I am addicted to buying downloadable games off steam. I have 130 games on steam, and over half of those I haven't even installed, let alone played. I really need to resist the urge to buy games, and actually play them for a change. Yet when the next steam weekend deal comes along, and it's a game that looks decent, I'll buy it. And I probably won't play it, at least for a while.
 
I need therapy. I have all these great games just sitting there, shouting "Play Me" at me, and yet rather than playing them, I decide to go onto the steam store, and buy buy buy. It drives me crazy. I just can't resist the urge to buy a game when it's staring at me on steam, saying "Buy Me".
 
I'm also somewhat addicted to steam achievements. Ever since Giant Bomb got achievement support, I've wanted more achievements. And this worsens my buying spree because I'll see a game that has steam achievements, and buy it, mostly for the achievements. GODDAMN YOU GIANT BOMB!!! YOU'VE MADE ME AN ACHIEVEMENT WHORE!!!!!!!!!!!
 
So, if anyone knows of a good psychologist in the north east of England, let me know. Oh, and he's got to be cheap, because I haven't got a lot of money after spending it all on steam games.

Hello and welcome to MattyFTM's soon to be world famous Wiki Points Report. I've decided to do a semi-regular blog detailing what I've been doing to edit the site recently, and gained wiki points from. I'm hoping it may inspire new people to get involved in the wiki part of the site and/or be interesting for current wiki editors to see what I've been up to. Or failing those, It's a way to waste a small part of my life, which is something I'm always looking to do. So without further ado here is my Wiki Points Report.

Monkey Island

With the release of Tales of Monkey Island, and The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, I've been getting my hands dirty with some of the Monkey Island pages. For starters, I wrote a full plot summary of Episode 1 of Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, and added a little bit to the gameplay section of the page. Also, I've written a couple of summary paragraphs for the the main location in the episode, Flotsam Island.

After that, I moved onto The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition. So far, having yet to complete the game, I've mostly stayed clear of the main wiki page, and have instead been focusing on images. While playing through the game, I have been taking screenshots, and uploading them. One even got used in Jeff's Achievement's Article.

Zool

Zool, there's a game from my childhood. I remember playing it on the Amiga when I was a child. At the time I sucked at it. Anyway, this is one of the wiki pages I've been meaning to get to since the site launched. I had forgotten it for a long while, until a forum thread from FlamingHobo reminded me that the first edit I did on giant bomb was to create the Zool Character Page. This inspired me to go and write something on the completely empty game page.

Stop 'N Swop

While browsing the Recently Created Concept pages, I noticed someone had created a Stop 'N Swop page. That's a great concept, I thought, why didn't I think of that? But rather than sulking about not creating the page, I set about writing a detailed summary about what Stop 'N Swop was, and quotes from games that mention the infamous and mysterious Stop 'N Swop from Banjo Kazooie.

Sunderland AFC

Sunderland AFC are my beloved football team (soccer team to you weird Americans). After adding a bunch of concepts to the FIFA 10 page, and realizing that a bunch of football clubs have pages, I decided to create one for Sunderland. I added info about it's history, it's current state, and it's inclusion in games. I also added some info to the already exiting page about our stadium, The Stadium Of Light.

Retro Points: Pandemonium 1 & 2

This is the part of my blog when I look back at edits I made a while ago. Today, it's Pandemonium! and Pandemonium 2 I'm looking at. These 2.5D platformers from the PlayStation era are a couple of games I have fond memories of. They followed Sorceress, Nikki and Jester, Fargus in their quests to save the world. Naturally, these games demand half decent wiki pages, so I set out to do just that by writing plot summaries and gameplay summaries for both. I even included a small segment about differences between the western and Japanese releases of these games.

So...

That's it for this blog. I hope you at least partially enjoyed this blog. I don't know how often I'm going to do these blogs, I guess it'll depend on how much wiki editing I do. Or I might completely forget and never do them again, like I did with my top 30 games ever list. Either way, Goodnight Comrades.

La la la la, La la la la, La la la la la la, La la la la!!!!!!!!!

I'm celebrating today, because my football (soccer to you weird Americans) team, Sunderland, have avoided relegation from the English Premier League and both of our local rivals, Newcastle and Middlesbrough have been relegated. It's extremely hilarious.  It's fantastic. Words can't describe how happy I am.

I've been in the pub since 3 o'clock (now it's after 10 o'clock). First watching the football on the telly, and then celebrating the fantastic outcome. We've been celebrating like mad. Singing footballing songs, laughing at the crying Geordies on the TV, singing along to songs on the jukebox. It was just a fantastic. We played a few rounds of dominoes, while still celebrating, and just generally had a fantastic time. Many beers (and a couple of whiskeys) have been drank, and it's just a fantastic day.

I'm watching the matches on Match of the Day now, and I've still got a huge smile on my face. This is amazingly funny.

EDIT: I completely forgot to mention our shirt burning extravaganza. We burned a Newcastle shirt in celebration of this event. It was Brilliant.

Having seen a tonne of people on GB blogging their top 30 games of all time left me with the strange compulsion to write my own, despite knowing that I'd never be able to settle on 30 games, and I'd never be able to settle on an order. So, after weeks of slaving over this list, trying to remember all the games I've loved, and trying to decide where on the list they go, I think I have the final list.

ITS BEEN DRIVING ME CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZZZZZZZYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sitting here on the verge of insanity. All I can think about is games. I close my eyes and all I see is game boxes flying past my closed eyelids. I'm watching the football on the TV as I'm writing this, and I'm fighting the urge to grab my 360 controller in an attempt to control the action as if I was playing FIFA. And I swear there are lemmings living in my bedroom cupboard. Not to mention that yesterday I was in the town and I could have sworn that everyone were goombas.

So, assuming the men in white coats dont get to me before hand, or I become even more indecisive and decide to change the list arround AGAIN, you can expect the first part tomorrow, so look forward to it. YOU HAD BETTER LOOK FORWARD TO IT!!!!! JUST THINK OF HOW MUCH BLOOD AND SWEAT I HAVE PUT INTO THIS LIST!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU WILL LOOK FORWARD TO IT, AND YOU WILL WORSHIP ME, FOR I AM YOUR GOD!!!!!!!! MWUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And on a completely unrelated matter, I recently broke both the 10,000 Points Mark, and the 3,000 forum posts mark, so Yay for me. That's another reason for you to WORSHIP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WORSHIP ME YOU FEEBLE EARTHLING SCUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

EDIT: I've been slightly sidetracked with this. I've gotten more indecisive and I've been rearranging my list again. I have the first part up tomorrow. I think.

EDIT 2: Got sidetracked again. Dunno when I'm going to post it.

I think the reason that people are so willing to shell out $60 for a game, is because they know they can sell it on later to get some money back. If they couldn't do this, I doubt people would buy as many games at full price. While yes, publishers are losing some revenue from people not buying games new, they are gaining revenue from people buying games new, knowing they can get some of the money back later. It balances out in the end.

Used games are also a great way for kids, who don't have enough money to spend $60 on a game, to get into gaming. And when they grow up, they will spend $60 on a game, so in that sense, it can be very beneficial for the industry. If new people didn't start gaming, the industry would gradually die out. I used to buy a tonne of used games, and if I couldn't get games for that sort of price, I wouldn't have gotten into games on anywhere near the scale I have, and I wouldn't be buying games for full price now.