Re: $19 billion on unplayed games

Spalls Hurgenson  <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

How much of that (alleged) $19 billion pie are you responsible for?

Well, according to PCGamesN's SteamIDFinder website, the same tool used to
come up with that $19 billion number, I'm responsible for $3,666.90 of it.

Of course that number is totally bogus, just like the $19 billion one.
I haven't spent anywhere near $3600 on Steam games, let alone the
$6,480.61 the website values my entire Steam collection at.  If had to
guess, I'd say I've spent somewhere in the region of $100 or $200 on
Steam games I haven't played yet.

However even if I were to try accurately caclulate amount of money I've
spent on games I've never played, how exactly I should do this is up
to debate.  For games bought individually the price I had to pay for the
game is obvious, as it is for the games I got for free.  However most of
the games I've bought individually I've played, so only a few of them
count towards what my "pile of shame" actually cost me.  As for the
games I got for free, none of them count whether I've played them or not.

The problem is games I bought in bundles, which is a lot of my Steam
collection and a lot of the games I haven't played.   A lot of these
games I never had any intention of playing, and I conciously excluded
these games when determining whether the bundle was worth the price.
So in other words, if I bought a bundle of 10 games for $15 intending
only to play 3 of the games, should I value those 3 games as costing me $5
each, and the rest $0?  Or should I value each of the 10 games at $1.50?

Then there's the question of what criteria to use to determine which
games I've played or not.  Whether or not Steam records any time playing
the game is a simple way to do it, but a misleading one even ignoring any
errors Valve may have made collecting this data.  For example, there was
a period where I was playing games just to get the trading card drops.
I usually made an effort to actually play the game, but sometimes I
just got to main menu and alt-tabbed away.  Even when I played the game
it was basically just as demo for the game, to see what it was like.
It wasn't a serious attempt to play the game.

So the I answer is I don't really know how much of that "pie" I'm actually
repsonsible for, but I've certianly paid a lot less than what PCGamesN
claims my pile of shame is worth.
--
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