Apparently making good

So if you remember, my plan when starting this blog was to stop me buying games.  If you'll remember further, that didn't work.  In fact, I failed miserably.  Boo for me.

I didn't let that get me down though.  I soldiered on.  I picked up most of the Christmas relelases that I was interested in, along with a few that I got really good deals on.

But there was a Christmas miracle this year.  I realized that I had too many games that I wanted to play, and I'd never get through them willy-nilly.  So, much like the cylons, I came up with a plan.  (Unlike the cylons, I didn't have a revelation and subsequently abandon my plan in a quest to have a baby.)

My plan was a simple one: play the short action games first, and then play through the long role playing games when those were done.  The result of this deviously simple plan? Huge success!  In the past few months, I've played through:

Mercenaries 2

Gears of War 2

Tomb Raider Underworld

Mirror's Edge

Prince of Persia

Fable 2

That's six games in two months, which is fairly impressive for myself.  Next up is the string of RPGs.  I have five on my list, at least two of which clock in at around 75-100 hours each to finish.  Frankly, I'm going to be busy for a while.

What makes this plan such a huge success is that it's actually resulting in me buying fewer games, since have a set schedule in my head of what I'm going to play.  A few times now, I've had games in my hand at the store, ready to buy, and then I think about when I'm going to actually get to play the new one, and I've put it back on the shelf.

The other elements helping me not buy is the worsening economy (not hitting me directly yet, but just in case...), and the subsequent effect on game prices.  Frequently this Christmas, games would come out, and then drop in price weeks later.  Usually, it takes several months for significant discounts to be seen, but with fewer people buying games lately, publishers are getting nervous and dropping prices in hopes of picking up sales.  Because of that, instead of having to wait many months to get something cheap, it's now only a few weeks.

I think the vital difference between me trying not to buy games before and not buying now is that before, I was forcing myself not to buy for the sake of not buying.  Now, I'm not buying because I know that I'm playing what I own.  The only difference is a mental thing of realizing that I have more than I need already, and I want to enjoy what I have.  I'm also applying this thinking to books, and am planning out what the next several books to read are.  

Here's to finishing another half dozen games!