Wise men say, ‘forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza’! — Michelangelo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990
Do you buy games that you rarely if ever play? Like to get games just to fill places in your collection? Or just are always looking for the best bargains for your gaming money? The last is a key one — waiting for sales is a good idea for shopping in general. You miss out on playing the latest release right away, but you save money and often if the game was good when it came out, it is still good to play. Just like late pizza can be worth it, with a discount, once reheated.
You may be a game hoarder. Games purchased on PC, especially digital purchase, have little if any resale value. And games in general really don’t appreciate in value on the used market. It isn’t like some things where rare, older items may someday be worth a fortune. The value of the money we spend on our games is the entertainment we get from playing them.
I have hundreds of PC games, with over 300 purchased in the last couple of years. I didn’t spend thousands of dollars on them either. A few were purchased at full price, even some preorders, but most of my collection was obtained at very high discounts — 75-95% off retail, some less than a dollar per game. You may wonder how I have time to play all of them.
Surprise! I don’t. I didn’t think you’d be surprised though. I get some games in bundled collections with only one or two of them on my “wish to play” list. Still, I may try out the others if I have time, simply because I have them. But here’s the thing: If I’m paying only a tiny fraction of the regular price for a game, even if I don’t ever play it I’m not out a lot of money. If I buy 10 games at 90% off, and only end up enjoying one of them, it is the same as if I’d got that game at full price. I still have the others, in case I change my mind, and I may never have tried that one cool game if I hadn’t bought it on the super sale.
My situation may be different from yours. Or not, there are probably others like me. We have a multi-PC household, with multiple gaming accounts (Origin, Steam, U-Play, Battlenet, etc.) on them. For games where we want to play at the same time — multiplayer mostly, but some single player games too — we have to have copies for each of us. This makes bargain shopping even more important to us.
Buy At Full Price
There are games we want at release, that we believe in so much we even preorder. I’m a Battlefield fan, and preordered two copies of BF4 Premium Deluxe, so we’d be all ready to play right away. That’s about $220 US, for those who don’t know the price. In my case, I played the Alpha and liked it, we played the Beta and had fun, and trusted that the release game would be awesome even if it had some problems at the start. Did we get our money’s worth?
How much is entertainment worth? A movie rental might be about $1 US per hour, while going to a movie theater is at least ten times as expensive. Watching TV can be hard to measure — generally less than a dollar an hour, depending on the service package — but I find movies and gaming more engaging, generally, than most TV shows. There are exceptions, of course, but I’d say that about a dollar an hour is a good price for entertainment.
So with over 1200 hours in BF4, we are well ahead on that score. But I’ve purchased other games at full price and played them far less, but I usually get at least an hour of play time for every dollar I spend on those games.
Preorder or full retail price games are the most expensive, but if we want to play what our friends play, it is often the only option. But if you are bargain minded, you can wait for the first sale. How long does that take?
Wait For First Sale
I’ll use BF4 (COD Ghosts came out at the same time, so it applies to it too) as an example. The October 29, 2013 release was followed by the November Black Friday sales, with a 33% discount on many new releases including BF4. You’d save about $30 off the Premium Edition by waiting a month — or a dollar per day of play time. Since we played far more than an hour per day, and enjoyed the game when it wasn’t crashing or glitching out :-(, I’m OK with the full price. With other games, I’ve been willing to wait for that sale, and only lost out on a month (or two or three) of play time on that game. Since we do have other games to play while waiting, and may play the game when we get it for months or years, the money saved can be worth that short delay. We can buy other games with it, and stretch our gaming money.
Watch For Bargains
The bulk of our gaming library was obtained from the best bargain sales I could find. The PC gaming world has some especially good bargains if you know where to look.
The best deal out there is the Humble Bundle. They sell games and other things to raise money for charities. The collections tend to be split into two or three tiers, with higher tiers requiring a larger minimum donation. Most of the PC games are available from Steam.com, though deals through Origin and others are also offered. Savings average over 90% compared to the current retail prices. The games can be a mix of old and new. The current big bundle is a collection of Star Wars games, and includes the 2005 Star Wars Battlefront II, which might interest people who never tried it and wonder what the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront game is going to be like.
Steam Sales
The next big place to find bargains is on Steam itself. The largest online digital superstore, it is more than just a game store online. It is a gaming community site, allowing gamers to connect and offers services beyond just games. Steam has sales all the time, but it is its seasonal sales — a full week or more of special bargains — which offer the greatest deals. Dozens of games go on sale, with discounts of 75% and even 90% being common. Game collections and Franchise Packs (all games of a given series) are often offered on sale, and those collections often are far cheaper than the individual price of the games themselves.
Last summer’s sale (2014) inspired me to buy a lot of games. Part of this was the price. The other was some family needing a “place to stay for a few days” messing with my vacation time. I figured that getting extra games to try out in my computer-filled (four PCs in LAN) Mancave would help me tolerate extra house guests. It cost more than 5 new release games, but we got a few dozen new games to play (some multiples to play together). We’ve played most of these games, and those we haven’t I expect will be tried out when time allows. In terms of play time per dollar, I think we’ve done better than a dollar per hour of play. But a less “binge purchase” might have been better, though if I’d had more free time during my vacation, who knows, I might have played them all.
Steam Features Support Game Sharing
I want to mention a couple features of Steam which people may not know. Many of you probably know the first one, but your Steam account works on any PC, not just one machine. Other digital game services work the same way. Your games are tied to the account, and you can install them on any PC you wish. You just can’t play them on more than one PC at a time.
Steam Play is an extension of this. Your games aren’t tied to just one platform. Whether you have Windows or Mac or Linux, if the game is available on one of them, your purchase includes it as well. No need for separate copies.
For us, Steam Family Sharing is a very cool feature. You can authorize family and friends to have access to your Steam game library, and be able to run those games from their account (and with their own saves and achievements). The only catch is that a given library can be in use on only one system at a time, so you can’t all play at once. But nothing stops you from opening one or more “Family Sharing” accounts for those games which you plan to take turns playing. Other game account services will let you share by changing users, but this is even more flexible.
A last cool feature at our house is game streaming. My Mancave holds our gaming PCs, but our living room TV has a media center PC hooked to it. It isn’t nearly as powerful for gaming, but Steam streaming allows me to play a game from my couch, wireless keyboard and controllers in hand, with the performance of my dedicated game machine via WIFI streaming. While I tend to play at my 27″ monitor with headphones on, the living room is a better place to show off your gaming. And there are games designed for shared family play, which work especially well here.
Many Other Good Sources For Bargains
Other online gaming services and stores offer their own special advantages. Amazon has its own set of good sales to check out. GoG.com — Good Old Games — is an excellent source of older games, packaged to install and run well on current PCs, and often offers very good sales. EA’s Origin.com offers its own set of sales, and has two special ways to get games. The first best deal is “On The House.” This literally gives you games for free, if you pick them when they are available. While most are older games, that doesn’t make them less fun. And free is always good. The other special offer is “Game Time,” which lets you try out a full game for a limited time, at a time of your choosing. Steam also offers limited time access to try full games, but is usually limited to select free weekends. Either way is a good chance to test out a game you might like, but are unsure about buying.
Free To Play
The last way to get more games is to get them for free. Yes, if you don’t know by now, there are games offered for play at no cost at all. Some of them are easily as good as any game you pay money for. The only catch with some is that you have the option to spend real money to get stuff to use in the game. In most games, you can play and have fun without spending that money. You need to watch out for those which lure you in, but then make you “pay to win” by making the upgrades you need to enjoy the game cost money. Fortunately, there are plenty of good games out there which are fun to play without costing you anything.
Becoming A Game Hoarder
With a bit of money and some careful judgement, you can amass a collection which includes games of every sort you most want to play. There will always be new games to entice you into spending more money, but having a good collection makes it easier to resist the temptation to impulse buy, just because something is new and shiny. Or on a good sale.
But beware. Bargain shopping and collecting can get addicting. You too may find yourself with dozens or hundreds of games and not enough time to play them all.
