14 Days Later...

I lasted 14 days without buying any video games!

My New Year's Resolution was to not buy any games...
I wanted to save money, and play some of the games I own, many I have never played. I tend to impulse buy games, especially during Steam sales for $5 or less.

But picture this, I see that Nation Red is "free to play" this weekend - it looks like a fun game, I have a zombie game out myself, I'm trying not to "buy games", so I suppose I could play this for the weekend, right?

I didn't expect the game to be so fun / addicting!
Maybe I was enjoying it more, knowing I could only play for a limited time. I ended up playing for seven hours (spread over two days), collecting over fifty achievements!

This made me rethink my New Year's Resolution:
I'm not trying to be a cheapskate. The game is only $2.50...
I realize enough "games for $2.50" can add up, this is part of the problem - but I got well over $2.50's worth of enjoyment out of this game, just this weekend.

One disclaimer for my New Year's Resolution was: I will support indie developers. Indie games are (usually) inexpensive. Also, I'm indie myself. I want to see indies succeed, certainly the ones who develop enjoyable games! I was only planning on supporting indies through Humble Bundle though...

Another thing to consider:
They chose to release their game, free to play, for the weekend. I download a lot of "free app a day" games, and how am I "supporting the developer" at all in those cases? Why pay $2.50 now? Well, a rare case, I downloaded Broken Sword as free app a day, loved it, and have since bought it full price as a gift and / or recommended it to a number of friends. This is a real benefit of releasing a game for free! It's a form of advertising for the game.

In the case of Nation Red:
Free full-version demo for a limited time. Some will buy it, some won't. You don't have to buy it, buy in-game tokens, DLC, click ads (for my games) as the case may be. And I think that's fine, I don't feel like a bad person for thoroughly enjoying free games, why not enjoy a game for a weekend? Bigger picture, they do get their game in the hands of more players, some "do" pay, or click ads...

Anyway, I could have felt justified just enjoying Nation Red while it was free. Like downloading Zombie Puncher, and never clicking an ad. I think that's fine, but I ended up buying the game for $2.50 after all, because I wanted to support the developer... even though I think I got all the achievements I want to get haha

Does that mean I killed my New Year's Resolution?
I don't think so. I could get into rules, authority, how arbitrary "holding firm" to any set of rules or beliefs can be, without question or consideration of special cases...

Instead, I'll just point to that "indie" concession I made in advance haha. Nation Red is tagged "Indie" on Steam! But even if it was not, I might have supported the publisher that paid to develop a game I enjoyed thoroughly this weekend!

(And I swear I won't buy the next game I see that's less than $5!)