quite that serious, half the year is over and not one game completed is quite extreme even if you're super busy with work. Can you not pick one game that is most fun to you and focus on just that one? I can sympathize though, I have 248 games here and 60 on Steam as well as some physical copy games and some freeware and abandonware games and right at this moment can't think of a single game I really want to continue or start to play. Dozens and dozens of games installed in various stages of progress, most of them adventure and strategy games.

You don't have to sign up, simply grab a chair and sit down so we can welcome you to this self-help group. You made quite an entry there, must admit that!

159 games just in this sale??? You must have bought many games that don't even fall into your preferred genres, there is a chance you'll not even want to play some of those and as a result buy even more games when there are new releases that do fall into your preferred categories.
Remember the old days when one would spend many weeks on just one or two games? Less convenient and harder times in terms of gaming but still somehow happier I think. Even if no one in their right mind would want to return to those times, the advantages of today are too big.


PS: Downfall is actually available for free, refer to this post but if you already bought that many games then one too many probably didn't put the hurt on your budget.


Yes, we all fail! But having to restart the clock isn't the end of the world, I already failed 23 times this year as you can see in clear detail here:

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/official_stop_buying_games_selfhelp_group/post1

And yet I feel like I'm improving because compared to last year, these relapses are much less. The summer sale 2015 got me worse than I expected but compared to all the previous big sales since I signed up, only 15 games (summer sale 2015 on GOG & Steam combined) that isn't bad at all, a major improvement even.




I don't count gift codes, I only count relapses by number of games I buy for myself. This is a little dangerous as I have bought a bunch of gift codes that weren't self-penalty related, just stuff I thought this or that person might enjoy.
Did spend more on gifts than on stuff for myself but I didn't go overboard on gift purchases, it's less than a handful non-penalty related ones and the penalty related ones are necessary because they curb my shopping and while I don't save any money that way, I prevent backlog form growing beyond control.

If it wasn't for my self-imposed rule to buy an extra gift code for everything - and I mean everything without exception - then I would have most likely went ahead and bought all of the following games:

GOG: Toonstruck, Door Kickers, Escape Goat 2, Trine 1 & 2, Majesty Gold, Banished, Act of War Gold, Imperialism II, Grim Fandango Remastered, Adventures of Shuggy, Mark of the Ninja, the whole Drod series bundle, possibly the whole Paradox bundle and a bunch of other stuff that looked interesting, even the casual Braveland games.

Steam: Age of Empires 2 HD (85% off), Cultures Northland & 8th Wonder of the World, Rise of Nations Extended Version, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Hitman: Blood Money, The Bridge, Vessel, Hexcells Complete pack, Unium, Cubot, Valkyria Chronicles and a bunch of other stuff, maybe even Mass Effect and Bioshock even though I'm not all too interested in those two but everyone keeps saying they are a must have so I'm curious to see if my intuition is wrong and those are games I might enjoy. My intuition is seldom wrong though but there's no certainty, that much is certain :)

In other words, I would not have saved any money if I hadn't bought any gift codes. I would have spent all the money for myself instead resulting in even more backlog I'm unlikely to clear - or worse, unlikely to enjoy much.

4 months clean then? Not bad at all!

(F.E.A.R. was released here on February 12th:
http://www.gog.com/news/release_fear_platinum




That might work short term but is an avoidance tactic, meaning you're still addicted but can't relapse due to technical circumstances. If those technical circumstances would go away, you would (probably) go nuts and relapse immediately. Just a guess though, it doesn't necessarily have to be that way, only in most cases with most people according to a hunch I have :)

Final Summer Sale Damage Report


GOG:

-11 games for $25.49
-20 gift codes for $39.30

GOG total: $64.79


Steam:

-4 games for $10.28
-4 gift codes for $10.28

Steam total: $20.56


Total expenses: $85.35


-For myself: $35.77
-For self-penalty gifts: $35.77
-For other gifts: $13.81
-Gifts total: $49.58



Estimated additional expenses if I hadn't bought any gifts:


-GOG: 12 more games for $38.04

-Steam: 14 more games for $32.80

Subtotal of additional estimated expenses: $70.84


Total estimated expenses if no gifts bought: $106.61

Estimated saving due to gift buying (penalty and non penalty): $21.26



Conclusion:

The rule of having to buy one extra gift code for every game I buy for myself ends up saving me money. The estimated savings are inaccurate and probably even higher than calculated as I calculated conservatively.


I therefor recommend my penalty system to anyone who is :

a) spending too much money on games
b) wants to add less backlog

OK, I'm guilty.

I buy games way too often in comparison to how slow I play through them. And have begun to realize it's a bit unhealthy especially with my low budget.

Bought 1 game during the sale:

Shadow Warrior Classic -$1.49 (Jun 7 2015)

Only one game?! I'm impressed, it's almost as if you don't need therapy but you're welcome nonetheless.

I'm in a much better position than before to resist future sales now that I mercilessly cut my wishlist down to a bare-bones minimum. I can't figure out how to make my GOG wishlist any smaller than that, same for the Steam wishlist except that I might kick off Panzer Corps, it's probably the best TBS I can add to my collection but I simply won't have the time or energy to dig into that anytime in the foreseeable future regardless of how attractive the game is.

It crossed my mind to drop $50 on a pile of games during the last few hours, but took a look at my library and thought about how few games I've played through so far. Downloaded my copy of Neverwinter Nights to play through later, and turned the computer off. I did pretty good, reading this thread helps though knowing that I'm not the only one who is self-aware of overbuying.

Thanks for the welcome.

Yeah, I bought quite a few purely because they're "classics" or "the best of their genre" and I have no idea if I'll enjoy them or not. God I probably even bought some real-time strategy games... *sob*

And this is all after I said "No more new games for a long time" when the Witcher 3 came out. I'm just lucky I didn't do the same in the Steam sale. (I'm still a bit pissed about the unholy demon-spawn Valve gave birth to with Bethesda. Thankfully the community killed it for the good of humanity, but they will conceive another that is stronger, faster and resistant to radiation.)

Ah yes, the good old days. When the only game I needed was HoMM 3.

Damn it! Ah well, at least that's one game in my collection that I'll definitely be playing lol.

Interesting. I may have to start doing that. Not retroactively though!

I've come to realize a few things about my particular case of game-acquisition addiction.

#1. It's not so much the financial aspect of my addiction that hurts me -- I'm quite capable of staying within my pre-defined budgets and games are so cheap these days when actively hunting for deals that even on my reasonably modest game-buying budget I am able to acquire 50-100 games a month without breaking a sweat.

#2. The thing that hurts me the most, and of which I feel is the primary negative consequence of my addiction, is the loss of time which sometimes feels beyond my conscious control due to deal-hunting, game research, and collection management.

#3. Deal-hunting and new game research, in particular, are the biggest driving factors that cause my addiction loop. It is the thought that I might miss out on a deal or miss out on some unique gem of a game if I'm not constantly scouring and snatching up what is available. Trying to avoid that tinge of regret for missing out on some fabulous 90% off deal or bundle causes me to pretty much compulsively monitor, think about, and research reviews and gameplay to an extent that is detrimental to my well-being.

Conclusion: What would probably be healthier for my situation right now is to spend less time worrying about catching the best deal and managing an ever-growing collection that is becoming increasingly meaningless due to my lack of time to play the games I am acquiring, and spending significantly more time enjoying the fruits of my addictive labors over the past months and allowing myself to just forget about the glorious deals which, in relation to my current situation, do not really matter all that much.

Ah. Yes. I see. I forgot this thread also means for anybody else that have the same problem. It is true that often we simply just need to confess our problem, have a talk with somebody (even if is not a certified professional), and try to tackle the problem ourselves after that.

I don't think the purchasing addiction is a reflection of more than these:

- Buying a game provides a small amount of pleasure (to those who like games, and a little more to those who also like collecting stuff).
- Games are cheap.

Really, the most serious problem here is that it's easier to gain pleasure from researching games and buying them than from playing them. Playing games requires some effort, buying games only requires some money.

You may be on the road to a gifting addiction.
The way I avoid it is by reasoning like this:

The price of bundles you don't play games from adds up. If realistically I'm not going to play any of those games any time soon, I could save that money, and if I ever really have a desire to play a specific game, I'd just buy it. Sure, it will cost more, but probably not more than just growing the backlog without control.

This reasoning doesn't always work, but I think it's sound enough. I do buy mostly bundles, but I avoid many bundles where I'm sure I won't play the games any time soon.