Xmas Carnage: Don"t Be A Hero! - PART 2 - Steam Train
Forget Black Friday. Forget Cyber Monday. If youre playing games on your PC, the only hot deals that matter this time of year pop up during Steams holiday sale, which started on December 22 and will end on January 4.
People like to joke about the the difficulty of resisting the allure of Steam sales, but if you dont have a plan of attack it can become a legitimate problem. On the one hand, how do you say no to an 80 percent discount? On other hand, there are going to be so many games that are deeply discounted, youre going to have to say no to something. You only have so much money. More importantly, you only so much time.
Over the years, Ive developed a few techniques that help me get through this difficult shopping season. Its also the season for giving, so Ill share them here with you in hope that they can help you as well.
1. Organize your Steam Library
My Steam Library, which has held all of my PC games for about a decade, is divided into four categories.
First, there is the default GAMES category, where all new purchases wait until I sort them. From there, they almost always go into the HAVENT FINISHED category, where I keep the games I am actively trying to play to completion. Once I finish a game, I move it into the FINISHED category, where Ill keep it until Im sure I dont want to play it again for a story Im writing. Once I feel safe enough that Im not going to play the game anytime soon, I uninstall it.
Finally, there is the dreaded f**k IT category. It might as well be called the s**t list, where I keep games that I havent finished, currently have no intention to keep playing, and which I probably rage quit out of literally muttering f**k it to myself. Most of the games on this list arent installed, because a rage quit is usually followed by a rage uninstall.
This is the most important category. Youre going to buy games that you dont like. Thats okay. Use this list to guide your future purchases. Dont buy downloadable content for games that are in the f**k IT category, obviously, and if Spelunky is already on it, maybe you dont need to buy another super difficult roguelike ever again, even if its $3.00 on sale.
2. Steam sales arent the only sales
The Steam Store is likely the first thing you see when you want to launch a game on your PC, so it makes sense to think that its the best place to buy your games, especially during a crazy holiday sale.
Thats true most of the time, but not always. Amazon also has a huge digital PC games sale, and it might have a better deal on the game you want than Steam. Most of Amazons digital PC games redeem through Steam anyway, and it also has deals on games you cant get through Steam, like Titanfall.
Steam is rules the PC gaming landscape, but its still always worth shopping around.
3. Accept the fact that you are going to die
The average life expectancy for a human being in the United States according to The World Bank is almost 80 years. Thats pretty good, but still, none of us are getting out of this alive.
Even if you lived that long and spent most of your waking hours playing games, you probably wouldnt have time to play every game Steam has on sale to completion.
Thats OKAY!
Games have taught us to be completionists. They reward players for getting all those 120 stars in Super Mario 64, or getting a platinum medal on every race.
h**l, even now, against my better judgment, Im trying to get a 100 percent completion rate in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. This is a really ill-advised endeavor, but I cant help it. Its a compulsion, but you cant indulge it all the time, even if you tried.
I believe this same completionist mentality makes Steam sales more difficult to resist. You start collecting games like Pokmon. Gotta catchem all, even if you dont have the time to play them.
In previous years, Valve even played into this by gamifying sales, giving players free stuff for buying a certain amount of games or completing a goal in a game that was currently on sale.
The only way to be truly responsible during your Steam holiday shopping is to fully internalize this truth. Life is finite. Youre not going to read all the books you buy and you dont have the time to play the games you want to buy.
By all means, go nuts. Buy games you wouldnt have bought otherwise, but remember you can refund Steam games, not time. If you dont like something, move on. Make use of that f**k IT category, and remember that the there are no continues at the end of real life, only the abyss of non-existence.
Source: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/3-tips-for-handling-a-steam-sale-and-accepting-your-mortality
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