How to stop playing EVERY game that comes out!

This, except for me it's CS:GO. I've played like 4 other games since I started playing that 2+ years ago. I find that I get most of what I need from watching Quick Looks/listening to the podcast and for the few games a year I really want to play, I do.

Get into DOTA2 and you won't want to play other games. Instead, you'll be spending money on cosmetics. Pick your poison.

BUY ALL THE SHINY NEW THINGS!

But seriously though it's all about willpower. I suffer from this much like some of you here and it's a hard habit to break.

While my unfinished games list isn't massive I've been struggling a bit with something similar - not so much new releases but games from my ever-growing wishlist I keep on buying even though I know I probably wont be playing them anytime soon. I think I finished like 4 games last year aha

I do have a monthly money limit I stick to but it's not all that helpful since I'm tending more to buy games on the cheaper side, for new releases that might work though.

What I've started doing recently is a 'points system' (got this from lurking NeoGAF) where basically from NOW onwards, any game you buy is -1 point and any game you complete/feel finished with is +1 point

The idea is to have as high a number as possible by end of the year/month/whatever date you want

I found it's working well for me so far, it's a good quick reminder of how many games I've bought/finished and has made me take a closer look at my spending habits.
When I want to buy a game I just look at my 'score' so far & if it's negative it tends to make me think twice and hold off at least until I finish a game, if it's positive I still find myself really weighing up whether I'll likely finish it soonish.

It's also a lot less daunting then taking into account your entire backlog, I know some people's are crazay big. As long as your score is positive at the end you'll have reduced that backlog a bit and you can always set a goal to motivate you if it helps, personally I'm hoping to end the year with at least +5 (at -2 atm :P)

I dunno, might be worth a try?.

There are lots of different sides to this and multiple layers to this. Are you enjoying the games you're currently playing? If so, maybe spend more time with them, 100% them or go for weird challenges or replay them on the highest difficulty.

Are you getting bored with the games you're playing? Try playing them in a different context, talk to friends about them, ask them what they play (or get them to play with you). Sometimes, you might even need to take a break from video games, go watch some TV or go hiking or something.

go have kids than time for video games won't be an issue any more ;)

I used to buy games and not finish them, then game prices went up in Canada and I decided I'd rather keep my money than waste it on things I ultimately wasn't going to play.

I still do it time to time but ... if you look at your shelf before thinking about buying a game and see some games you haven't finished that you still have some interest in playing, then you probably don't need to get anything else.

It's called a shopping addiction. If you can't manage it to the point where it has started to negatively effect your life then you should consider getting help of some kind. There is no shame in asking for help with an addiction, they take down even the strongest people.

I buy far too many games as well. It's not a real issue for me because I have the budget for it and I've been hired into multiple development jobs partially due to my somewhat encyclopedic knowledge of games. That being said I do have a problem finishing games so I often come up with somewhat arbitrary rules to stop myself from trying to play too many games at once.

For example Farcry Primal just came out but I haven't finished Farcry 4 (well other than the quick alternate ending). I can't justify picking up a new game in the series when I haven't finished the previous one and it is available for me to purchase digitally at any time. Sometimes my rules are a bit more random like right now I won't allow myself to play Rise of the Tomb Raider until I finish Assassin's Creed Syndicate, I guess because they are both action adventure games?

The multiple price hikes that happened in Canada last year also help me question do I really need this for $80 right now? Do I actually have time to play it?

I took a look at what kind games I were buying that I weren't enjoying or that I weren't finishing and cut those out of my life. I also stopped buying bundles (why do I need the sequel when I haven't played the first one?) and started asking myself if I really needed to buy this game right now (most of the time, no). I got rid of a bunch of physical copies that I didn't care for as well.

Play Destiny. I have played like 3 other games total since it came out in 2014 because it takes up all my gaming time. lol

Weird, I had a kid last summer and I still play games. Not as much during the day on weekends anymore, but the kid goes to sleep around 7pm, that leaves a lot of hours of gaming.

All I've gotta say is you must play through a ton of tutorials!

I stopped pre-ordering games after Brutal Legend, I loved the demo then pretty much hated the game.

Maybe just sit down and start an 'epic' like the Witcher 3, or the opposite and just play the crap out of a rogue-like like BoI: Rebirth/Afterbirth, there was definitely a few months where my PS4 was just a $500 Binding of Isaac machine.

Develop a better sense of self-control and don't buy things impulsively just because the game is hyped up or because your friends tell you to buy it.

I used to have this issue, too. For me, it was because I was on sites like this all the time, listening to podcasts where people do literally nothing but play video games and write about them. I saw them as some sort of minimum benchmark on how many games I had to have played. I finally stopped doing that when it really hit me that

Nobody

anywhere

ever

cares whether you're to be knowledgeable about, or played, every major title

If I were to recommend one thing to kick the habit, it would be this: stop looking at release schedules. That eliminates almost any time pressure you might see yourself under to finish anything by any given time or when you "have" to run out and buy a newly released thing

I used a budget planner and I stuck with it for a few months until I kind of lost focus and went back to my old habits... So that helped for a while. What is helping now is exciting upcoming technology limiting my budget. I want to eventually experience a good version of VR tech, and I want to have the NX whatever it will be, and I will need to upgrade my PC soon. Price ticket? Probably along the lines of $2000 total? So yes I've been saving up since the beginning of this year, I'm on a very tight budget, and I need to keep this up at least until the end of this year. If I can do that I can probably do those awesome things. That has been the driving force behind controlling my gaming expenses.

Yeah I've just crossed over the line where I now have a real job and a lot more income than before so I feel like I've been buying games more often. However, I recently set up a specific game budget for me per month to kind of keep me in check and it works pretty well. I'm kind of curious about other people with budgets and how much they have it set too. Currently I have my trusty mint app at $150USD per month for any gaming related purchases. That allows me to get roughly 2 big releases and one smaller one per month and that's if it's busy.

@anund@onyxghost:

There are obviously a lot of factors to still having time for games after having a kid. When my first kid was born, I played more games in her first 2-3 months of life than for a year or so before, mainly because I was so anxious for her arrival that I could hardly play games before she was born- I just read books about having kids and child development...

I had a second kid 14 and a half months after the first... And he didn't sleep as well. So, even though I was playing some games some evenings, I usually didn't have the energy.

Also, my job is very demanding. People with less demanding jobs will have more time for games. I also currently don't do much of anything else with my free-time. People that do other stuff or have a more active social life will obviously have less to no time for games.

Finally, I cringe when I hear people talk about playing games with their little children in the room (*cough* Jason *cough*). Study after study shows how bad it is for children. It is bad for their eyes. It is bad for their speech development. It is bad for their brain/mental development. It is bad for helping them make sense of the world.

So, to wrap up, it is just all so based on your individual life and priorities. I often struggle with how much of my time and identity I have wrapped up in gaming, considering I don't work in the industry, but that's also a very personal thing that I don't think everyone should share. :D

This topic is really important to talk about, so thanks for wanting to share your struggle with the community. The first thing that helped me when I went through this last year was to acknowledge that I had a problem. A real problem, too, that wasn't just in my head. It affected many things outside of money, things like time, and quite honestly, devotion. I found I was devoted to buying new games, and now that I'm free from that feeling, it feels great. In other words, I'm not a slave anymore to the idea of buying games. That's part of the reason that I've been playing some older FPS games recently, and also why I decided not to buy a new game for 6 months.

Something else that you have to consider is that playing video games as a hobby is a lot healthier. I say that because if you want to play video games or make them for a living, then you are more likely to concentrate all your time on them, especially all the new stuff that comes out. We all experience 'burn out', or 'mental fatigue' because of it. It sucks, not just because of how we feel, but also because we get less and less excited to play any game, even if we know it's really fun to play. And this overall emotional response is because we know it's not healthy at all. We've turned our enjoyment of games into a really harmful obsession, and this reality is very scary.

The last thing I want to mention is what I've recently decided to do to help with my own addiction problem. I like to alternate between playing video games and reading books, but then I let my mind's imagination wonder by watching movies all the time. This has helped me out a lot. I have found out recently that I really enjoy reading about American history, so I look up a book and see if my local library has a copy. If they do, great. If not, I find another book that they do have. This will save me hundreds of dollars in a single year. Then, when I finish reading, I start playing a game that I already own. So in both cases, I'm not spending any money, and instead, just spending time. Really, I'm not lying when I say that it's changed my life for the better, and I'm confident that it will make it easier on me in the future because I'm not tied down by release schedules or release buzz.

Maybe you can find something like this for yourself, and then share about your experience at a later point. Just know that you're not alone, and while people could help you and should help you along the way, a lot of it comes from your own convictions to change and to make it better in your own environment.

I gave myself a guideline: Finish the story in games I don't actively hate. But honestly since the drop off in AAA and AA releases this really hasn't been a problem for me.

Sometimes I'll go a few months without buying anything now. Although November can still get a bit expensive.

I agree with some of the silly comments in here

Start playing an Esports Title game and play competitively - Games like Dota/Rocket League and LOL will take majority of your time and lead you away from games

Its why i havnt finished fall-out 4 even thought i really enjoyed it, just took to much of my time away from games im trying to improve at