I'm not addicted to games, I'm addicted to buying games

This past Christmas was remarkable for me due to one simple fact: I didn’t receive any videogames as gifts. I didn’t ask for any, so none were received - plus, let’s be honest, it’s a little tricky to buy a games journalist a surprise gaming gift. It’s without a doubt the first year I didn’t get any since I was old enough to understand them. It’s not so much that there were no games I’m interested in, it’s just that most of them are only available through Steam. My family aren’t really techno-savvy enough to turn that into a proper gift. So I got lots of board games instead; much easier to wrap, and much more substantial to receive on Christmas day. This left me in a rather unique situation post-Christmas with no games to play and no money to buy any myself (student+Christmas=bad finances).

It was, and is, a situation that highlighted to me something I’ve been struggling with for many years. In fact, I’d wager that most ‘hardcore gamers’ (man I hate that phrase) share the same issue. It’s a consumerist gaming addiction; addiction purely based on the need to own something, a desire to play a game that exceeds all normal and sensible emotions. Desire that quickly becomes about more than just playing a game, but conquering an obstacle. I daresay it doesn’t take long for that desire to become an obsession as the mere concept of owning and playing the game becomes a near-constant thought that’s difficult to shake.

Let me provide an example, hopefully that’ll prevent me from sounding like a deranged looney. The only game I really wanted to play this holiday season was the Company of Heroes 2 expansion Ardennes Assault. I love the story mode of CoH games and as a self-contained story DLC this was right down my alley - hell, I’d even written in my Western Front Armies review that Relic should have made a Battle of the Bulge campaign! Safe to say, I needed it in my life. Yet I didn’t realise that the game is in fact available on DVD before Christmas, and the stupidly high £30 price point on Steam made it tricky to buy for myself. So the 25th passed without me getting the only game I wanted to play. Now is the part where I’ll let you grab the Kleenex.

Once the Christmas rush was over, I found myself without a game to properly enjoy. So I looked around online for the cheapest way to buy Ardennes Assault, but the best I could find was just shy of £20. That’s not exactly expensive for a game, I’ll admit that, but it’s money that I simply didn’t have, and couldn’t afford. But I still wanted to play the game; I really, really wanted to play the game. So pretty much every day I checked the price online, and checked that the Steam sale hadn’t knocked the price down - it did once, to £23... Undeterred I continued to consider the purchase. I had the physical money in my account, but considering I did very little work during December, I knew January would be a tight month. Spending £18 on a game was a bad idea.

Then my friend convinced me to buy Don’t Starve Together. It only cost me £7, and I got the single player version and DLC included - what a bargain! Still, I could have put that money towards Ardennes Assault. For about a day, I managed to stop considering the purchase; I’d bought a great game that I could play in my down time. Yet even while I was playing and enjoying Don’t Starve, there was a niggling feeling at the back of my mind. A day later I quit mid-game, checked the price on G2A and put the game in my basket. I checked my bank account in an effort to convince myself that it would be OK to go through with it. Then I remembered that I was going to London on the weekend to see a wrestling show. Damn. Spending £18 on a game was a bad idea.

Again, the urge to purchase was pushed to the back of my mind. It was still there though. I kept thinking about the presentation I saw at gamescom, and how awesome the game looked then. I read some 7/10 reviews in an effort to convince myself that it wasn’t even worth playing. That didn’t work; I’m a sucker for anything WW2, strategy or Company of Heroes. In a rather pathetic attempt at compliance, I ended up playing the original Company of Heroes for a few hours. That didn’t work either. Hell, it made me want to play Ardennes Assault even more. Not long after, I realised I’d become addicted to something I didn’t even own.

I wanted to enjoy the game, yes, but it went deeper than that. By this point, I just wanted to service my own addiction. I needed to buy Ardennes Assault just so I didn’t have to keep thinking about it, and wondering how much fun I would have with it. Perhaps the worst part of it all was that no game could possibly live up to the hype that I’d established in my own mind. After over a week of consideration and self-debate, the game had become some sort of self-imposed lesson on the value of money. I had to resist my impulses. But then, every so often, I’d think that I probably could afford to buy the damn thing after all.

This strange combination of emotions isn’t new to me, and I expect it isn’t especially new to you either. I’ve always struggled to balance my finances with my love for gaming; writing about games and getting them for free has certainly helped, but annoyingly often I find myself craving a game I can’t afford. It’s somewhat reminiscent of waiting for a new title to be released: the pent-up excitement, constant Googling to find out new info, all to the point that the game can’t possibly live up to your expectations. The difference here is that the obstacle between me and the game is purely mental (well, not always, but with Ardennes Assault).

The really sad thing is that I’ve written all of this in the past tense.Don’t let that fool you, I still haven’t bought the game. As if to prove my sad state I’ve actually written a whole article about it. During the course of which I’ve checked the price twice. It didn’t change, and neither did my attitude towards buying it. I’ve got £12.25 pending from Ebay though, so once that goes through I might just get it. Then again, I could just buy it now with the knowledge that the £12 will go in soon... Or I could keep that money for the rest of the month.

You see!

I’m an obsessive person. I’ll grant that. But this is just getting silly, I should just go ahead and buy it!

...

OK, I’m back. I didn’t buy it. I might need the money for food. Food is quite important. Almost as important as videogames.

Help.