Total cost of gaming

Old Man · 7 Jul 2021 at 14:25

It's that time.

I'm interested in a rough estimate of the cost of your pc's and consoles, but just the total number of your purchased games rather than the rough total cost (impossible to know i think) through the years.

I'm feeling a tiny (very tiny) bit bad about spending my extra cash on gaming when (according to my wife) I could be spending it on our home (or I think she means her); (somtimes I really do miss my old bachelor flat).

My pc's (through the years): £7000
Games: 756

GreyHam · 7 Jul 2021 at 14:36

PCs and consoles, maybe £3k over the years.
Games...hundreds. hundreds and hundreds.
I haven't bought myself a new 1440p monitor from guilt over doing up the house...but that's stuff that needs doing, not just my wife deciding she wants something therefore I have to pay for it lol

FredFlint · 7 Jul 2021 at 14:38

I probably spend between £1000-2000 per year but I use my PC for work as well.

robfosters · 7 Jul 2021 at 14:41

Since buying my first components in 1997, I reckon I’ve done at least 6-7k

Dano · 7 Jul 2021 at 14:43

A lot less than I'd have spent on fags and booze if I'd gone to the pub instead

Kelt · 7 Jul 2021 at 14:48

Dano said:
A lot less than I'd have spent on fags and booze if I'd gone to the pub instead

Same here!

MikeTheNative · 7 Jul 2021 at 14:54

I'd rather not try think of the money I have spent on sim racing stuff and iracing, thank you.

Quartz · 7 Jul 2021 at 14:57

Old Man said:
I'm interested in a rough estimate of the cost of your pc's and consoles,

Easily £20k+, maybe £30k+, but that's over more than 30 years and I used to work in IT.

Old Man said:
but just the total number of your purchased games rather than the rough total cost (impossible to know i think) through the years.

Many.

Dano said:
A lot less than I'd have spent on fags and booze if I'd gone to the pub instead

Preach it.

MikeTheNative · 7 Jul 2021 at 15:01

I agree, even if something costs thousands of pounds, as long as it's used and you enjoy it, then the money hasn't been wasted, I would say it's well spent. I think I've gotten my money's worth out of all my computer stuff, (i bought a cheap condenser mic was which useless), there's quite a few games i've never played or played for 5 minutes though........

Klunt Bumskrint · 7 Jul 2021 at 15:22

I've been gaming since the mid 80's, I really don't want to know that figure.

adolf hamster · 7 Jul 2021 at 15:43

at a very rough guess maybe 3-4k since i started properly pc gaming about a decade ago. steam library is currently at 142 call it ~160 including other platforms.

however given how much i've been leaning on my rig for work these past couple of years i'm happy that at least part of that cost is pretty well justified.

of course like many i've a bunch of stuff (particularly on steam) that's low hours or unplayed, almost exclusively stuff picked up cheap in steam sales and/or included with other bundles (or free titles on origin).

Mr Badger · 7 Jul 2021 at 15:47

Dano said:
A lot less than I'd have spent on fags and booze if I'd gone to the pub instead

So you don't chain smoke a packet of fags and knock back a bottle of spirits during an evening gaming session? Amateurs!

Mr Badger · 7 Jul 2021 at 16:00

My expenditure on PC gaming is comparatively low in recent times as I haven't upgraded my system for quite a while (the last performance update was a GTX 1080 a few years back) and I don't buy full price games at release and usually wait for sales/discounts. These days it's got to be something I really want for me to pay much more than £10 for a game.

Where I have spent some money is on an Oculus Quest 2. Fortunately there have been two Humble Bundle deals of VR games so that helped stock up my VR library.

Smokey Deza · 7 Jul 2021 at 16:26

Couple of grand over the last two decades, if that.

I rarely buy games. Probably about 30 in my library.

Ayahuasca · 7 Jul 2021 at 16:29

Probably about 10k in 15 years, started off spending willy nilly and then moved to picking up most stuff second hand or waiting for exceptional deals. A couple of recent issues mean I'll be buying motherboards and graphics cards brand new though as it's much easier to return them if they fail, depending on the brand.

In terms of games, I have no idea, guesstimated that into the above.

potatolord · 7 Jul 2021 at 16:35

Maybe £3k on pc gear in the last decade? Around half of that on graphics cards and waterblocks.

Games, well under £1k in the last five years. I rarely buy a game on initial release these days.

A fair chunk of that went on steam sale games I played for an hour or less. There's a lesson there.

varkanoid · 7 Jul 2021 at 17:23

Old Man said:
I'm feeling a tiny (very tiny) bit bad about spending my extra cash on gaming when (according to my wife) I could be spending it on our home (or I think she means her); (somtimes I really do miss my old bachelor flat).

newbie type mistake - never tell the wife how much you spend on your PC

m4cc45 · 7 Jul 2021 at 20:28

Games wise I've not spent much - maybe £100 in the last two years. The free games on Epic and GOG have been spectacular at times so I haven't needed to.

Hardware wise - I upgraded to AMD after years of just having a i7 2600 as it was such a crazy upgrade in terms of performance. So I probably spent about £7-800 on that (reused my GPU and power and some HD) and I'm aiming to have that for a few years.

I've probably spent £4k over the last 8-10 years.

M.

bayo000 · 7 Jul 2021 at 22:09

Hard to say but thinking about it probably around £10k over the 20 years since I moved out. Not as bad as I'd expected, deffo wasted lot of money pre-orderinng or buying "CE" editions of games but then never actually play any of the DLCs. Currently 387 games on Steam and easily have over 100 of unclaimed codes on Humble Choice/ Bundle.

DireEmblem · 7 Jul 2021 at 22:11

I would say if you consider everything bought for me since I was a kid, up to date, its probably worth a Tesla possibly more when you account for inflation.

Nes
Mega Drive
N64
PS2
PS3
PS4

Not to mention pc gaming!