Buy more, save more!!

There's an interesting pschological effect which occurs whenever people see discounts. In essence, common sense takes an extended holiday while the demon of impulse rears its ugly head. Its a discussion which I've had with the missus on more than one occasion. Basically, she passes by a store, sees a discount sale on and immediately starts proclaiming "Honey, the more I buy, the more I save!!"

Yeah...

I always used to believe that I was better than that. That I was above such petty and tawdry marketing. And then I read this article which made me remember my time in London.

The article basically talks about the writers efforts to minimise his spending on video games. He did this by no longer buying games at full price and instead, would only purchase a game if it was on budget. Unfortunately, the plan backfired as he ended up buying a lot of games on budget even though he didn't have time to play them. The fear was that the budget game would no longer be available by the time he got around to it.

Which is almost identical to my own experience when I was in London. You see, unlike HK, London has a very vibrant video game retail market. The end result is that lots of games are offered for sale at discount prices (we're talking GBP5 or GBP10 here). And just like the author in the above article, I ended up buying a lot of old games and only playing them superficially before moving onto the next game. Hey, at GBP5 or GBP10 a pop, it really wasn't a big deal.

Since my return to HK and more expensive games, I find that my gaming habits have changed considerably. Due to the more expensive nature of games, and the introduction of achievements on the Xbox 360, I find that I play the games I buy a lot more and probably get even more value for money out of it as a result.

Despite this, the old desire to get a bargain is still there. I often find myself trawling the second hand games bins to keep an eye out for any good bargains. I also check Steam every weekend to see what the big weekend sale is. This phenomenon isn't limited to myself either. Sales figures for games sold on Steam are very often dominated by games which are on sale at the weekend. Pretty impressive when you consider that those games are being sold at a huge discount in many cases.

Ultimately, despite all my snide comments to the missus about her ability to be suckered by a sale, I'm just as bad as she is.

PS to the missus - if you are reading this, I just wanna say that this is the closest you will get to an apology for all the snide comments from yours truly.
:)