Games as a sign of the times

[kjorteo]

This morning I was browsing the Nintendo Switch eShop's "Great Deals" section for what's currently on sale. There are often weirdass yet intriguing-looking indie titles there for like nine cents or ridiculous giveaway prices along those lines, but I've always been reluctant to pick them up. Not because of the cost, but because I use LastPass so my Nintendo eShop password is something like tlg1!#SAakh&D@ag!^UDFj2%*5h#$ or some nonsense, and I have to enter it manually every time, with a controller, and it's just... not... worth it, not for some random bargain bin gamesoft. I've often thought that if I just gave myself like $10 or so standing eShop balance, I would probably use it and start picking up some of these offers.

Today I finally broke down and did just that, opening up the Nintendo section of my LastPass vault for hopefully the last time in at least a little while. I picked up The Deer God for I think something like 42 cents after tax, earning 2 Nintendo Gold Points for the transaction. (1 point = $0.01 in redeemable Nintendo Funbux.) I also picked up NO THING for 19 cents, using my 2 Gold points to knock it down to 17 cents, with a one cent tax bringing it back up to 18 cents grand total, plus that transaction earned me exactly one (1) more Gold Point so I can get one cent off the next time I do this. If this weren't a fully automated process, like if I were in GameStop dealing with a human I was forcing to go through all of this, Nintendo would have to be so sick of my shit by now.

Anyway, I have like $9.40-something and one Gold Point remaining and I'm interested to see where this ends up going. Much like my Steam account, I'm going to turn my Switch library into the finest in Absolute Bullshit.

(Car Quest and The Way Remastered were excellent, though. Those are valid and legitimate and even people besides bullshit collectors should look into them. I will fight you.)

... And then a friend informed us that both today's purchases were actually already in The Bundle anyway.

It's... look, we've managed to go through and examine and curate seven pages' worth of Bundle games total. There are like 50-something pages total. This is going to be a thing whenever I shop anywhere else for like... a while, probably.

That said... oh well? I don't mind dropping like 50-60 cents to get those two on the Switch where I can play them in bed on the big screen and such. But yeah, "Oops I bought this indie game because I wasn't aware or completely forgot that I had it already" is just... that sure is the world we live in now, game-wise, I guess.

Comments

[xyzzysqrl]

"Oops I bought this indie game because I wasn't aware or completely forgot that I had it already"

Welcome to my world as of like ten years ago.
I have ABSOLUTELY done this before. And will probably do it again.

[kjorteo]

Celine: Oh, I've been doing that since long before The Bundle. I just... something about today's events got me to stop and just... really drink this all in. Like, to just think about it, that this is in fact the world we live in where this is a problem we could conceivably have.

Video games. *wave hands*

[kjorteo]

Sara: Remember when you were a kid who always watched, and dreamed and desired and yearned more than anything else to be on Video Power? How much you craved being one of those lucky kids who got to go on the all-you-can-grab games binge in the end? How awesome you thought it would be to run through a facsimile of a fully stocked game store and leave with approximately All Of The Games?

The kid in that video got a good, what, 15 games, counting duplicates? (Plus a TurboGrafx 16 and a bike which admittedly are pretty cool but shh my point stands.)

We have over fifteen hundred.

Your dream didn't come true in literally the exact way you were imagining but it came true in the end. Look at all of this.

[kjorteo]

Celine: ... The retro enthusiast in me still wants to be on Video Power and run through a setup like that. Not even an updated version, I mean just let current adult me in the year 2020 answer trivia questions about Bart vs. the Space Mutants for a chance to walk away with two copies of Sunsoft's Batman and two copies of The Rescue of Princess Blobette. Hell yeah I'll take a complete-in-box TurboGrafx 16.

... Completely valid about, like, current games, though. Yeah.

[xaq_the_aereon]

Is there any chance this would support said indie developers twice over? Because that'd be awesome.

[penguinmayhem]

Or at least encourage the publishers to host them.

[kjorteo]

Yeah, I'm good with sending Nintendo a message that this is the kind of stuff I want to see in the eShop.

[kjorteo]

I guess? I mean we're talking like 50-60 cents or so combined between the two purchases so I can't imagine them getting a huge take from that, but it doesn't hurt I suppose.

[xaq_the_aereon]

Yeah, but if a few hundred people fail that same spot check...

[kryfus]

As someone who may actually have notably more games than the pack rat, I too know the feeling of accidentally buying a thing I already own without realizing it. At some point you just accept that you're helping support the devs ;)

[kjorteo]

Oh hey, welcome to Dreamwidth, didn't see you get here :3 Hello!

And yeah, pretty much. Oops we had those two games already from The Bundle, but now for like 50-60 cents we can play them on the Switch and those developers get a few cents' worth of extra support. Okay! Not exactly something to regret, just something we thought was an interesting subject to stop and think about. Sara made an excellent point above that I actually feel really good about when thinking about it like that, so hey, I think we all came out ahead here.

[penguinmayhem]

"Haha oh that's so silly," she said, as she unironically contemplated spending a hundred dollars on a fucking flight stick just to play Space Trucker Simulator.