Game Subs Made Me A Monster

Games just show up on my console and computer, and I don’t deserve them. Since I got Game Pass, my patience for games that don't immediately excite me has plummeted.

There are some benefits to this of course. I feel less obligated to spend time with games hoping that they will turn into something I love. I have also been surprised to find myself forgetting about games that I thought I would love when I started, but have dropped from my brain because of everything else I can play.

It's hard for me to shake the feeling that those games I stopped playing so quickly "deserved" more of my time, because I know if I had spent $30 or $60 I would have spent more time with them. It makes me think that subscriptions services will start to change the way games are made. I think the Gears 5 team even admitted to doing this. Maybe this is something to look forward to though. A game that grabs you and won't let go is always a pleasure to find.

So have any of you gotten more discriminating since subscribing to games? Are you excited for how these services might change games, or the time you spend with them?

It is worrying that it could change how games are made, similar to how pop music has to "grab" people for at least 30 seconds on Spotify.
I don't pay for subscriptions as i dedicate myself to playing through every game i start, so i wouldn't benefit from it, but i know people who do. To be fair most of my friends only really play competitive multiplayer games, so through game passes they've attempted to play more single player games than ever before, but i really can't understand the idea of installing loads of games just to touch them for an hour and move on, that's like watching 10 minutes of all the new movies, there's no satisfaction in that.
I don't get the appeal of subscription services at all, like Humble Bundles, i don't need loads of games thrown at me, i do buy loads of games but they all interest me and i will play them (currently have 968 games in my Steam library, i will play them all).

Agree, am also a monster. I also find that I am way more critical of any game I actually pay money for outside of a sub. If BL3 was a subscription game, I simply wouldn't comment on it or play it, but also wouldn't hate it.

@north6: That's interesting, because the only way I would play it is if it came to a sub service that I already have. I agree that I wouldn't care about its shortcomings as much. I would probably give it a couple hours, see how much it was like BL2, and drift away...

I'm the same way with Game Pass. A recent example was Kingdom Come: Deliverance that I absolutely could not stand long enough to keep playing after my first combat experience.

Hell, even some games where I'm like "this is neat" I find it hard to come back to it.

I think another, darker side effect of Game Pass is that I have found myself waiting games out to see if they come to Game Pass where before I might have just bought them. I also feel a little guilty about buying games when I look at all my "free" games from Twitch Prime, Epic Game Store, Game Pass, etc. It's now my Pile of Shame As A Service.

I know that Phil Spencer says that people who subscribe to Game Pass buy more games so maybe I'm in the minority.

Another thing i always keep in the back of my mind. Subscription services are spearheaded by big artists / games / series / movies. People in general are subscribing for the big boys. The smaller games are nice to have around, they give subscribers the feeling that they're getting a good value. And these devs need to be there where the people are, so when the audience is locked into subscriptions, they have to be part of it as well. But do they get a good deal from being part of it when they will get ignored by a large amount of players that just want to play the big AAA games?

If you have a quirky mechanic that is instantly obvious and make sense on a stream, it could do wonders because the barrier to check out a game is super low with a subscription service. i'm thinking Get Over It, Human Fall Flat, Guts or Glory. These games might get some decent exposure . But how will a singleplayer story game fare? Probably not as well.

Like i imagine that in the current situation, less people would get their eyeballs on those smaller games and buy them, but when they actually do buy those games, it's probably more impactful than someone accessing it as part of a subscription. And the ironic thing is that when these games do appear in subscription services, the kind of player that used to buy for these smaller games before , will only have an extra incentive to be part of the subscription service and stop buying individual games. After all, their fav games are appearing there now too.

It's a tricky situation and does make me think that smaller devs are getting discouraged to make certain kinds of games with this new reality. Or looking positively at it, these game needs to immediatly grab people's attention and be offering something different from the status quo. A gif should make people want to play it.

I have found I was doing this even before subscription services. Once digital games started to go on real cheap sales or bundles is when it happened to me. I have a couple hundred games on my Xbox One currently installed, with another few hundred in the ready to install list. Or my Steam library of over 4k games, most of which I will probably never touch at this point.

I do TRY a lot more games than I used to, but I find the number of games I actually finish to drop significantly year over year.

I can see this happening as the amount of free games I get from everywhere now is too many but honestly I just never play those games. I still have yet to buy anything through EGS and I haven't touched any of those games besides Conarium.

I am thinking that with Game Pass I may just do like many have done with something like HBO GO and only use it play a specific game I want to play and then drop it.