Re: $19 billion on unplayed games

On Thu, 27 Jun 2024 06:53:00 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 6/26/2024 12:43 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

 
You've probably read -or at least heard mentioned- the news story that
Steam users have spent $19 billion USD on games they've never played.*
(If so, you've probably also heard some wag jokingly claim, "Yeah,
well, I'm probably responsible for $1 billion of that"**.) You may
even have heard counters to this estimate, calling it wildly
inaccurate (something I myself tend to agree with).
 
Still, regardless of the actual value, I think it is indisputable that
a lot of people have a lot of games they have never installed, much
less played. It's the nature of the industry now; there are just /SO/
many games available, and there's only so much time in the day to play
them. Add to that calculation that games are, on the whole, getting
longer and becoming harder to pigeon-hole (and thus harder to
determine ahead of time whether they're the sort of game you'd like)
and it's more surprising when somebody /doesn't/ have a huge gaming
backlog.
 
Then you got things like HumbleChoice,Fanatical, and Amazon which
throw BUNDLES of games at you (some of which you want, some of which
you don't) and it becomes near impossible not to acquire games which
you'll never play.
 
In some ways, you have to almost pity the poor publisher, which not
only has to compete against other publishers, but put out a game that
will stand out against the dozens or hundreds your customers may
already have in their library. It used to be that gamers might only
have a handful of video games total; any new addition was certain to
be played. Now, the hardest part of my video-gaming hobby is not
BUYING the games but picking which of the thousands I own to play
next.
 
(Somehow I always manage to find a few, though, as evidenced by the
monthly 'what have you been playing' thread ;-)
 
Valve's gotta be lovin' it though. 30% of $19 billion is $5.7 billion
USD... and they barely gotta provide any bandwidth or support for
those games. Good money if you can manage it. ;-)
 
How much of that (alleged) $19 billion pie are you responsible for?

>
Depends if you disingenuously count the games I got for free or Amazon.
It's probably thousands if not into the tens if you do.  If you don't
it's probably less than $100.
>
Having any that I actually payed for and didn't even try is a shame, but
I do even have a few CDs/DVDs of games I bought in the bargain bin that
I at some point thought I would play but never did.

It also really depends on how you define 'play'. The survey used it as
"added to library, but never run once'. Aside from the fact that Steam
is particularly bad at keeping track of data like this, is my firing
up a game by accidentally double-clicking it and then immediately
hitting ALT-F4 really 'playing' it? (that's happened a few times here
;-). And what if I launch the game directly, without involving Steam?
I've definitely played the game, but Steam has no idea. Plus, there
are a number of games on Steam that I have /definitely/ played, yet
Steam shows me as never having done so.

Given the reach of my video game library, it should be no surprise
that I've 'played' a lot of games. But for vast swathes of that
library, this 'play time' often is counted in minutes. Just long
enough for me to get the most basic idea of what the game is about and
how the overall mechanics work. Technically, I've 'played' these
games... but I'd never include them in my monthly play-list. For me,
those experiences are little better than watching a video trailer for
the game.