Last personal game purchase: Dec 2024. Games obtained after that point are either gifts from friends or obtained via gifted cards

Over the years, I've accumulated over 200 games and looking at the numbers made me stop to actually consider how many of them I've actually played (or finished). When the answer is barely a quarter of them, it made me reconsider whether I'm just buying games for the sake of it and not because I'm excited to play it front to back, and then question why the practice of (digitally) hoarding media we barely touch have been so normalized.

In synchronicity with other areas of my life, I've made a conscious decision to not spend a single penny on new games out of pocket because I have more than enough games to last me the next 5-10 years, thus need no new additions until I've played my way through all of them. While there's always the temptation to keep up with the latest releases, realistically new games are going to cost me more money than if I might as well wait for it to go on discount over the years.

If I ever "run out" of new titles to play, I can always re-play games I already have in my library because seeking the constant feeling of novelty is why a lot of us have never-ending backlogs. If I love the game the first time, chances are I'm going to enjoy re-playing or re-visiting it on a later date.

All in all, I'm practicing a form of digital frugality with the games I've bought and am looking forward to finally going through my (subjective) massive backlog of games