A year ago I dropped the bar on The £25 Game Challenge – prohibiting myself from buying any game that was more than £20. It was called (amazingly) The £20 Game Challenge. Now, the bar drops lower – to £18!
Why?
Two reasons. Firstly, I broke the £20 Rule once last year, by buying the Collectors’ Edition of Fallout: New Vegas. The lovely, lovely Collectors’ Edition of Fallout: New Vegas. For this impudence I must atone!
Secondly, I think it’s do-able. The sweet-spot for game prices these days seems to be £17.99, with most games dropping that low within the first 3 or 4 months after release.
As before, the rules:
I will no longer pay more than £18 for a game.
Hopefully the pay-offs will be three-fold:
- I will save money (obviously)
- I will, in a very small way, be protesting about the high cost of games
- I won’t buy so many launch-day games that I don’t play for months
The latter in particular is a big thing. If I pay £40 at launch, and then don’t play it for six months, the chances are the price will have come down. OK, so I run the risk of never actually buying the game, but that’s better than the risk of buying it and never actually playing it, yes?
However, there will be some exceptions to this £18 Rule:
- If I have loyalty points, gift vouchers, store credit, etc. then these don’t count in the £18.
- If the game is, say, £20, but is in a “2 for £35” offer, then the price counts as £17.50 if I buy both.
- For games that include extra hardware (Guitar Hero, for example) I am allowed to pay over £18, but never full price.
- Any postage costs are not part of the £18.
In addition to these tweaked rules, I will put one exception. Which seems like a cop-out, but I have no choice. My hands are tied. The exception is this:
On the 11th of November 2011, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will be released. Barring delays, anyway. As with Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas before it, I MUST own the collectors edition. On release. MUST. NEED. OWN. FACT. As a result, it is exempt from this £18 Rule. However, I will not pay full price for it, and will pester Bethesda on Twitter almost daily until release (I already started pestering them about a month ago, actually) to try to get a copy for free.
Phew! What do you think?
Good Luck with that, I think you will be able to do it but what about Batman Arkham City?
I’ll get it when it’s £18 or less, obviously 🙂
Seems fair. I think I’ll stick to £20 in my head, although as you say, £18 seems to be the sweet spot these days and I’ll probably end up not paying any more in reality.
Thinking back to the 8-bit days and allowing for inflation, life is pretty good. Well, gaming life at least…