It's a trap! Buying frenzy.

I've fallen into a trap of buying too much stuff.
It's easy to do in the UK, really. Between all the Charity Shops, the Entertainment Exchanges and Steam's offers, I most probably bought more games in the last two years than I did during all my life before moving to the UK. It's awesome, but it's also scary.

This comes back to my post about the gaming regime from some time back. I should probably introduce a buying regime as well, because right now I've got more games than I could possibly play through in the next year, or even maybe the next two years. And I still feel the need to buy more.

It's a state of mind. Steam doesn't help, really. The guys over there put up different titles on sale. There's a limited number of games I'm really interested in. There's another limited number of stuff I'd be willing to pick up because they sound cool. And for some reason, Steam manages to make me an offer on one or another near every week. Damn.

Anyway, my point is, I've fallen into the trap of buying stuff because it's either cheap or I really want it. As most of you know, I live away from my home town now, and I only have a crummy laptop to play and work on. By crummy I mean that it can't run Warcraft 3 with full details, and Diablo 2 slows down when I turn on the minimap, so you get the idea. I can't hope to run anything more recent than a 2003 game (even that can't be done sometimes). And yet, while here, I bought many games from 2006, 2007 and from around these dates, in hope of playing them over Christmas.

I'm going back to Poland for a month. There is no chance that I will get to play all the games I have bought in the last year alone over that period of time. I am hoping to play around 5-10 of them, depending on how I feel about rushing through some games instead of taking my time with them. And still I am tempted to buy new games which I won't run here. Why? Because of that trap.

It gets more tricky with the used game market. You can find real treats there and some of them you won't get for any reasonable price elsewhere. I bought a copy of Kohan 2: Kings of War for fifty pence for goodness sake, and that was the only copy of the game I've seen outside the one I bought when it premiered in Poland!

But yeah, a word of advice, if you're buying new games and just can't stop. Ask yourself these questions:
- will I have time to play this with all the games I have now which await play?
- is this something I've been waiting for for a long time, or is it just something that caught my fancy?
- if I don't have the time now, will I'll be able to get it cheaper when I do have time to play it?
- if I won't get it now, will I'll be able to get it at all later on?

I find these help to determine whether you buy something or not. For example, I bought a used copy of Call of Juarez today, because I don't think I'd be able to pick it up at all, but I have the sequel (prequel, technically) to the game, so I figured - what the hell, why not? Though again, it's one of the games I probably won't have time to try out until the Summer holidays...

Seriously, anyone with issues like mine, we need help... but not if we can control it. We can do it. Meanwhile, go play something.