Great question posed by Stabs in a comment after my blog post in which I admitted to having bought 42 games last year and only played 13 of them thoroughly.
"Do you see it as a problem that you never or briefly played so many games - are you too impulsively buying games you're not really going to play or is it still worth getting them to have a brief look?"
I gave a brief answer in my own comment but I will try to expand on it here.
I do try out the majority of the games I purchase and I do manage to immerse myself more completely in a small number of them. In fact once I latch on to a particular game I often immerse myself quite completely in one game for a few days, or even a few weeks. One of my greatest gaming pleasures actually comes from completing games and once a game gets its hooks into me I will stick with it quite doggedly to the end of the main campaign. For this reason I quite like the modern trend towards shorter more intense single player games and I simply ignore gamer achievements, DLC and other mechanisms that are used to artificially add longevity to games.
Of course with so many games to play it does sometimes happen that I get distracted from a game before I reach its natural conclusion. If I wasn't enjoying the game that is not a problem but there are a small number of titles I regret not having played more thoroughly. I tell myself that one day I will get back to them but it rarely happens.
My play-style does limit what I can hope to achieve in certain types of game. Competitive multi-payer gaming of any sort is more or less out because I am not prepared to commit for long enough to build up any ability. MMORPGs could be a problem but I appear to have struck a comfortable compromise with Lotro where I play for a couple of months and then take a year break and Turbine have been kind enough not to add content at such a rate that I cannot catch up.
Gaming Acquisitions since last Friday: Disciples 2 Gold Pack (Original Game plus two expansions), Batman Arkham Asylum, Lotro Europe F2P preview client, Dogfight (Aerial combat).
Games played since last Friday: Disciples 2 (half way through tutorial), Batman Arkham Asylum (about two thirds of way through main campaign), Lotro original (Joined a kin raid to Barad Guldur last night), Lotro F2P preview (spent half an hour starting a new character and getting him to Archet). Dogfight (installed and played about 10 minutes of tutorial. Might join RPS event on Friday).
"Do you see it as a problem that you never or briefly played so many games - are you too impulsively buying games you're not really going to play or is it still worth getting them to have a brief look?"
I gave a brief answer in my own comment but I will try to expand on it here.
I do try out the majority of the games I purchase and I do manage to immerse myself more completely in a small number of them. In fact once I latch on to a particular game I often immerse myself quite completely in one game for a few days, or even a few weeks. One of my greatest gaming pleasures actually comes from completing games and once a game gets its hooks into me I will stick with it quite doggedly to the end of the main campaign. For this reason I quite like the modern trend towards shorter more intense single player games and I simply ignore gamer achievements, DLC and other mechanisms that are used to artificially add longevity to games.
Of course with so many games to play it does sometimes happen that I get distracted from a game before I reach its natural conclusion. If I wasn't enjoying the game that is not a problem but there are a small number of titles I regret not having played more thoroughly. I tell myself that one day I will get back to them but it rarely happens.
My play-style does limit what I can hope to achieve in certain types of game. Competitive multi-payer gaming of any sort is more or less out because I am not prepared to commit for long enough to build up any ability. MMORPGs could be a problem but I appear to have struck a comfortable compromise with Lotro where I play for a couple of months and then take a year break and Turbine have been kind enough not to add content at such a rate that I cannot catch up.
Gaming Acquisitions since last Friday: Disciples 2 Gold Pack (Original Game plus two expansions), Batman Arkham Asylum, Lotro Europe F2P preview client, Dogfight (Aerial combat).
Games played since last Friday: Disciples 2 (half way through tutorial), Batman Arkham Asylum (about two thirds of way through main campaign), Lotro original (Joined a kin raid to Barad Guldur last night), Lotro F2P preview (spent half an hour starting a new character and getting him to Archet). Dogfight (installed and played about 10 minutes of tutorial. Might join RPS event on Friday).
Comments
I do admit to being a sucker for Steam sales, but usually it's to buy a game that I may have played at one time and want to repurchased a copy.
BTW, Arkham Asylum is an awesome game! At least I think so, I finished it on all three platforms!
DLC, when free, usually gets me back into a game, at least that's happened with both Left 4 Dead games so far.
Actually, free games in general can eat into gaming time. Alien Swarm, Super Crate Box, Insurgency, and plenty more provide just as much fun as if you paid for them.
I'm not sure where games you've played before but want to re-buy digitally fall into place here but that's also something to consider.
I have so far resisted the urge to re-purchase games I already own just to get them in digital form but I agree with you about free games. These days you could spend you entire gaming career playing high quality free games. There really has never been a better time to be a PC gamer.