Too many free video games is ruining gaming – Reader’s Feature

I absolutely agree with recent messages about time being the biggest barrier to my gaming. While to some extent I expect most of us are experiencing content overload across various mediums, I’d argue that the games industry itself is a significant contributor to this issue and its potential downfall, and it is spiralling further every week.

Firstly, a bit of context. Gaming has been my main hobby for close to 40 years, but I also balance this with TV, film, books, board games, football, comics, music, and most of all, parenting a young child. This especially means I don’t get that much consistent time to myself, but at my age I also don’t have any social pressure to play a specific game, at a specific time, where all my friends are gathered.

I don’t particularly like live service games as I prefer variety; they tend to just be time sinks and I often feel hollow after an online session – like no real progress has been achieved towards an end goal where I can progress through my backlog.

I feel similar with these ridiculously padded open world games that take me years to slog through. I usually have a lot of games in circulation at any one time, mainly to avoid getting totally bored with the repetition. I assumed the padding in games was initially created to combat the second-hand market, even more so than perceived value, but the broader gaming community’s move to digital has almost destroyed this market and yet game structure has not changed.

Now take a look at the games I am currently playing and see if you can find the problem:

Advance Wars: Dark Conflict (DS – bought second-hand almost 15 years ago)
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag (Xbox 360 – free with Games with Gold)
Dark Souls (Xbox 360 – free with Games with Gold)
Destiny 2: The Witch Queen (PlayStation 4 – half price sale)
FIFA 22 (PlayStation 4 – free with PS Plus)
Football Manager 2022 (PC – free from Epic Games Store)
Galactic Civilizations 3 (PC – free from Epic Games Store)
Gloomhaven (PC – free from Epic Games Store)
Halcyon 6 (PC – free from Epic Games Store)
Here They Lie (PlayStation VR – free with PS Plus)
Mafia 3 (PlayStation 4 – free with PS Plus)
Mario Kart 8 (Switch – gift)
Super Mario Odyssey (Switch – gift)
Metro 2033 (Xbox 360 – free with Games with Gold)
Rome: Total War (PC – bought for around £8 about 15 years ago)
Middle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor (PlayStation 4 – gift, but about £10)
The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past (Switch – free with SNES library)
The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii – gift)

In general, I’m already maybe a decade behind and over half the games I’m playing were free. The only ones bought anywhere near full price were Nintendo, as they tend not to drop in price. Plus, I own maybe a further 400 games I’m still to play, most of which were also free.

On average, every month I get another seven to 10 games free(-ish), but over the last decade I’ve only finished about 10 games a year. Of my list above, I’ve been playing Advance Wars, Dark Souls, and Total War since 2021! Why would I even consider paying full price for a new release? In the days of only physical copies, I’d maybe see a game in the sale and panic buy in case I never saw it at that price again.

Now, I ignore digital sales at a fraction of those prices because there is no urgency, no FOMO [fear of missing out]. I’ve got more than enough to play, and I’m actively incentivised by the industry to not buy something now, as I’ll probably be given it for free before I’d have got around to playing it. It’s also why I’ve zero interest in paying for a subscription like Game Pass – I’m already drowning in options.

I appreciate my situation is not the norm and a bit of a result of an OCD desire to experience as many games as possible. But this still clearly makes me part of the problem for the industry, though one largely birthed by the industry itself. I’m already a lost cause as every month sees my backlog increase, pushing new releases even further away and making it more likely that they’ll be free by the time I get to them.

I don’t want a crash, I love games, but the truth is that if it did all collapse it would optimistically be at least a decade before I was affected, by which point something will have replaced the current norm. It may be the only way I actually catch up!

By reader Ernie