Getting it on the Cheap

As I have recently moved, I find myself having to be a little more frugal with money. As gaming can be expensive and is a non-essential expenditure, I've been looking into ways to get my fix for less, without turning to piracy!

The first way is obvious, prioritise your wants and or wait for sales. Over the last month a large number of triple A titles have been released and of these the only one I've bought is Skyward Sword, although I did receive a free copy of Arkham City. Now I would have liked to have also gotten Skyrim and will eventually pick it up, but it will just have to wait.

If however you are the kind of person who likes to have lots of new games then you should consider supporting the indie gaming scene. The reason I say this is that not only are indie games cheaper than AAA titles, but indie developers support the community that supports them, and as such you can often find bundles of their games for sale on specialist websites. The most well known of these sites is the Humble Bundle, where you choose how much money you pay, and how it gets split between the games makers and charity. Recently a new website, Indie Royal, has started selling bundles of games with the price starting low and increasing with each bundle sold, the price can be driven down by someone paying more than the current price. These websites will usually result in you picking up the whole bundle for the price of a single indie game.

Another option is to become a retro gamer. Last generation consoles sell for about 1/10th the price of current  consoles and their games are also significantly cheaper (there are a few exceptions to this rule for example Suikoden II). The important thing to watch out for when retro gaming is resellers, these people buy the cheap copies of the games and then mark them up. I strongly recommend doing your research, otherwise you might end up paying £20 for a players choice edition of Super Mario Sunshine (I just checked ebay and there is one up there for that price) when you really shouldn't be paying much more then £5.

My final way to help keep your price of gaming down is to make some friends. Websites like Meetup let you find groups of like minded gamers and even if their are no active groups in your area you can also search for individuals. Although I have mainly focused on video games, some of these principles can also be applied to board and table top games.