margotit's really hard to explain to new friends who find out i play video games that i'm also excited about new games, but i had to stop myself from buying anything until it had been out at least a year due to both budget reasons and because i'm already fully saturated with good games i want to play
(ok there are exceptions for like, small underpriced indie games, and sometimes friends get me gifts of stuff like elden ring-- but for the most part, that was a treadmill i couldn't be more glad to get off of)
「Carmilla」 luné's villain era@emaytch not quite all the way there yet, but def favoring older stuff + smaller games these days. at some point I'm gonna get my emulators all humming, and finish porting years-old GOG games over to the HTPC so I can play them on the couch. with a controller.
just increasingly don't see the reason to buy anything that's both new and high-budget.
@lunemercove yeah, it's not like i don't LIKE the odd big budget game, but the good ones i'll still want in a few years, and the ones that won't (aka games with a heavy live service or multiplayer requirement) i probably won't get to before its too late anyway
@lunemercove the worst part is the fomo of all your friends playing something new, but once i realized how extremely heavy game companies were using that as a sales tactic it became both easier to resist a little gross, tbh
@lunemercove plus, for the cost of the average new game console, it's like you said-- i can set up a machine to emulate more old stuff than i could possibly play in my lifetime already
@emaytch the budget angle is something I have to work on a bit (having some runway + formerly having Tech Salary gave me terrible habits). but considering I already have the machine and already have all the games (or can cheaply re-buy them on GOG and then just download and transfer them DRM-free), might as well just make it an Eternally Got Enough Games machine.
@lunemercove honestly i think almost everyone in the western empire is bad at budgeting-- our entire society is designed to actively discourage good habits
@emaytch periodically I think about how it's good for your credit to have a card and never quite pay it off.
@emaytch think it helps that my social network got a bit cleaved with the death of cohost, and most of the people playing Big Games in my discords are playing games I wouldn't touch if paid to do it.
@lunemercove yeah, i think the biggest concern is just wanting to support devs, especially smaller ones that have simply priced their games at a reasonable cost given the labor involved, but it's not like that's most of what ppl i know play anyway, at least not as actively as stuff in the aaa sphere
@lunemercove (i also think the industry is heavily oversaturated/leveraged, but i'd definitely prefer that when it adjusts it ends up favoring small producers over the big ones, which.. seems unlikely :\ )
Dawn Tåke 🌙 
@emaytch
2026 has been an indie year for me so far. My one big game is Princess Peach Showtime, but that's two years old and I got it from goodwill.
2026 has been an indie year for me so far. My one big game is Princess Peach Showtime, but that's two years old and I got it from goodwill.