• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

I've got video game FOMO bad.

Dutchy

Member
It's not really that serious, to be honest.
You made two threads asking for help, unless you are bragging in disguise. I'm getting a lot of mixed signals and can't figure out why you're so vocal about this.

It's not actually impacting anything as my wife and I have set amounts of "fun money" we've allotted and I'm within that.
Great it's not impacting anything.

It's more my time that is being wasted than money.
Oh? So it is impacting something.

Spending behavior can be a real issue even with people who have plenty of income.

Before making the 3rd thread about this issue of yours, take a step back and take a good look at yourself first (do this before buying games as well)

You seem like a grown up. Time to fucking act like one.
 
Last edited:

nikos

Member
I've been the same way for as long as I can remember. I love buying and trying new games. I don't finish many but that doesn't mean they didn't provide good value for the money. This hobby is really cheap compared to many others.
 

BossLackey

Gold Member
You made two threads asking for help, unless you are bragging in disguise. I'm getting a lot of mixed signals and can't figure out why you're so vocal about this.


Great it's not impacting anything.


Oh? So it is impacting something.

Spending behavior can be a real issue even with people who have plenty of income.

Before making the 3rd thread about this issue of yours, take a step back and take a good look at yourself first (do this before buying games as well)

Bro. I'm bored at work and Neogaf is slow as fuck. I made a post because I think a lot about my gaming habits because I fucking love games and am more introspective than the average bear.

I'm not some destitute arm-scratching tweaker who's stripping copper out of my dad's A/C unit to pay for games. I have disposable income and get bored easily. It's that simple.

Thanks for the armchair therapy though.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
I used to have FOMO but over time I realized that I was finishing fewer and fewer games. It took a bit but I've become accustomed to waiting for deep discounts or sub services to play most games, especially third party games. I still buy some full price games at launch. I have Stellar Blade waiting to unlock and I bought Tekken 8 at launch. But I have to know I'm going to like it to pay full price, so I sleep on most.
 

Draugoth

Gold Member
I quit Diablo, Halo because of FOMO pratices. These games are abusing FOMO to sell overpriced items in the store. Now i only play single player games and i've never been happier
 
Last edited:
I got over this last generation. During the ps3 and early ps4 gen, i bought everything i wanted on release date. Once those black friday sales started going, I manage to snatch up a LOT of games. Only games I buy full priced are Sony AAA and 3rd party AAA games that are well optimized for the ps5 console. For multiplayer games, missing out on content is real. I cant wait until a game like Helldivers goes on sale because its already 40.00$ and has content that wont come back.

I still buy games at full price if they are worthy, but I have no problem waiting for games to go on sale if they have poor performance. I took an L buying Callisto Protocal at full price, thinking I was supporting a studio with a vision that wants to create Dead Space like quality horror games. I havent bough Rise of the Ronnin yet because I dont think its worth 70.00$, but I still want to play it. Once you build a nice backlog, you have less of a reason to buy games at release. Add in a 5 TB hard drive, and 2 TB of SSD space, I have my own "Netflix" catalogue of games to sort through. Thats what killed my fomo.
 
Last edited:

BossLackey

Gold Member
No problem. I can tell you're hurting. Just know the solution lies closer than you think.

Eagerly awaiting thread #3 with another update

To expand on why I'm so vocal about this. It's hard for even me to understand.

What it really boils down to is I am somewhat obsessed with categorization in my life in general. Taxonomy is just how my brain works.

Unfortunately for me, games have never been less clear in what genre they're in.

RPG elements are in pretty much every game at this point (not that I'm complaining).

A single game can be a top-down roguelite hack-n-slash deck building action RPG with puzzle elements. For whatever reason, I haven't been able to stop thinking about the box of games BossLackey plays. What defines this box? I'm finding that answer hard to come up with and I've been thinking about this for about two years.

"Okay, here are the genres I play". But that turns into "well this genre is really close to the ones in the box already, so might as well put those in there too". Problem with that is I have less free time than ever, so I can't do that in any practical way without stretching myself thinner than I already am with the breadth of games I play.

So I'll say "okay, no JRPGs". But Dark Souls is technically a JRPG and that's my favorite series. So then the cycle starts over in my head.

I (delusional) feel like if I could just define what games I do and don't play, I could ignore the rest. So I think I'm buying games so much lately in the hopeless pursuit of crossing things off the list so I can have a "system" I can adhere to. A process. I crave the binary of knowing definitively "I absolutely play these types of games" and "I absolutely do not play these types of games". And I feel as if I cannot move on mentally from this. It's a splinter in my mind.

These are of course the mad and incoherent ramblings of a man desperate to break the cycle of thought. The hamster wheel my brain has been on for so long. Not to save money, but to save energy. It's like a math problem that can't be solved and yet I try.

IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED, DUTCHY! :messenger_loudly_crying:

Here I slide ever further down the spectrum.
 

Griffon

Member
As time went on I developed a strong resistance to FOMO.
I only buy games on day one if CDKeys has a decent preorder deal. Otherwise I'm content to wait and play something else.

OP, my only recommendation is to know your own priorities. You need to ask yourself which genres/series do you truly care about, and which ones you wouldn't give much of a look at if you weren't so easily swayed by marketing blitz.
 
I'm proud of myself I didn't buy lot of stuff this year on the first day. The only games I bought right away is Unicorn Overlord and Eiyuden Chronicles. I should have waited on buying Eiyuden Chronicles though

I'm gonna to be waiting on buying games nowadays due to seeing if they are censored in any way (I wait for a sale on Steam)

Also I'm noticing that I have less FOMO nowadays

The only games I buy right away are the Xenoblade games or any game from Monolithsoft and the Trails games from Falcom
 
Last edited:

simpatico

Member
I get FOMO on imported Genesis/Saturn shmups. It's an expensive kind of feel. Pay a semi absurd amount and endure long shipping time for ~60 minutes of gameplay lol. Despite these obvious pitfalls, I cannot stop.
 

hemo memo

Gold Member
It doesn't make sense to buy full price anymore, especially with extensive libraries and frequent discounts. Plus, with longer games, you'll likely find another discounted title by the time you finish your current one.
 

CashPrizes

Member
I have this too but it is like, a year later. Games I bought at half-price or less well after they came out, but haven't had time to play/booted it up just to see how it looks on my PC but haven't put more then 2 hours into include:
Assassins Creed Valhalla
Far Cry 6
Nier Automata
Spider Man Remastered
Miles Morales
Dead Space Remake
Calysto Protocol
Control
Alan Wake 2
Guardians of the Galaxy
Psychonaughts 2
Cyberpunk expansion
Warhammer 40K DarkTide

And that is just the games you could consider AAA. Not including things like Slay the Spire or Into the Breach or Norco.

What should I play first? Currently playing a lot of Darkest Dungeon 2, Unicorn Overlord, HellDivers 2, and when next Diablo IV season hits will max 1 character on that because it sounds like they are fixing a ton of core systems.
 

Toots

Gold Member
tamar braxton child GIF

The only important thing you could miss out is time spent with your loved ones, so next time you fancy a game, go hug your mother instead.
 
I can empathize with you, OP, as sometimes I do experience FOMO, but only for some niche low print console games that I know I'd regret missing out on getting physically later when they become expensive due to resellers. It doesn't really have any impact, but I just dislike that feeling.
 
The industry cured me from this exact thing.

Stopped buying games day 1 since its always a shitfest of bugs/ unoptimised rushjobs/ crashes/ mediocrity.
Not worth my investments.

DONT buy online. Go to the shop so you have some thinking time. Cant stress this one enough. Impulse acquisitions are easier done online from behind your computer/ phone.

But I know how you feel. What actually worked for me back in the 360 days was when I held the game in my hands in the store I would ask myself a question or 2.

- Do I want to buy it?
- Why do I want to buy it?
- What do I still have that I like and have to finish?
- Does this fit in my collection right now?

10 seconds of pondering which ultimately lead me to put half of the games back when I held them in my hands.
 
Last edited:
It's fine OP, there is nothing wrong with that. How does the saying go? "You do you". It feels good to buy new stuff at release. You DO WANT to FEEL GOOD right... right? Right.

Also just wanted you to know that Sandland is out now too, which kinda got eclipsed by Stellar Blade, so make sure to pick that up as well. In case you get bored of one, you can play the other.
 

Hudo

Member
Every time you buy a game, you have to do 100 push ups and 100 crunches.

Either you will stop buying games or you'll get fit in the process.
 
FOMO is all mental weakness….. I jest, but seriously it’s okay to have more then one hobby.

I’m a video game junkie myself but I’ve also been playing guitar for as long as I’ve been playing video games (going on 40 years). I also run and do a lot of gardening and……

Expanded your mental capabilities, don’t become stagnant…
 
Top Bottom