Most people who buy games on Steam never play them | Hacker News Reader

Most people who buy games on Steam never play them

howtomarketagame.com

208 points3Samourai215 comments

The title is a misreading of the data. It's not that "most people who buy games on Steam never play them". It's that most games people buy remain unplayed. A tiny, tiny minority of people who buy games of Steam never play games they buy on Steam.

EDIT: Apparently, this error was introduced by the HN submission! The title of the article on the website is: "Most people who buy your game won’t play it". This matches the data presented by the article.

The article glosses over what I'd have to believe is the biggest reason - some games, in particular older AAA games, are discounted so aggressively that it seems silly to not purchase. Like 5-15% of the original retail price.

It’s never silly to not buy something you’re not going to use. Particularly once you realize there will be an identical sale or discount in 6 months.

Think of it a different way, you like city builder games, but you don't want to play one right now. You can buy 3 different city builder games for $10 during a sale. And when you do fancy a city builder, pick the one that most appeals in the moment.

By purchasing a bunch of different game cheaply, yoh have the choice of what kind of story/mechanic to play when you do want to play a new game.

You're speculating on your future desires, and you might as well get a selection when it's cheap.

A game pass subscription sort of scratches the same itch, but you don't own the games. So can't replay a few years later if you aren't presently subscribed.

It's not about being stupid with your money, it's actually a cheap way to give yourself choice in the future.

It absolutely makes sense to buy things you may (emphasis on may) never use, especially if it never "expires". Insurance is a great example.

People are buying these games knowing they're adding to their backlog and likely won't get through the whole thing, but the price is so low that the chance they'll want to play the game someday is enough.

I'm one of these (apparently rather typical) consumers and will buy almost any modern-class AAA game if it's $5.

Tell me you don’t really know how insurance works without telling me :)

You’re not “buying it and then not using it”.

> Tell me you don’t really know how insurance works without telling me :)

This will be interesting news to the insurance company I co-founded :) :) :)

> You’re not “buying it and then not using it”.

This boils down to semantics, but most consumers feel like they're "using" their insurance plan only when they file a claim.

Unused games in my Steam library are basically insurance against being bored.

Oh so then you’re just walking around pretending you don’t know how insurance works ;)

My argument is the value quotient is so insane that the primary friction to purchase is likely more down to the UX of the storefront to complete the purchase, rather than the purchase price itself.

So in that vein, it doesn't matter if there will be another identical sale. The psychological things "in the way" to complete a purchase are virtually non-existent if you had even a minor passing interest in the title the first time you see it at that fire sale price.

I like supporting the arts. Sometimes I like the idea of a game and want the studio to keep the lights on, even if it takes me years to get around to playing it. It's about signalling what kind of games I want to see in the world.

Sometimes games get pulled from the marketplace. In which case you can't buy it later.

That's not super common on steam though.

Yes. I’ve loaded game buying whenever Epic has a free promotion.

5-15% is not aggressive. 50% is aggressive and that’s when i bought games on steam that i never played

Of, not off. So 85-95% discount.

One stat in here supports a third, slightly different statement. The median player has not played 51% of their games, so: "most people who buy games on steam have not played most of the games they own."

Correlates with my experience. Sometimes sales are so attractive you buy several games for cheap, or even an entire franchise, but playing them all can take enough time that another sale comes again. Red Dead Redemption 2 has been collecting digital dust in my library because I'm still playing Fallout 76. I stopped buying more because it feels wrong.

Bundles contribute a lot too. Hey you can get these three games for dirt cheap because you own another game in this bundle! One of them’s interesting to you, maybe even already on your wishlist, the others are not, and the bundle is less than the full price of the one you think might be neat. The others just sink to the bottom of your collection, uninstalled, unplayed, unloved.

bingo. big sales and GoG deals, etc. mean I can get 5+ games for the same price as one moderately priced AAA game.

but usually I'm buying the bundle for one or two things, and the rest is just window dressing. maybe I'll get to em, maybe not...

You should play RDR2, it's absolutely phenomenal. That and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 are the best role playing games I've played in the past decade.

Full agreement. Rdr2, Witcher 3, and mass effect trilogy for me.

You should try KCD2, can not recommend it enough

I know, but I can't deal with two massive RPGs right now. It doesn't help that a multiplayer RPG like Fallout 76 multiplies the role playing opportunities.

Ditto. I have several games in my backlog that I got on deep discount, but need serious time commitment to play. It's going to take me a little bit to play Witcher 3, Disco Elysium, or the entire Mass Effect trilogy. Also there is a certain time horizon on steam that play time wasn't tracked. I am pretty sure I played Half Life 2, since that's why I have a steam account in the first place.

Edit: You may not want to know if your steam account is old enough to drink...

I uses to collect almost everything, now having over 2000 games. Now i select them for Steam Deck playability. I still hoard a lot, but i also try to at least start them once and play a little before moving on to the next one :)

I've bought entire publisher catalogs on summer/winter sales years ago. Tons of games, while I might primarily be interested in a handful. It was just cheaper to buy the whole catalog.

I have considerably less time than money, at least when it comes to $5 games that take 50+ hours to beat.

(I'll get to you someday, Mass Effect)

That's just because we aren't retired yet. :)

My steam library is just an extension of my retirement portfolio. Diversification if you will.

There are also weird effects with family sharing. I have things in my account that my kids have played but that I haven’t.

I don't know why but I find language like this incredibly frustrating. Maybe it's because the media tends to do this sort of thing all the time to fit statistics to their narrative.

The other thing is abuse of percentages. "Only 5% of US population has ever finished a video game." (which is a staggering 16 million people). This type of thing.

Instead of focusing on folks who actually do invest time into your product, even if the % is low.

I think because the “true” statement is more awkward as a headline, and requires more seconds to parse. Thus they need to dumb it down.

The real headline would be “Most games people buy are never played” or something. Which can mean a lot of things like do people often buy games that nobody else has ever played?

Welcome to syntactic ambiguity. But I think this was clear enough to infer what it meant before the rephrase (aside from some edge cases like how does this play with gifts and family sharing).

Time is the biggest cost of gaming.

Yes. I get it that people also want to try and play various games. I think that 'eventually' everyone has their go-to game, just like everyone has their 'go-to' takeout/takeaway. I want pizza or burger. I will try a different joint, but it will be one or the other. The same for gaming. Defender of the Crown, AoE II, Fortnite. I stopped buying games a long time ago. I am sure that there are many great games.. but... I like pizza, I like burger. You can tempt me with sushi once per quarter, but DotC, AoE, FN.. and that's that. I got 'no time' to learn/master a new game. Or rather I got time, but I will not 'invest' it to start another open-world game that will require 5 years!

This it’s true, and must weighed carefully.

I prefer casual games because of this.

I’m in this category. I have two tiers of games on my wishlist. Those that if they are less than $20 I would buy and those that if they are less than $3 I would buy.

It’s not automatic, sometimes I just don’t feel like buying a game anymore even when it’s on sale, and I’ll drop them when if they go on sale and I don’t want them enough to pay.

But I do end up with a few games in my library I haven’t played yet.

I re-read your comment 5 times and I still don't see the difference you're trying to highlight.

What I got is: people buy games and they don't play most of them. Is it wrong?

I think they are saying: Imagine 100 games were sold on steam, and 50 of them were unplayed.

If each game was bought by a different person, then both most games bought and most people never play the games.

However, it’s very likely a small minority of people take advantage of the insane sales Steam has sometimes - like if 50 people bought a game each and played it, and one person bought 50 separate $1 arcade games and never touched them.

You get the same statistics in both cases of number of games played, but it’s two very different scenarios in terms of how humans use steam.

For me I imagine it’s a third case, that people like me often take advantage of the $1 deals and never end up playing most of those old or arcade titles?

% of people vs % of games.

A single person who "collects" games or buys them because it seems like good value can have thousands of titles in their steam library. Someone who actually plays all of them will have a much smaller number.

On a sad follow-up, (because it happened 'near me'), once the 'collector' dies, his/her kids will never play those games. Today's 15yo boys will never try to play Zaxxon, Wizball, Saboteur 2. So someone who is 30+ buying (e.g.) 100 games, should know that their kids will safely ignore 99 of them. As game-tech progresses, I think that it's only me (the dinosaur) or few of us that play on a PC and all youngsters play on them fancy consoles. 'Any day now' games will require a VR set (10-15 years?), so no more.

I think it depends on the upbringing on such kids: if you collect alone in the dark and share none of it with your kids before you're gone then it's not surprising that they wouldn't know what to do with any of those.

I think they're saying it's top heavy. There are some people (rich whales) that buy lots of games and don't play them, while most people on steam are playing the (numerically fewer) games that they buy.

Buying Humble Bundles doesn't really make a you a rich whale though.

The title of the post indicates that most people who buy games on Steam never play a single game that they have purchased (vs. your correct understanding of the data, which is that people buy games and play some but not all of them).

That’s a pretty strict reading of “them”, though. In non-academic contexts, I think most English speakers would understand it as the intended meaning rather than that there are many people who have Steam but never play anything.

The point is, whether intentional or not, the submitted title is ambiguous and possesses the capability to mislead. When talking about data we should strive to use as accurate language as possible.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone's interpretation of the title tended toward their own experience, or lack thereof, with Steam.

Sure, I would edit it as well but it seems overblown as a nitpick thread.

the original title is "Most people who buy your game won’t play it", which is actually equivalent to what you're saying (even though it still says 'most people'!). HN mods edit titles to avoid clickbait and the like, which can end up like this

Oh you're right! The title of the article on the website matches the data presented by the article. I didn't notice that it was different.

Pretty bad of HN to edit a good title into a dishonest one like this.

Which can be perfectly rational even financially when discounts are >50%.

It amazes me that the community still tolerates the sloppy butcher that is the automated HN headline editor. An absolute embarrassment is what it is.

+1 complain for the editoralized title. It's so much worse than the original.

Am i the only one who couldn't care less about these semantics and doesn't get what the heck you're even talking about?

I won't say it's not hording, but there are also some other reasons you can't well untangle from hording:

- buying games you played pirated before (now that you can afford them), but you already played them so no need to play again

- buying games you played at someone else place, lend to you etc. Again you already played them but want to give back to the authors.

- buying games you will play later, and once you play them you have new games which you will played later -- leading to some constant amount of unplayed games (and some you end up never playing 'cause time)

- early access titles you already bought but will most likely only play on release

- buying very story driven games (mainly short indi games) where through watching someone else play you already now (and enjoyed) all the story but want to give bac to the authors anyway ("someone else" could be twitch, or you room mate, doesn't matter)

I have a few of this cases in my Steam library.

E.g. Little Misfortune for the last case or Hades 2 for the early access part or Dave the Diver for the I will definitely still play it part (very soon TM, jokes aside probably starting Wednesday).

Also one point I didn't include as it's kinda hording: Game bundles where you want all games but one, think the last game is still nice but anyway will never play it as there are too many other even better games.

- buying a bundle of 12 games to get the two games you actually want to play

- donating to a charity event that gives you games

bundles have to be the biggest reason. i have actually spammed my steam account this way with big number of games that i have no idea what they even are and often times are just meh. you buy 10game bundle because its cheaper than 2 of the games you want bought separately and now i have 8 new unknown things on my account

I've got games that I intend to play later, and they were cheap enough that I don't think I'll save any more by waiting. I do intend to play Mad Max at some point - $5 was too much for me to add it to my library. $2.50? Fine... pulled the trigger with 9 other items I plan to do. The thing with steam is once you have them in your library, they remain. Some items are not sold anymore, however.

Looking at my queue over 20 years... likely hording. Nuts. One of the gotchas I bumped into was I really need a larger disk for games. Some of the newer stuff takes an enormous amount of space, which means it waits and waits.

Also collections. I almost finished Tomb Raider II.

I wish more game developers adopt the “no sales, period” policy of Factorio.

Here’s a relevant quote from the developer.

> Not having a sale ever is part of our philosophy. In short term, they are good and bring extra money, but we are targeting long term. I believe that searching for sales is wasted time, and people should decide on the price and value, but putting option of wasting time to search for deals or waiting seems like bad part of the equation.

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=159659#p159659

I get why people put games on sale. It gets you on a list on steam and gets people to talk about you on Reddit and gets emails sent to everyone who’s wishlisted your game. It boosts your profits and I get it.

But let’s be honest, these techniques benefit the developer not the player. The developer profits from the players FOMO when a sale happens. The player thinks he has accumulated a glorious Steam library when in reality he just wasted tons of money on games he wouldn’t even ever launch.

If any thing the domain of this website already tells you everything you need to know. It’s all about marketing, aka moving money from your pocket into theirs with psychological maneuvers.

Putting a product on sale is amoral because somebody might buy something they don't need, is weirdest take I have seen in a while. We're not all just whales, some people don't have that much money. Plenty of teenagers, unemployed, etc. are able to get some good experiences because of good sales.

I think the point is that, on the whole, sales manipulate consumers into spending -more- money than they otherwise would have. Of course this isn't true for every person all the time, but on average I suspect it is; sales are common partly because they actually lead to more revenue, despite the discount.

That's not why sales lead to more revenue.

They do because people who can't afford full price will wait to buy on sale. Whereas people who can afford full price will often just buy it when they want it for instant satisfaction.

So they get mostly full price from people who can pay full price, and make it accessible to people who can't afford it at full price.

Citation needed?

Are you saying Amazon does Prime Day so people who previously couldn’t afford an air fryer can now afford one? Are you saying Black Friday is actually a massive charity event by companies so people can buy their products?

I’m pretty sceptical of this whole “make it accessible” logic - I can only imagine very few parts of my life where a discount was actually the only way I could afford something (back when I had limited pocket money). A game going from $80 to $60 doesn’t practically make it any more accessible to most people, it just makes people feel better about their purchase.

I was definitely waiting for sales when I was younger when the games were too expensive for me. And when my earnings went up, I became more willing to buy them full price.

No, I would not buy those games for full price. And not just games. And not just me.

It is the same deal with black Friday sales, with people who buy used stuff etc.

There's no "citation", just go work at any business.

And you seem to be misunderstanding. They're not doing it out of charity. They're doing it because if something costs $50, they make more profit selling 20 at $100 and 20 at $70 than they do selling just 20 at $100.

> A game going from $80 to $60 doesn’t practically make it any more accessible to most people

I think you may be out of touch with some people's financial realities. $20 can very much be the difference between buying something and not buying it this month. And people will literally wait half a year to buy something on Black Friday because it's the only way they can afford it.

With physical goods unsold items literally cost money to the point that sometimes it is cheaper to sell it for a dollar.

The real reason cracktorio can do no sale is the same reason Minecrack can be basically no sale (same price forever) - it’s an evergreen game people will always buy at a low roar.

Most games are like DVDs or books, they frontload 90% of their total revenue in the first few months, and so sales are a way to squeeze a bit more juice out later.

While the price of Minecraft stays the same, the game never stopped evolving and getting content updates. For $30 you get a much bigger game now than fifteen years ago.

The reason factorio devs can take such a stance is that they crowd financed the game over a decade ago when doing that was viable, and since then the game has achieved cult status. Sure the game was officially released in 2020, but it had been in Early Access since 2016.

Ironically I bought it and never played it. I only bought it because I played a clone of the game called "Dyson's Sphere" made by a Chinese developer and wondered what the original game was like.

> The developer profits from the players FOMO when a sale happens.

No, That isn't it at all.

This is like super backwards. FOMO happens typically when a big game is released. No months/years afterwards.

A lot of players are waiting for a game to be the right price. Triple-A titles are now £60+. Doom the Dark Ages was over £70 at launch that is without the extra micro-transaction nonsense. Some games (even indie games) come out at £25-30. I am a big Doom fan and play megawads such as Eviternity and I said to myself "No I am not paying that much" for the new Doom game. I have plenty of disposable income.

If the game comes down to less than £15 that is 3-4 overpriced coffee / 3-4 pints of beer down the bar.

If you are patient you know that the game is going to go on sale some time in the future so you wait until their is a sale. Steam even have mid-week deals. I hear/see these conversations all the time on Discord, in person, reddit etc.

> The player thinks he has accumulated a glorious Steam library when in reality he just wasted tons of money on games he wouldn’t even ever launch.

I've never heard anyone flex their Steam Library. I don't think anyone thinks of it this way. Achievements in a particular game, sure.

> FOMO happens typically when a big game is released

FOMO around sales: I've bought a bunch of games when they were on sale even though I was not going to play them right away, simply because I didn't want to end up wanting to play them later and have to buy them full(-ish) price. And then I never played them anyway.

I understood what they were saying, I don't think that is generally true due to how Steam tends to operate.

There isn't going to be much FOMO when people know that a game is going to be on sale every other month. Maybe if you are unfamiliar with Steam you might do that.

I've heard people say plenty of times "I might pick it up when it is on sale again". That seems like the opposite of FOMO.

> these techniques benefit the developer not the player

Hard disagree. Buying games on sales is a magnificent way I can expand my horizons and play random games I'd have never heard of otherwise or would've never tried.

This is like Michael Phelps giving swimming advice. Interesting to listen to for sure, but not really applicable to the vast majority of people.

It's not so simple. While it may not be causation ("they're successful because they don't make sales" is likely not true), the correlation can be almost as strong: the philosophy / mindset that leads you to make that choice of strategy is the same philosophy that also informed various other decisions that led to you developing a successful game.

I think a good example of this was the Blizzard of old. They "could afford" to only launch things that were near perfect because they were successful, but they also were successful because they never relented on their perfectionism.

So you shouldn't blindly imitate the choices of successful people, but taking a few pages out of their core values and driving pillars will likely help a lot.

I waited for Elden Ring to be on sale because I wasn't sure if I will like it, and 2 hours is not enough to try a game like this. No other reason.

Lot's of people buy on sale because it's too expensive for them otherwise. Factorios sales model does mean lost sales, they have just decided that it is okay for them. Game is DRM free, can be pirated with no problems if you can't afford it.

The point of sales is that you sell the game to people who think the game is worth full price at full price and those who have less money or think the game is worth less to them at the price they would rather pay.

It's basically a reverse auction process, where the bids start high and get lower over time.

The KSP1 DLC is basically never worth it at full price to me.

I don't know.. maybe if you cannot control your impulses..

For me Steam sales are great. I have things in the wish list and when the sale is good I might buy it. I always check if it's a good sale on SteamDB.

I usually play these games but most of the time not for long. That's why I don't want to put in the full price.

Stupid thing with sales is that "regular" price ends up being overpriced.

> these techniques benefit the developer not the player

And when every dev is doing that it hardly benefits the devs either.

Seems like basic price discrimination. Occasional sales let you capture some of the people for whom your game (or the option to play your game, maybe never exercised...) is worth $10 instead of $20 (or whatever). I don't really see who is harmed here, other than players who say "well maybe the game will go on sale..." -- but did they really value the game at its sticker price to begin with?

Yes, and the devs' refusal to ever put the game on sale has led to me still not buying Factorio, despite hearing how good it is. I'm just not sure of the value when I buy most my games at 10 EUR or (much) lower.

Factorio has deep gameplay. You can spend thousands of hours on it and still have more to learn and experience.

If it's your kind of thing, spending $70 for the base game plus the Space Age expansion is really good value; orders of magnitude more than most games. But if you want something that will give you a few hours of entertainment and then move on from it, it's probably not for you.

There's a free demo which has more than enough gameplay for players to decide whether they want to invest in the game.

For games like Factorio and Minecraft sales work a bit differently. These games are evergreen and very easily and commonly pirated, so people who are buying already have tens or hundreds of hours in the game. The marketing and capturing price sensitive markets through sales makes less sense - you are only losing margin to people who would buy regardless.

> but did they really value the game at its sticker price to begin with? reply

Factorio is a game that's sold at 35$ price point - half of the usual new game price. Does that mean that the developer doesn't value his game when it's so cheap?

What a silly notion.

I guess you're being rhetorical or sarcastic, but for people who're not familiar with today's gaming market: $35 is a very high price for 2D games like Factorio. Most 2D games are $10~$20. If you take sales into account, it would be much closer to $10 than to $20.

Thinking about games along a single axis (2D vs. 3D) is a weird way to measure value.

You should compare Factorio with other sandbox/simulation games with procedural generation, deep systems, complex logistics, and large modding communities. Examples that come to mind are Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress, which have similar price tags.

Personally, I have a ton of unplayed games because of Humble Bundle. Like I would buy the bundle for 1 game, and the other 9 came with it. For some of them I would redeem the coupon just in case.

My Thursday morning habit is to download the free games from Epic and Prime Gaming. I have hundreds of games I paid nothing for and will probably never play, but every once in a while I’ll read about an older game, find I have it in my library from one of these giveaways and can enjoy it. When I had PS+ or GamePass I did the same thing. I’ve had less success with Steam, but used to do the same thing with HB. I’m sure there are many others doing the same thing which skews the results.

Even GoG gifts games from time to time. They're not usually amazing, so I could understand people grabbing them but never actually playing them.

Same. Epic has Civ VI Platinum Edition queued...

That and sales, especially the old ones with dailies, you'd see a game at 90% off and you'd go "uh that looks fine I can swing $2 for it" but might never actually get around to playing it.

I am in the same position, except I have had a humble bundle subscription from the very beginning.

Of games I have specifically paid money for, I believe I have played 100% of them.

It's probably the wrong interpretation to say a lot of people are making the decision to buy an individual game and then not playing it. Although I know people who do that, even with physical boardgames, they usually have the intention to play but life gets in the way.

That's a completely different scenario to myself where they just accumulate without me noticing. A number of times I have read a retrospective of a game and wondered if I owned a copy already. I usually get around a 50% hit rate on those.

Yeah, that's probably my biggest culprit too. I'm guilty of getting something and then not playing it, but I'd say over half is due to humble bundles.

Same. My library is probably >70% unplayed because of that, but in terms of money spent I’d say the number becomes <10%. And in general people are more likely to impulse buy on discount, especially deep discount. So I won’t count on making most of the revenue from unplayed sales (plus the provided stat is average 32.7% unplayed, median 51.7% unplayed, that’s not “most” anyway).

Nearly all of my "unplayed" Steam games have been played plenty by me, just not through Steam. Sometimes I think about how my Steam account contributes to statistics that are used to drive narratives like this where "not time-tracked by Steam" = "unplayed game bought by an insane collector." But chances are that narrative is overwhelmingly right most of the time, so whatever.

Just to clarify, I have the same usage and it's because I "pirate" games and only buy the ones that I play more than once/couple hours.

I don't trust and nor like the refund policies/processes and all kinds of fences they implement, and often even after I have bought a game I will keep using the pirated version because it is more convenient (offline play, no need to login and it's already installed... when games are 100-150GB sometimes it's a waste of time to reinstall using Steam). Do you have another kind of usage that leads to these false positive?

One admittedly rather niche example of buying games through Steam only to play them* outside of Steam is where you download data to use it in some open-source remake that relies on the original assets. OpenMW/Morrowind is the main one that comes to mind for me - I have sunk dozens if not hundreds of hours into OpenMW but needed to download the Morrowind assets from Steam to do so (after I lost my original game CD). There are a few other examples of such games out there, like CorsixTH/Theme Hospital (actually not available on Steam I believe, but available from GOG so same principle).

> I don't trust and nor like the refund policies/processes and all kinds of fences they implement

Steam is pretty reasonable. If you bought a game in the past 14 days and played fewer than 2 hours, you can get a refund for any reason. You need only go to your recent purchases, “report a problem”, and with a couple of clicks you’re done.

If works incredibly well and with no hassle, I have done it a number of times for games which ran like crap on my machine or plain weren’t fun.

I’ve heard GOG is even better with their returns, though I have never tried it. And they sell games which are DRM-free, so even better than a pirated version.

One exception: sometimes it counts the launcher running (and downloading more stuff), but it's rare for some games, mostly MMOs. So I have personally seen how people did not manage to log in before the 2h were up.

> Do you have another kind of usage that leads to these false positive?

No, pretty much same usage. I buy games to support the devs after I've already pirated the game and determined it's good, then I go back to playing the pirated copy.

Steam's refund policy is awesome. You can play any game for up to 2 hours and refund for no reason. When no man's sky came out I bought it, played it for like 15 minutes, refunded it. The next day I thought I'd give it another shot so I bought it again, played for a little while and refunded again.

I have refunded a bunch of games, never had any problem with it. As long as you haven't played more than 2 hours they refund no questions asked.

Steam’s return policy is pretty generous. But I can see not wanting to deal with it anyway.

Dito with books, side projects, courses on udemy, ...

It is not a game thing. It is a human thing.

Some cultures even have a word for it, like the Japanese; Tsundoku [0]

Buying the tools are a step to step to fulfillment. It is easier to buy the step to fulfillment then walk the path.

Then again, some books are one offs and only used for a small portion, not full consumption.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44981013

The urge to collect, it’s not our best one.

Yeah, the same is true for board games. The average number of times a board game is played is < 1.

When I graduated and got a job, one of my first aquisitions was a new game console and several titles. It sat mostly idle, because despite earning the money to afford it, now I lacked the free time. After a couple of years gathering dust I gifted it to my younger cousin.

Taking a segue, I am a 50+ man who hasn't played any games in my working life. I did play Prince of Persia 2 but never crossed level 1. Played Doom in the network mode with classmates. Now I want to start exploring games. I am on Ubuntu with Intel graphics. I am ready to invest in a joystick or gamepad.

What games do you guys recommend to me? Also any hardware accessories, other than GPU's, that is?

I just tried Steam, and was completely overwhelmed by choice.

The problem is that I could recommend a hundred wildly different games that you might like, but playing a hundred games just to figure out which one is right for you doesn't sound like a good use of your time. Can you give more information? You like single-player games? Classic card games like solitaire (rec: Zachtronics Solitaire Collection)? Postmodern card games (rec: Balatro)? Deckbuilding roguelikes (rec: Slay The Spire)? Actual roguelikes (rec: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)? Postmodern roguelikes (rec: Caves of Qud)? There's so much out there, even the cream of the crop is overwhelming to a newcomer. If you're a programmer, maybe look at the best games from Zachtronics (Spacechem, Opus Magnum, Shenzhen I/O, TIS-100, Last Call BBS... they're all pretty good).

As I haven't tried many games, I am not sure what I really like.

Card games are out unless I am playing in real life ;-)

I haven't played board games much. I tend to zone out pretty fast.

First shooters, feels immersive enough, but when they become fast paced and need quick reaction, I get overwhelmed and zone out.

I guess I am looking for something that is immersive, but forgiving in it's gameplay. As I have RSI injury on my wrist, any mouse based games are out.

Your reco on Zachtronics, looks interesting, will definitely try out the publisher.

By "immersive" are you thinking of first-person games like Doom? Sadly most first-person games prefer to use a mouse to control the camera, and most also reward twitch reflexes. You said you were willing to buy a joystick, so maybe you would enjoy a flight simulator? And if you wanted something more game-y, then the Mechwarrior franchise is a very immersive, slow, ponderous first-person game that makes good use of a joystick as well.

Sadly most games these days are not accustomed to be entirely controlled by a keyboard. However, any game that supports a controller should allow you to configure it to use a keyboard instead. The only games I can think of that are keyboard-first are old-school genres like MUDs and classic roguelikes. For a starter MUD I'd recommend DiscworldMUD, and for a starter roguelikes I'd recommend Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (which is not quite "forgiving" in an absolute sense, but is relative to its genre). Both of these games are free, can be played in either the browser or a native MUD client/SSH terminal (respectively), are extremely Linux-friendly as a result, and are "immersive" in the sense that they invite you to use your imagination (although DCSS also has a graphical version).

If you're willing to be "immersed" by a game with a top-down perspective, I'll go out on a limb and recommend Moonring. It's free and made by a single indie developer and designed to evoke the classic Ultima-style RPGs of the 80s, but with modern conveniences and sensibilities. It gives you a free-form world to explore, and even if combat can sometimes be punishing you never really lose any progress for dying.

DiscworldMUD has definitely piqued my interest. I own the whole pratchett's set. Something I can see myself enjoying :-)

Moonring seems interesting. A title I will definitely try.

Wait for steam sales, buy a bunch of cheap stuff that seems interesting and figure out what you like from there. And ignore moralization in the article and comments.

It is actually ok to buy a bunch of cheap stuff without being sure you will like it. People always bought physical books based on few pages in the store and either finished them or not. People start netflix shows and figure they dont like them 15 min in.

I highly recommend Caves of Qud. It's great for keyboard-only. I think it's got controller support too. The game is very confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it you can really get sucked in. Runs great on ubuntu.

Though if they play Caves of Qud, I'd recommend playing in either Roleplay mode (which enables autosave checkpoints at settlements) or Wander mode (where most enemies in the game start off neutral to you, and you gain XP by exploring rather than fighting). Classic mode would be intolerable for anyone but a hardcore gamer.

Noted. Will avoid classic mode first time around :-)

Kibwen gets it, not to knock the other user who suggested Subnautica, but that would likely be one of the last games I would think to recommend, its too much for a first game. Too many gameplay mechanics, too many objectives(and side objectives you set for yourself) I would think it would just be overwhelming for a "first" game.

To go on top of kibwen's questions; what kind of game do you think you'd like? Do you like a long movie/book that gets you heavily invested in the character?

Do you tend to prefer genres like action, romance, comedy, drama, or even sub-genres like spy films, whodunnit, slapstick over dry humor etc etc. I'm not asking for you to respond with all of these answers but it if you're looking for something that will click with you - you have a better chance using whatever genre/styles you like in other entertainment mediums.

Lastly, do you want to see what you've "missed out on" in the last couple of decades us nerds(collectively) consider the creme de le creme? Or are you looking for a game you* specifically will enjoy? Again, just something to think about.

As someone in their mid-30s whose dad got me into gaming when I was in diapers while I watched him play Hexen and Tribes 2, here are some random games off the top of my head - these will only include 'modern' games aside from roguelike/card/'programming' games, going from what I think would be "easy" to "hard" in terms of accessibility:

Portal 1/2 Terraria/Minecraft Half life 1/2(maybe at a lower difficulty) Team fortress 2(something my father still plays today) Disco Elysium Uncharted Series """ this is the point I'd consider to be somewhat difficult at this point) many of these games I recommend just becuss the developers are known for their intuitive introductions to controls, UI, gameplay mechanics, etc. I'm really not sure about Disco Elysium though you may want to research it a bit more and see if its something youd be interested in)

""" And for some personal picks if you're able to pick these games up or want something further down the road some of my personal favorites of the last decade(definitely not titles I'm recommending for a first): """

Nier Automata/Nier Replicate Baldur's gate (series) Mass Effect(1-3, the only ones that exist :) ) The Witcher 3(the first two are great as well IMO but haven't aged well visually or in terms of gameplay mechanics) Metaphor: Refantazio The 'Yakuza' series or as its now named 'Like a Dragon' Claire Obscura: Expedition 33 Red Dead Redemption(old and new)

And if you destroy any or all of these games or find yourself to be a masochist when it comes to games you can try my personal favorite series(toss up between nier):

Dark Souls(and all of the spinoffs available to PC)

I purposely stayed away from games from genres that kibwen mentioned, although I think those are much better choices than my own.

Oh and as far as controller; either a Nintendo switch pro controller or ps4/5 controller would be my go to if you don't like the feel of keyboard/mouse. A decent headset like a Bose QC37(whatever the most recent over ear headset is) or just a decent sound system(doesn't have to be a headset) as well as a decent monitor with a refresh rate higher than 120Hz...

I went on forrr wayyy longer than I expected to, but hopefully some of what I said makes sense. If nothing else just research the 'easy' titles and kibwens recommendations.

I'd just hate for you to pickup a game that just didn't vibe with and have it ruin your reintroduction with gaming. As I alluded to at the top, movies and games share enough similarities where it feels almost like someone asking "I haven't watched movies/TV/read any entertaining books in the last few decades, which movie/TV show/book would you recommend for me?"

I definitely like something that is long. I am an avid reader of SF/Fantasy series. In TV series I prefer Noir style, ...

You definitely have asked some interesting questions. What I am looking for is something I can enjoy :-) and not something that I missed out on It's been a stressful period for me personally for last few quarters, and I am trying to figure a way to wind down but that which keeps me engaged in some form. Something I can do in the weekends. Reading or Streaming is not cutting it right now.

Thanks for the reco, I will try exploring few of these titles.

As for headset I have DT 990 pro, Sennheiser BT (I don't recall which one), so I guess I am set there.

Similarly for monitor, though I don't have 120hz, but I have a 32inch setup, which I hope will be sufficient for now :-)

On the controller, I will consider your recos.

I guess the strategy for now will be:

- Download few titles recommended in this thread, especially if they have a trial / demo option. Play them. See if I vibe with them.

- Get a controller.

- Figure out my taste, and start exploring similar genres. Also keep some time aside for exploring other genres and titles.

- Rinse and repeat :-)

Thanks for the recos.

Hands down one of the best games I have ever played was Subnautica and I highly recommend it without knowing your preferences.

It’s a deep sea exploration / builder with a story that gets crazier and crazier.

It’s also very approachable and mostly easy to play.

Subnautica in VR (with the Submersed VR mod) is easily the most immersive environment I have ever encountered.

Thanks. Looks interesting... Will definitely try this one

It's hard to recommend games when you don't have a baseline taste. The past couple of years having a demo became very common on Steam, so I suggest trying some demos.

You've played a 2D platformer and a multiplayer shooter, two very popular genres with massive offerings. If you're interested in more along the same lines, just off the top of my head I'll say try Hollow Knight as a 2D platformer, and Overwatch 2 as a multiplayer shooter (this one is free). Overwatch 2 may be overwhelming for someone new to gaming.

There is a genre called cozy games for more relaxed experiences, like Journey. There are also turn-based roguelikes, and for those I would recommend Balatro.

I don't know about Ubuntu or Linux compatbility so look into that, but I know Steam's OS and Proton have made massive strides.

Journey seems something I will like to try :-)

I wasn't aware of cozy games, but I guess that's what I am looking for. Thanks for the keyword

Then more along those lines is the walking simulator genre. It's called walking simulator generally because combat is not emphasized, with focus on immersion, exploration, and narrative. How puzzly it is varies from not at all to all about the puzzles.

Steam has awesome genre pages so you can search by tag then go to the tag's page and you can see what's hot right now in the genre, what's top selling of all time, what has demos etc. that's why I'm mentioning all the genres.

Thanks for providing another keyword :-) Walking Simulator genre looks interesting.

I'm gonna recommend Final Fantasy VI. The FF games generally aren't sequels to each other (the ones that are have titles like Final Fantasy X-2) and FF6, while on the older side, is not only very beginner-friendly, but also has quite good writing.

So-called JRPGs (Japanese Role-Playing Games) tend to offer decent bang-for-buck and are generally more controller-friendly than CRPGs (Computer Role-Playing Games). Besides the Final Fantasy games you could also check out the Persona series.

Man the genres and sub-genres I am discovering here is just awesome!

JRPG's is another discovery. Seems like I am opening myself up to a whole new world :-)

There are still a HUGE number of games you can play with Intel integrated graphics all of which are extremely good. Many of the greatest games of all time are quite old or 2D which means you don't need anything special to run them. At most I'd invest in a controller (both Xbox & PS5 controllers are compatible) but you don't even need that to play almost all games on Steam. Some cheap but great games: Hollow Knight, Celeste, Hades, Outer Wilds, Undertale, Rimworld.

Thanks for the reco. Will explore couple of these titles.

I wouldn't buy a joystick if you're into Flight sims. I'd look into a Hotas setup or a virtual reality setup where the whole cockpit is simulated (VTOL VR).

I started out on Microsoft Flight Simulator back in 99-2000. I feel like that was the peak joystick purchase era.

Get a monitor with a good refresh rate, get a good gaming keyboard and mouse, potentially look into mechanical keyboards if you watch some videos and find it interesting.

Watch some YouTube PC gaming channels.

Also there's SO many games you're right it is overwhelming.

You could easily go ten years back. And buy the top ten games on some gaming site rank list.

Obligatory mentions: - Red Dead Redemption 2 - The Last of Us - BioShock Infinite - The Witcher 3 - City Skylines (Sims City like)

Really depends on what category of game you like. Highly highly subjective thing these days.

You can almost make friends by aligning on the types of games you like because it's a bit of a personality litmus test.

I'd imagine a lot of people in HackerNews play Factorio quite seriously.

Oh I have a good monitor, but I don't have an high end GPU. I do have couple of mechanical keyboards, and split keyboard which I use for my programming.

Any youtube channels you can recommend? Especially for older people with RSI :-)

As for what genere I like, I am not sure. I am looking for something that is immersive, where I can spend some long hours during my downtime. But that does not require any mouse. This is a deal breaker

I will try out some of your recos.

Can't go wrong with Portal, although I had to look up a walkthrough from time to time in order to get past a puzzle, especially the end puzzle. I think it should play pretty well for you on Ubuntu and be a lot of fun.

Portal 2 is even better than the first one, but play them both.

Seconded. And play Half Life 1 and 2. They’re arguably the best single player FPS games of all time.

I watched couple of Half life videos/movies and I found the story line engaging. I haven't tried playing the games though. I guess next step will be that, in case they support controllers as I don't use mouse.

You might want to try out the Steam Deck - https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck

You might like story driven games, like Read Dead Redemption 2, Witcher 3, Mass Effect... all on sale on Steam currently.

You can also install emulators on the Steam Deck, so you can play those games before you started your working life.

Otherwise look into how to install Valve's Proton on Ubuntu to play the games available on Steam.

Alternatively get yourself a cheap PS4 pro on eBay, which usually come with plenty of games bundled. Don't need the latest and greatest console. PS4 still has a huge library of games and you can get those cheap on eBay too.

I installed Steam for Ubuntu after reading the parent article :-) But I was completely overwhelmed by the choices, that's why I asked for some reco.

It depends on what games you like.

One game that I recommend to anyone is Firewatch. It's a beautiful, linear story game with easy to understand mechanics. And it only lasts a few hours, so it's a small time investment.

I can also recommend Outer Wilds. It's a puzzle story game. It gives you a lot of freedom, with the downside that it's somewhat easier to get stuck. For this game you should buy a gamepad.

If you like single player shooters, I recommend Half-Life 2.

Hope this helps!

PS. As for peripherals, a keyboard+mouse should be plenty. Some vehicle driven games require a gamepad to play comfortably.

As for a GPU, the games I mentioned here will run on anything semi-modern. No need to buy something brand new.

Thanks for the reco.

Anything that requires mouse is out. I have a RSI on my wrist, and anytime i use the scroll wheel it flares up.

I am ready to buy a gamepad. I guess I will need to explore which one I should buy.

Outer wilds looks interesting. Something I will explore one of these weekends.

Outer Wilds is amazing if you like puzzles and/or sci fi.

Noted. Is on my definite list now :-)

PC games generally assume you have an Xbox controller. I'm not sure about Linux compatibility but based on a quick search it should work fine.

There isn't really a good way to recommend a game to someone who's never played a game before - preferences regarding immersion, complex mechanics, turn-based vs live-action, etc. vary wildly. Someone who likes Europa Universalis 4 frequently does not like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and vice versa. With these constraints I would probably recommend Cyberpunk 2077 (no gamepad), and if you decide you like live-action, Hades, and if you don't, Slay the Spire.

Ah, I just saw your adjacent comment about RSI. First-person games like CP77 can be played with gamepad, they're just better with mouse. But without a mouse, I'd switch my initial recommendation to A Hat In Time.

Hat in time sounds quirky and interesting. Will give it a go

Regarding gamepads: you can use the xbox/playstation ones with your computer. Bluetooth is hit or miss for me (windows), but they both work really well with a USB cable. Its subjective of course, but the console manufacturers do a pretty good job with comfort and quality.

If you liked Doom, it might be fun to play through some of the newer doom games like Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal and see how they've evolved over the years.

Oh I wasn't aware that I could use the xbox/playstation controllers on Ubuntu. I guess that makes it easier to buy one.

I did not play much of Doom in a single player mode. It was typically in a LAN party my friends used to organize. I don't have much nostalgia for the game as such, more for the time and friends during those period :-) I am not sure I wanna explore the newer versions. But I might try...

Thanks everyone for the recos.

I asked chatgpt to summarize the conversation, and this is what it came up with.

https://chatgpt.com/share/68752971-9e78-8012-bb83-5586a81d4d...

I have a huge backlog of games I’ve bought on sale knowing I would enjoy them, but never got around to playing them. It’s well over 50% of my game library.

The problem for me is that a good game that you really like can easily eat multiple thousands of hours. It’s just a time consuming hobby. And it takes a lot of effort to get started on a new game. I can’t help but think “wouldn’t I rather spend that time improving my ranking in x or y game…”

Literally thousands?? A 40-hour work week for a year is ~2000 hours. Out of curiosity, what's your rough 'playing schedule'?

I’ll put 3-4 hours into gaming from around 8:30-12:30 pm after the kids go to bed. It takes the place of most TV, movies, or social media for me. On the weekends it can be a bit more. I also do competitive gaming and during the comp seasons I have some later nights.

That has been my schedule since 2008 or so, and it adds up (or so my Steam numbers tell me).

I think this is the real reason for the metric, browsing steams sales and scooping deals for later, I wonder what the numbers would be if they compared playtime with full price purchase or purchase made not during major store-wide sales.

I'm buying games I will play when my kids leave home.

I'm buying games that I pirated as a kid.

The longer you wait the cheaper they will be because of the age.

I have a ton of games that I haven't played. Mostly it's due to wanting to support the devs that pushed linux builds for their games.

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/gear-acquisition-syndro...

First from "guitar acquisition syndrome" can now become "game acquisition syndrome"

It is "gear acquisition syndrome". It refers to all guitar related equipment, actually I'd say that it refers to pedals much more than guitars.

Synthesizers (and related stuff, such as effects or virtual instruments) qualify too. I don't know if there are other instruments which trigger this behavior.

More than just instrument. GAS exists in Photography, cycling, camping, DIY, automotive repair,...

It's linked to the dopamine anticipation loop that buying an item feels like you're making progress.

I was aware of photography. But it's remarkable that guitars and synths seem to be the only two instruments.

> It's linked to the dopamine anticipation loop that buying an item feels like you're making progress.

I'm not fond of such explanations. The brain is so much more than dopamine. I don't think there's even a thorough explanation linking buying a guitar and dopamine, let alone one that can link it purely to dopamine. Buying is not a loop either.

Very different.

With a physical item you can always sell it or give it away.

Instruments in particular can hold value extremely well.

Also, just having the guitar as a decoration can look nice.

There's a reason most guitar manufacturers put a lot of effort into aesthetics.

My library has quite a few games I haven't played, but most are from bundles that cost as much as or slightly less than the other bundle parts I actually did want. A couple are from friends posting keys from bundles, and then I got sidetracked by something before seeing if whatever game was actually as interesting as it sounded.

The only one I actually properly paid for and haven't played is Elden Ring. Because I got sidetracked for too long between buying it and finding out it wanted admin access (for some anti-cheat rootkit) to play at all rather than just to enable competitive online things I wasn't interested in. Which I didn't feel like doing on a machine that also had non-game stuff on it.

I don't know if it still requires elevated privileges because I've played it on Linux, but if you used the Seamless Coop mod it disables EAC and uses the Steam API for multiplayer, so presumably won't require admin privileges. There's also er-patcher which I use to "fix" the framerate and comes with an option to disable EAC (and a few other nice features IMO).

There are mods to disable online play and anti-cheat with it.

I’ve bought a bunch of games just to support the creators, to vote with my dollar and say: I want more of this. Dwarf Fortress comes to mind as an example. I’ve got to sit down and learn to play it. Will probably take a week!

I have probably 1000 games in my Steam library. Played maybe 50 of those if that.

Why? Earlier Humble Bundle subscription... And in addition I've bought so many bundles separately I've never played.

I’ll often buy a game (esp an Indie game) and just not have time to play it. I don’t have a ton of free time, so if a game doesn’t immediately draw me in and keep my attention, I don’t play it. I think that’s pretty common.

I’ll also buy games on a whim and never get much past the title screen.

I have more money than time these days. But when I was younger I had more time than money. So I’d pirate games. This is kind of my way of atoning.

I will buy games purely because I want them continue to be made. There’s developers that released a game I liked 10 years ago that I still buy all the games of just on the off chance the next one will be equally loved by me.

Conversely, there’s publishers that I avoid like the plague. Nothing Ubisoft or Electronic Art will ever see my disk any more.

Surely they could have worded that better. What they mean to say is that most games that get bought don't get played.

Umberto Eco's game library.

Like courses on udemy. Most people buy a ton of courses probably for the feeling of having bought a course. Which translates apparently to already halfway there becoming that expert the courses promises you to become. Or they build a catalog and sell the account (on udemy).

About 15 or so years ago a roomate and I recognized this issue and created a simple solution that worked for us. A Google sheet where we would list games we completed and give them 5, 10, or 15 points subjectively based on the size of the game. At the end of a school term whoever got the most points would pick a dinner (take-out, dine-in, etc.) and the other would pay. For us that's all it took to break out of the habit of playing the same 2 games all the time.

I'm sure many of you are being fastidious engineers and immediately thinking about all the failure modes. But that's the delight in something so simple: we didn't have to worry about everyone else's failure modes.

I buy lots of potentially interesting games when they go on sale. Especially single player (or at least with a single player option) so I don't have to worry about servers sitting down for a lack of players.

This is true for all products.

How much of your closet is filled with stuff you haven’t worn in at least a year.

How much of your freezer is full of stuff you’ll never eat.

How many of the books on your bookshelf will you actually read before you die?

I find for physical objects, I’m much more likely to actually use them. I have read 95+% of the physical books in my house, wear 90+% of my clothes in any given year, 95+% of the food I buy. Mainly because I’m physically limited to buying/owning a certain number of things before I run out of space. With a 150TB NAS and at least 4TB of local storage in each of my PCs (and the fact you don’t even need to download a game to buy it), it’s a lot easier to hoard digital items without using them.

Physical books (and games) sit there on a shelf and you're occasionally remind you that you bought them and maybe should read/play them.

Items in a digital library seem much easier to completely and utterly forget about.

True, but on the flip side, items in a digital library generally don't have to be paid for and put there until you're about to use them for the first time, making it a little stranger that they never even get booted up.

Everyone's different, but at least for me, I don't buy a game with the hope I'll find time to play it sometime in the next month, I buy it when I'm ready to start playing it, like right now.

I'll bet kitchen tools are big on this. How many people buy a specialized appliance like a bread maker and then use it once or never at all? If you don't use something regularly, it's easy for it to end up tucked away in a cabinet where you never think of it again.

eBooks and audiobooks are even worse than paper books in that regard. Environmentally much better though!

I buy a lot of games I pirated, so it looks like I never played them.

Maybe I’m not the crowd this article is referring to, but for the most part, I wishlist games I’m interested in, then buy them on sale. As a result, I’ve played most of the games in my library.

Having said that, there are still games I haven’t played, but these are older titles when I used to follow Steam on Twitter, and would grab random games on sale.

Since moving to only buying wishlisted games (I no longer follow any other feeds of sales), I’ll only buy games I’m already interested in.

I am somewhat guilty, but I bought a number of Humble Bundle's (when it was the original one) and got a huge number of games I am not interested in.

So I guess I fit in but still not?

Man, those unopened hobby product photos just look like spending addiction. I still remember someone on r/headphones who had like 30 different AKG headphones.

Why just Steam?

I buy my ps5 games on disc. Most of them I treat the same as Steam. I wishlist them and occasionally do a round of checking which ones have cheapened enough to get. That because physical cheapens faster than digital on console, and you also retain long term access no matter what Sony may decide next year.

And yes, I have a few never opened console discs as well. They definitely weren't full price...

> I too participate in video game tsundoku. SteamDB has a tool that will show you how few games in your collection you have actually played. Here is mine. 2/3rds of my games were never played.

> To see your own stats go here: https://steamdb.info/calculator/

Ahah, piker ...

I know some people with a huge library, practically everything free. They are into game design, so in their case it's more meta than playing. Given that there are hundreds of thousands of (wannabe/student/amateur/pro) game designers and programmers, I wouldn't be surprised if there are many people with similar libraries.

Many people buy a lot of games just to give them away on steamgifts.com. I used to be heavily involved over there, giving away many thousands of game copies, and ended up with over 4,800 games in my own Steam library, and I still haven't played more than 200. I don't think I have enough days left in my life to ever play them all.

The point is to collect games when they’re at a discount, no? At least that’s the game I play! Got 100+ at this point

I just checked and I have 300+, yet from checking purchase history I haven't really spent that much on Steam at all. Apart from Cyberpunk I never paid much for anything.

As others have mentioned, for me it's also mostly Humble Bundle promos, paying small amounts that were just donations. Maybe once or twice there was a game I wanted.

I haven't opened it in 5 years though. I always toy with giving it away or deleting it.

I use a tracker to try and fight this, showing how many games I've started and also achievement progress in them in aggregate.

But I also buy a lot of books I intend to read later, so I almost think it's inherent to digital copies? The less friction in storing them the easier it is to buy aspirationally.

>I use a tracker to try and fight this, showing how many games I've started and also achievement progress in them in aggregate.

I've tried something similar before and it worked, for a while, but I started feeling the free time I spent gaming at best felt like a chore and at worst like a job. Nowadays I just play what I feel like and don't really bother much with completing games or not, because realistically I never will finish my backlog.

also very reasonable. there's no sense doing any of it unless it's enjoyable, and "getting your money's worth" out of a book or game you just aren't liking is a bad consequence of caring too much for the sunk cost and etc

> But I also buy a lot of books I intend to read later, so I almost think it's inherent to digital copies?

Nah, it also occurs plenty with physical copies. Look up tsundoku.

What tracker? I need something like this, I've around 1600 games on steam and need a way to keep track.

There are others but http://completionist.me/ works the best for me. Shows the averages and also has things like "this many games are under 5 percent completion" so I can go find something I booted up once and forgot about.

I also use steams category system to then tag some of those into a backlog category, although that doesn't help as much

It turns out that gamers, despite being the people who fund my existence, are not fully rational actors, unless we consider some externality like they are buying games for the mental satisfaction of collecting or something.

One tactic I’ve developed for myself is I select 1, maximum 2 games I want to play from my wishlist and I get those during seasonal sale. I don’t purchase other games until the next sale unless it’s to play with my friends.

Do many more Americans than I realized pay for unlimited data caps? I try to restrict myself to 1 download per month with a family of 3 because we get pretty close to our TB cap each month and I work from home.

People who buy a game and don't play it, usually don't download it either. And many cheap games don't have huge downloads either.

Some games I play for an hour but never return to.

Some games I have 1000s of hours on.

Whether a given game will be the former or the latter is hard to tell.

Given these facts it makes sense to buy a lot of games knowing I will only play a few regularly.

This makes me wonder how much consumer spending as a whole is on products that people never use. It's not like this psychology is unique to gaming. Could it be as high as 50%?

So true... out of the 5 games I have bought on steam, I have played 2 (one fully), and installed and just played briefly 1, and two other never even installed.

True for board games, ttrpg books and games, and a whole lot more. We have an abundance of cool things, but not an abundance of time and opportunities.

I have a backlog of games, so lately I buy only if I plan to play it. I don't use bundles - that's the source of most the unplayed games.

Yeah, I used to do bundles like the Humble Indie Bundle back in the day, but most of those games just became unplayed entries in my steam library. These days I'm a lot choosier about games I buy - it has to be either a game I plan to play right away, or a game I'm certain I'm going to play later and is on sale. Otherwise, I have too many unplayed games to keep dropping money on more.

it's an antilibrary https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antili...

I buy games I might play, my kids might play. And sometimes to repay my younger self debt.

I like to curate and grow my collection over time. I’m fine not playing 80% of games I buy on steam

Steam games are the original NFTs. You buy them to look at the cover art in your Steam library.

Most books I get, I don't read

It’s still worth buying physical books that sound interesting to you even if you don’t read them, because then you can have an impressive shelf of books in your home that you might read someday, or someone else might want to read from.

With these steam games? No physical copy means you’re just throwing money away.

Maybe it's a good thing; they might be doing more productive things!

I just realised I bought expedition 33 and still haven’t played it. :(

I buy some just to support the developer if they are small.

Games are just like fashion!

This was me for a long time and it got even worse especially with Humble Bundles — I often ended up buying games on say PS5 though I had them on steam.

Ended up building a side project for myself which would yell at me for trying to buy something I already had.

But that’s ok, sometimes the collection is half the fun

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