LogFAQs > #946148531

blu posted...

These days even poor people can have a sea of games.

It's true. There are so many giveaways, deep discounts, and games that are just outright free to play (good ones, not the aggressively monetized cash grabs that dominate most of the F2P market) that it's really not that expensive to amass a sizable backlog, especially when you also throw in games that are more normally priced but offer thousands of hours of gameplay (e.g. Minecraft). You've still got the relatively high cost of entry of a console or gaming-capable PC, which can be a difficult hurdle to overcome for poor people, but it's far from insurmountable (especially looking at older second-hand consoles) and is still an incredibly efficient use of entertainment dollars.

Black_Crusher posted...

It's weird but I don't really drink and I don't do drugs. I wonder if buying video games that you'll never play qualifies as some sort of addiction? Serious question, now. We may not be all that bad however take a gander at Steam and you'll routinely see tons of people who'll buy stuff and never even install the thing. That's next level!

I'd say it's a variant of hoarding disorder, at some level. It's not as destructive, since digital libraries are hypothetically infinite (and even physical libraries can get very large before taking up enough space to affect living conditions), but it's the same basic compulsion of "I should take advantage of this good deal and I'll probably play it eventually" driving people to purchase stuff that will ultimately be useless.

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