4

Make Sure The Game Actually Works First

Warner Bros./Rocksteady

Day 1 disasters are nothing new. Fellow columnist Luke McKinney recently wrote about games that were dysfunctional hunks of shit from the day they were released. With Triple-A games only growing more complex, we'd all better get used to the occasional release-day clusterfuck of bugs, glitches, and crashes with no patch in sight for weeks or months or kind of just ... "Eh, whenever."

3

You Should Wait A Year

9nong/iStock/Getty Images
This picture is irrelevant but wonderful.

2

With Just A Little Patience, You Can Buy Games For Damn Near Nothing

Palto/iStock/Getty Images

I hate to pick a side in the long-running PC vs. console debate, but there are some facts that are too difficult to ignore. Like this one: When the prices on digitally distributed PC games are discounted, they're discounted to an extreme -- discounts that can be ruinous to compulsive buyers. (More on that in a bit.)

Earlier I mentioned how once I started making money like a big boy I immediately started blowing it on video games like a child. "That's irresponsible!" you say. "You're bad with money!" you say. While my gold-plated robot money-burner will confirm all of that to be true, it isn't true when it comes to my video-game-spending habits. Online retailers like Steam, Good Old Games, Humble Bundle, and Green Man Gaming have made buying digital copies of video games so cheap that it makes me feel bad for the people who made the games in the first place.

rudall30/iStock/Getty Images
His name is Theodore, and he's quite obedient.

Hundreds of people poured their souls into these games, often in awful working conditions, battling long stretches of sleepiness nights and borderline insanity, just so I can buy their game for less than the cost of a McDonald's burger that will constipate me. That's demoralizing. But if I can ignore the cries of the Chinese children who make my phone, I can ignore the goateed white guy in California who coded my game.

For most of the year, $10 can't buy you very many games. But come December, when every online retailer starts selling off games like they're going out of business, $10 can keep a person playing until the following December. Last year's Steam winter sale was ridiculous. Not only were huge titles marked down by as much as 80 percent, but those awesome old black holes of nostalgia like Knights Of The Old Republic were as cheap as one fucking dollar. And it wasn't a case of having to carefully hunt and search for the good deals, either. They had thousands of them on sale, and they were all listed front and center. Right there in your face, taunting you. Daring you to not buy them.

1

Fight The Urge To Buy Every Cheap Game In Sight

Batke/iStock/Getty Images

Digitally purchased games have become the modern-day equivalent of books. I mean that in the most negative way possible. For a lot of people, bookshelves are the place aspirations go to die a slow, dusty death. People buy books knowing damn well they've got stacks of them at home or on their Kindles that they have yet to open. Bookshelves, real or digital, are monuments to all the times people say, "I'll get to that one day."

Highly relevant.

Digital video game purchases bring out the same behavior in people. Oh, is that pretentious puzzle game that I heard was mediocre on sale for $1.50? Add To Cart. Hey, is that generic space marine first-person shooter on sale for $5? Add To Cart. Whoa. Is that game where you just kind of walk around for a bit and then you die and then supposedly learn something meaningful about life or some such horseshit on sale for whatever loose change I can find beneath my driver seat? ADD TO FUCKING CART! Buying has become too easy, and that has created a whole new problem that stems from something great.

Video games are usually an excellent investment. Not in terms of resale value but in terms of time. For $12.50 I can watch a two-hour movie. For $60 I can play Fallout 4 or The Witcher 3 for over 100 hours and still barely scratch the surface of what they have to offer. When the prices of those games are eventually reduced, their allure, which was already strong, will grow stronger. The perceived need to own them will become undeniable. But to play them, that's a different matter. That's the conundrum of the modern video game market: Anyone can feel satisfied after buying a 100-plus hour game for an ultra-low price, but there isn't a store in existence that sells the time needed to play them all.

ForestMavka/iStock/Getty Images
No. Buying a watch doesn't mean you bought ti- you now what? Forget it.

When the urge to buy every game in sight crops up, take a second to ask: If I buy it, am I doing it because I'm optimistic I'll soon find the time to fit it in among my growing backlog of everything else that's vying for my attention, or am I doing it simply because I can't resist a good deal?

The search for an answer should be easy, but those goddamn discounts are little dickheaded fairies that snatch the answer from your hands and hide it beneath a pile of every game you've ever wanted on sale for 80 percent off. They should make a game about that. I'd totally buy it. But probably not until it went on sale.

Luis is just coming up with rules for everything, and you must all obey. In the meantime, find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

The Oscars ceremony used to be a prestigious event. These days, it's more and more becoming a drama that deserves it's own ridiculous Hollywood retelling. Join Stanley Wong ("The Big Short"), Liana Maeby ("South On Highland"), Jack O'Brien, Dan O'Brien, and Alex Schmidt for a LIVE podcast at the UCB Sunset Theatre TONIGHT at 7:00 p.m. as they break down what it'll take to save the Academy. Get your tickets here!

For more rules on video games that will stand the test of time (like how all video games should allow you the option to play with another actual human being) check out The 7 Commandments All Video Games Should Obey and maybe you can explain to us why almost any generic key can open any door after you read 29 Baffling Rules of Life in Video Game Universes.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see the epitome of video game frustration in 7 Video Game Puzzles That Made No !@$&ing Sense, and watch other videos you won't see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook because we'll be here for you when your videogame relationship fails and you need a place to vent.