|
Now I'm convinced that this idea is not for everyone. There are some people out there that just want to have the world's largest backlog of RPGs ever. I'm not that person. I hate having more games than I can play, because I always end up feeling worse than when I do when I have little to play. Also, I'd never get a chance to replay older titles. It makes me feel like I need to rush through one game just to start another. In the end, I wasn't enjoying games as much as I once did. I wanted to fix this.
Looking at my backlog at the time really put me in a bad mood. I would know that I was in the middle of at least a couple of console games, a few handheld games, and had way too many games still untouched on the shelf. So instead of being excited about upcoming titles, I was dreading getting new games, because I knew that they would just add to the list. Well, I couldn't just stop buying new RPGs, so that wasn't an option. The answer was actually quite simple: cut back on purchases. That seems so obvious, but it's really not as easy as it sounds.
Cutting back on purchasing RPGs was really difficult. I would see a new RPG coming out; start drooling and plan to pre-order it. So the first change in my thought process was to ask myself a few questions. To start, I would look at my backlog. If it was fairly large, then I would either pass on the new game or get rid of an RPG that it didn't look like I was ever going to play. If the backlog wasn't too bad, that didn't give me the green light to jump in and buy the new title. I had to stop myself from buying everything that was coming out, because I wasn't playing everything I was getting. If I had any doubts at all, I would pass on the game unless it looked like a possibly limited run title. In passing on the game, if I heard good things about it and it sounded like something I wanted to play, I might pick it up later on for a cheaper price. The hardest part has to be the change in mentality. Just knowing that there are RPGs out there that I didn't have was difficult. Over time, the reduction in my backlog made this more tolerable, but it can still be a stuggle.
Just these simple changes have not only helped me cut down my backlog of RPG significantly, but it has also saved me money. In the past year, I've only passed on two games that I still am looking at purchasing: Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime and Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion. Both of these titles are still available, and I can pick them up cheaper than I could have done at release. In concept, this is a no-brainer. If you buy less, then you will have less of a backlog, but actually doing this is much harder than just talking about it. So if you are looking to trim down your backlog, then the next time you are RPG shopping, try to apply these rules and see if it helps.
|
RSS feed
iTunes
