Let's start this hike

I'm standing in front of this mountain I will refer to as K1. Feeling excited for the accomplishments ahead, but also afraid, because I know it will be a long journey. 

Of course this mountain didn't arise out of thin air. It began on December 6th, 2011. The day I bought my first indie game bundle. The Humble Introversion Bundle; six games all in one neat package. And you are even helping charity! I put hours upon hours into Dungeons of Dredmor, a game I still hold in the highest regard. I tried Darwinia, the classic I had heard so much about. And I looked at the tech demos they offered, as well as reading forum posts about their development.

But this bundle came with Steam keys. Steam. This abhorrent DRM service that locks you out of your games if you don't have an internet connection, right? Yeah. Well they also have TF2 which I had played for half a year at that point, so I already had an account anyway. I activated the keys and all went well. Until a month later the next Humble Bundle started with even better games and more keys. Of course I grabbed that one too.

Back then we had a month or two of rest between them, but the Humble Bundles were so successful that many 'competitors' started appearing. At first Indie Royale with more underground titles, but also one or two Steam keys. Then Indie Gala, which offered more bottom-of-the-barrel quality games, but made up with quantity. And that's all I started caring about at this point. I had gotten so many games that the library list had a scroll bar. And every week I added a handful more.

It only got 'worse' from there. Holiday sales, Groupees, Bundle in a Box, Bundle Stars, and LazyGuys showed me all of these awesome deals I would be missing out on, if I didn't buy them right now. And of course almost all of these games were left unplayed. Spending so much of my time on reading about and getting the best deals didn't leave much time for gaming. I wasn't even interested in most of my purchases. 

At the 500 mark I said, "stop". I thought this had gone on for long enough and I should play my games before buying even more. As you can see this worked out just fine. I did play more, but the buying didn't stop. And even though I didn't spend as much time on researching deals, the world of bundles had accommodated. A subreddit about GameDeals presented all important sales in one spot and updated within minutes of a new bundle launch. IsThereAnyDeal.com monitored my wishlist and emailed me whenever a game was on sale somewhere. Everything was so easy. 

I had traded with Team Fortress 2 crate keys before, but during the last Steam Summer Sale I went all out. I traded the key items for games bought in regions where Steam sold them for half price, like Russia or Ukraine. Once I had enough reputation I bought hundreds of Dollars worth of keys back from these dealers at an even cheaper price than the market. Only to spend them on even more games. And all the time I felt like I was profiting so much. Of course in the end I didn't make a cent, but that was never the goal. 

Recently I cracked the 1,000 mark. 1K. The mountain. My profile says I'm a Game Industry Guardian. I've heard there are about 3,000 games on the Steam store. Which means I own one third of all the games that are being sold there. SteamDB says my account is worth $11,204.94, which of course is hugely inflated, but it's still telling me something. 703 of my games have never run once. 

And that is about to change. I will set some strict rules on my buying behavior and some not so strict rules on my playing behavior:

1. I cannot buy a game or bundle until I have finished three games. 
2. I cannot buy a game that has not been on my wishlist for at least two weeks.
3. I cannot buy a game that has a demo unless I have finished said demo.

1. I will choose three games per week that I'm allowed to play.
2. If I have finished a game or have played at least 1 hour of a game I don't like, this game will be removed from my list and I can add another game so I'm back to 3.
3. After completing a game I may write a note of success and a review on this blog.
4. This excludes multiplayer should a friend ask me to play with them.

The method to choose these games will likely be steamroulette.net, but I'm very open to suggestions. 

I hope this project will be a successful one and I can finally get a grip on my library and my own spending behavior. While doing so I hope I can entertain a few readers with game reviews and other articles about gaming. In any case, K1, you are going down!

= T.

Fun Fact: If I had all my games in those classic dvd cases (15mm thick), they would stack about 15 meters high (according to wolframalpha that's a 5-story building).