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Tldr;
I don't think I missed anything in 2021 and kinda feel the same about next year.
--
I suppose I should start by saying I started this "challenge" by accident. I had no goals or motive and certianly no inspiration.
Usually, perhaps for many of us, I'm an opportunistic game purchaser. I have a few wishlists of neat games I've seen here and when they go on sale (or I see the sale announcement), I snap up few of them at the best discount I can find. I almost never buy at full price and have massed a decent library.
So at beginning of the year, I decided I wanted to try to complete more games, especially the ones with a story.
This lead me to the obvious next step: "I'm playing X, why buy Y? I'm not going to play it right away anyway. It'll be on sale again later too, maybe for less"
By the middle of the year, I realized that I've not purchased a game this year. I hadn't really noticed up until then.
I decided to make it a thing. I'm just not going to buy games this year. I mean, I hadn't even noticed I want buying anything for almost 4-5 months, so I it didn't seem like a hard challenge to complete (low hanging fruit!! That's my style!!,lol)
So it's the end of the year, and I'm still purchase free. And I think I'm better off for it.
I must admit I've had some conflicting thoughts and opinions while doing it and I'd love to hear how I'm not a true Linux gamer or something😋
- I'm a better gamer for it. Since I've nothing new to distract me, I've completed alot more games and I've come to appreciate the ones I played a lot more.
- 2021 might have been a "bad" year for games. I don't think, without looking here, I could tell you one upcoming release, let alone one that's really exciting to me. I think part of that is our niche slot in gaming as linuxers, part is the early access model. There were a lot of interesting and cool games released... But must haves???
- I saved money. I don't have a "gaming budget", but even saving 20-30$ a month, adds up.
- I'm hurting or not supporting the devs! Maybe, so what? We don't owe each other anything. Besides, is buying a game at 50-90% off really even helping? If your putting it on sale, you likely already recouped your initial costs.
Also, am I really helping a dev by buying a game I'll barely play just to show support? No. Charity support is either too small to matter or misleads a dev about their actual fan base.
-I'm not a real gamer! Probably. I know of people who get super excited for the latest and greatest. The buzz. The hype. The rig upgrades!
I can't do that. I love building PC's, but it's expensive. So are the newest games. I can buy both a little later for cheaper and after the bugs are worked out. I don't really have any pressure to purchase a game right away. If it's good, does it matter if I get it on release day?
I figured I'd share my experience in case any of you feel the same way. I'm not advocating that we all stop buying games, bit I'm curious as to your buying habits.
What about 2022? I don't know.
I'm not convinced I'm missing anything and I still have plenty of games to play.
Last edited by denyasis on 27 Nov 2021 at 6:06 pm UTC
Outside of mods to games I already own and a few freeware short games that get dropped by itch.io, nothing really calls to me in the the new gaming world. I picked up a bunch of free games as they were offered, throughout the years. I tried Steam and did not like it. Got rid of my account but kept the DRM Free titles I had on it. Tried GOG but the lack of transparency with Linux native releases and their move towards a launchers has put me off. Dump that account and kept the games.
So far only itch.io and Stadia have my eye. My kids have been gifting me a bunch of indiebox games which are great but many are short which is fine with me but having boxed games in the house once again is very sweet.
I was very fortunate that my kids grew up playing the stuff I already had and played F2P games which has helped saved us all a bunch of cash. My kids still play DOTA 2, TF2 and LoL. Some even play Stardew Valley that they got via this site when it was a giveaway awhile back on GOG.
I'm not looking forward to any gaming project whatsoever. I'm just checking stuff out here out of curiosity.
I do agree with all of you; I'm personally not seeing a lot that I'm interested in either. Maybe I'm no longer the target audience; I get tends and tastes change, or more likely, I have a better idea of what I like and don't want to deviate from that.
I know I'm definitely not the target audience as I'm looking for online mp games that I can host and make mods for. This has me staying with older stuff.
Last edited by Mezron on 28 Nov 2021 at 12:12 am UTC
Caveat: But if you count donating to FLOSS games as "buying a game" then I'm a fraud and please disregard the above.
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I have a huge backlog and still receiving free games from various sources. So many awesome worth playing games that I kept pushing back while keep acquiring new ones...and never get around to play them.
I've come to the realization that I'll maybe never have the time to play all of them. So I've made myself a "must play" list and I'm slowly going through it.
Other thing I realize was that most of them are rather old games, so no need for new hardware, especially now with the advent of FSR (and my new Freesync monitor). I think I'm set for now.
Years ago I used to get in a frenzy during the sales time (especially on Steam), in the last two though I haven't even once check the page. I stopped caring about that.
Also, almost all AAA titles are dog poop in all this pandemic times. Bugs "livestock center", release unfinished game, full of FOMO microtransaction predatory, and out of optimized codes which may causing failure or worse destruction to our PC hardware.
In my opinion, do not buy anything based on what you want in these turbulence time; if you cannot afford it. Trying save your money even just 1 cent. Sure, we should support the developers for their contribution towards Linux gaming. But, not on the basis that we got nothing to eat for dinner.
So, just think it as expenditure "resistor" or "regulator".
What I have been trying to do is only buying things I am going to play immediately. Buying something on sale to play in the indeterminate future is what leads to spending money on stuff that will sit on my library. Though I'll also say I feel zero guilt for games I haven't finished, I'm not going to force myself to play something just to check up a list. I'm not going to play something I don't feel like just because I bought it.
A bit of a hot take here, but I'd recommend to everyone: give up on AAA. Straight up avoid them. They are not worth your time, your money, your computer power. Sure, they do a few cool things once in a while due to sheer amount of money, but they also suck in ways no one else could and are almost always uninspired and repetitive. When small studios are bought they start to suck after a few years, and it's no coincidence.
Don't buy an overpriced GPU to accommodate AAA requirements. Don't spend a ton of money to get stuff at release, to get special editions, to get the best possible version. Instead of learning to live with AAA bullshit - anticheat, DRM, lootboxes, toxicity, bugs, day-0 DLC, abused developers, money laundering, crypto scams, etc - learn how to live with the limitations of non-infinite budgets.
Sure, make exceptions once in a while for something you really care about, but don't normalize it. No need to go all into game jam stuff and obscure one-person dev teams, just accept that AAAs are not worth it and have never been. No, it's not just newer AAAs, it was always bad.
My current main rig is a Raspberry Pi 4 running Twister OS with my back up gaming/work device being a System76 Gazelle 17. Since my wife and I are still playing older titles we are probably going to stick to this setup for years to come. It's been a smoother gaming/work/family computing experience since we went this route.
If the upcoming kit I ordered for a Raspberry Pi laptop goes well, we may end up selling our gaming laptops since they are going for more than what we bought them for used.
I have a big backlog like most of us here, and by no means do I have a massive collection compared to many. Yet I will never ever finish my ~500+ games in my lifetime. This realisation led me to buy way fewer games in the past two years, saving me quite a bit of money. Why buy games I will likely never play? What do I actually owe these creative content creators? It's not up to me to have them succeed and produce more quality games.
Weird, huh? I think so.
I do still contribute to PC gaming and can happily refer to myself as a PC gamer, known for prolific use of credit cards during store sales. I'm not sure how much of a gamer you can be if you stopped buying for years...but who decides what a 'gamer' is anyways? Not me. So do what makes you happy! Spend your money on other activities you value and want to contribute to. Then again if you like a game, even if its AAA, then I believe you should support them too.
The only thing I really disagree with is your assertion that 2021 hasn't been a good gaming year. In my opinion, it's been pretty spectacular. Native games like Valheim, Griftlands, Legend of Keepers, Loop Hero and most recently, the absolutely superb Roguebook have kept me very happy this year with hours upon hours of gaming.
Throw the net into Proton-land and I've been blown away by The Phantom Abyss, Everspace 2, Mass Effect Legendary Ed, all the while playing old favourites like Noita, or games that recently removed Denuvo, like Nier:Automata, Death Stranding, or Star Wars: Fallen Order.
2021 has been pretty special, I think.
I'll admit, I did feel weird consciously deciding to stop buying games. I mean you go online here and other places and it's all NEW RELEASE, NEW RELEASE, SALE!!, and the comments are usually "OMG my wallet!", "grow the collection!", and "best game ever!" (I am making fun of us all a bit here, have a laugh 😂).
I think it's ok fade in/out of one's hobbies. I know there was a stretch of several years where I really didn't game much at all due to life (although I still bought games, hoping I'd find time later).
Pretty much exactly sums up my situation. I started trying to "complete" more games in 2020. I'm very bad at that, usually getting "bored/distracted" or giving up when it gets hard. I think I've completed 11 in the last 2 years. Probably more than I've ever finished in my life before.
On top of that, I've "discovered" games that have been in the collection
gathering dust, but turned out I really enjoyed. The STALKER series, Witcher 1-2 (made me read the books), XCOM 1, etc etc. Instead of browsing for a game to buy, I play!
I guess I'm singling you out here, but you wrote it very nicely. Sorry. But what are we calling AAA? Like large commercial budget? If so, I might have to disagree. I can think of quite a few good games from the past that are pretty good (Witcher 3 as an example). Or are we talking more about mass-market games? In that case, I can agree.
Totally cool. I hope you are enjoying the new games too!
I can respect your opinion here, after all, our enjoyment from gaming is subjective. Of the games you mentioned, I remember a few of them from this site. Perhaps I should say something like, 2021 did not have a lot of games that interested me personally? Without trying to sound super down on anyone's gaming choices, for me, if I saw something interesting, I likely already owned something similar.
While I'm not buying, I still enjoy reading about Linux gaming here including all the new releases and news. So I must admit I appreciate all of you that are still buying and trying new games and talking about them.
If I wanted to be charitable or do something nice for a cool person I could find more effective ways of doing it than by accumulating random shit I don't care for. Heck, those days we even have things like Patreon that specialize in that.
I'd say Witcher 3 is AAA, maybe not as high budget as Cyberpunk 2077 but still clearly in the AAA realm. And it's certainly an outlier, a game that stands out for how well liked it was, winner of multiple awards and breaking records of copies sold. And it still had a bunch of problems: it was notoriously buggy at first, it was delayed, had accusations of heavy crunch. It was full of the usual spurious (if harmless) bling - a bunch of cosmetics, pre-order exclusive "protective sleeve", decorative statues for the ultra-expensive versions, etc. It was a quite heavy game on release, and on the high end of game prices. And, while it was masterfully executed, it was not particularly inventive or unusual - action RPG and open world, in AAA, who ever heard of that? None of that makes the game bad, but what I mean to say is that this is the shining jewel of AAA and it still has some of the same bullshit? Now imagine the average quality of AAAs, those with the always-online DRM, with the micro-transactions, the bad reviews...
Look, I know some things are only achievable by AAA. Indies can't get this much content in an open-world game, can't get instant match-making at any time in the day, can't get the same ridiculous high fidelity, and etc... but looking below the shiny film on the top, it's not worth it.
Edit: I'm not sure if I was clear in what I'm saying. I'm not saying that no AAA game is ever worth your time/money, I'm saying that as a whole AAAs are not worth the trouble they cause. My conclusion is not that no one should ever play any AAAs, but that everyone needs to look more critically - look past the marketing - and stop making excuses for the fundamental problems of AAA games. Look into other directions, think about which limitations are actually acceptable, this kind of stuff. Though I'm ranting way too much, maybe if someone wants to keep discussing the issue we should make a new thread.
Last edited by eldaking on 29 Nov 2021 at 5:42 am UTC
Well crap. WL2 was one of the ones I tried this year, but I couldn't do it. It was so.... Boring? Perhaps the aurora/infinity engine styled RPg's aren't for me. I really like the concept, but I've only ever managed to complete Planescape: Torment (fantastic writing) and Fallout.
BioWare is particularly infamous. Got bought by EA in 2007, same year as they released Mass Effect (the first one, but they had already started work on the second). Dragon Age Origins was released in 2009, but work started in 2002. They finished what they were already doing... and then it was all downhill.
There are plenty of other, lower-profile, stories. At first it's all great, their games have more stuff than ever. Then they start making more action RPGs and shooters, focusing more on multiplayer, putting out more DLC, graphics become more "AAA generic", people from the studio are moved to help with other projects, deadlines get shorter, there are news of controversy in the workplace, and then you realize their old games were so much better, why could that be.
Like others here, I've such a huge backlog of games that I as well will probably never be able to play them all. So I don't see the point of adding even more to the catalogue.
At the same time, I greatly lost interest in playing games or get bored rather quickly. Instead, I rather spend my time differently.
So playing some old games from time to time suits me quite fine and I really don't feel like I'm missing out anything.
As I'm mostly buying Linux natives, new games are not going to break the bank either. As I'm buying relatively few games, there's bit more time for each game.
I think I share some favorites with scaine.
Valheim has most hours and it's one of those rare first open survival craft games that have native Linux build. It can be bit unfair sometimes, but not as unfair as Muck.
Ziggurat II is proving FPS fix for this year. Sure, it's roguelite arena shooter, so story is bit thin, but it's still good fun.
Rain on your Parade is quite good mayhem.
Luck be a Landlord is a roguelite slot machine game. Doesn't have as expansive world as Valheim for sure as all you see is the slot machine, but it's still fun little game.
Griftlands is narrative card game. Relationship building is in heart the game, which is something little bit different.
Loop Hero is maybe last one worth mentioning. I guess it's bit like autobattler with constructing world from tiles. It's clearly doing its own thing.
Last edited by Anza on 2 Dec 2021 at 5:41 pm UTC
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- I already own a ridiculously large collection of games. Many of which I have never installed. Occasionally I spot a special offer, and think "Hmm, I should buy that, that's a good deal" only to then despair at the fact that I already own it and I didn't remember. (Nowadays, I always search my game collection before finalising a purchase.)
- I have slowly become more realistic with respect to understanding what I'll get out of games titles. I choose games based on research whether the game-loop appeals to me. Some games play incredibly well, and I just can't put them down. (These games fit that mould for me: 7 Days To Die, Nuclear Throne, Slay The Spire, FTL, Ring of Pain, Crypt of the Necrodancer)
- There have been less AAA native Linux titles released, recently. We've got more games thanks to Proton, but I'm not inspired to buy them unless they are available for *my* platform (Linux). My quite recent 2021 purchases of Valheim, Prodeus (due to come to Linux after EA), Ion Fury, Objects in Space, Vaporum - were thanks to those games supporting Linux. Linux played a major part in my decision to go ahead with the purchase at the specific price-point.
- I've also come to the understanding that game longevity is limited. If the game is old and isn't updated, it can get to the point where it cannot be played any more. Progress keeps marching on in the tech world, new Linux kernels, new libraries. Plenty of older games get left in the past, and become harder to launch as time goes on. I can't guarantee that Steam, itch, GOG, Epic Store, Stadia (hah!) or others will be around in 10 years time. So, when one of those ceases to exist, what about *my* games - Oh, yeah - They're gone for good (unless I downloaded them and retain an old system to play them on).
I think I'm gonna skip purchasing for 2022.
My first thought was "Ohh, what about that awesome release coming up in 2022?" Followed by "Wait, what game was I thinking of?"
Almost like the assumption is that something big/good HAS to come out...
If I can't remember what in 2022 I'm supposed to be excited for, I probably won't remember to play it.
Besides waiting for '23 will give me plenty of time to remember what I'm supposed to be excited for... And maybe a big fixing patch or two, lol.