Robot Claw

Last year my gaming habit seemed to decline noticeably, with 15+ year lows in both the number of games purchased and the total dollars spent. Has that trend continued? Let’s find out…

In 2013 I purchased only 50 games. This was the first time since 1994 that my average had dropped below a game a week. Given I now include iOS purchases in my data, this is significant. The fact is I am simply not buying as many games as I used to, and I doubt I will ever return to the early 2000’s when I was purchasing an average of 2+ games a week.

Despite buying fewer games in total, my dollars spent increased about 20% from last year to about $1300, or an average of about $26 a game. This was a more than 60% increase on the amount spent per game since last year, almost entirely due to my decline in iOS spending in the last year.

Here are the plots:

The above is a percentage breakdown of games per system. I’ve included the 6 months of World of Warcraft subscription as one purchase for Macintosh. Comparing to last year the decline in iOS games downloaded is notable. This is for two reasons: I download fewer iOS games, and I don’t track free game downloads. If you’re not following the iOS gaming scene, free-to-play is fast becoming the norm.

Above is the percentage breakdown of dollars spent per system. Obviously iOS amounts to very little since the games are rarely more than a dollar or two. The 3DS dominates this list, both because of the high amount of purchases and the $40 price point for games.

The trends this year were:
1) More dollars spend on PS3 and 3DS
2) Fewer dollars spent on PSP and DS (both are ‘dead’ systems now and may disappear from these lists next year)
3) A sharp decline in total iOS games and total iOS spending

What the charts do not show is how much time I spend gaming, and I truly wish there was a way to measure that. My feeling is despite the downward trend of purchases, I don’t spend significantly less of my free time (and that’s key) gaming. I may game less overall due to the increase in work responsibilities and vacations (I’ll spend about 6 weeks away from home on vacation this year), but when I’m home I still play a lot. Actually, I play even away from home, and you’ll see why in a moment…

There was also the fact that 2013 was a year with several ‘epic’ games, by which I mean games that kept my attention for very long periods. These included World Of Warcraft, Monster Hunter 3U, Dragon’s Dogma, Pokemon X, Tales of Graces f and my game of the year (below). Indeed, some of these (especially Monster Hunter or Pokemon) I could have just kept playing but put aside to devote time to other games.

So onto the lists! As with last year, let’s start with the biggest disappointments in reverse order:

3) New Super Mario Brothers U (Wii U) – Come on Nintendo, it’s like you’re not trying. Just as the 3DS game from last year was a disappointment, so too was this Wii U game. It’s not a bad game – in fact it’s actually quite good. But as a Nintendo game, and a Mario game, and as a game that desperately needs to sell a failing system to consumers, this simply wasn’t good enough. And it certainly wasn’t as good as it could have been. Let’s hope they have remedied the situation with the recently released Super Mario 3D Land for Wii U (which I hope I get for Christmas)

2) Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon (3DS) – Farming the sequel of a beloved game to a third-party isn’t a great idea to start with, but that’s not the real issue here. The problem with this graphically excellent and technically impressive showcase of the 3DS is that it lacks any sort of a soul, and becomes more of a ‘checklist simulator’ than a game. I loved this the first few levels, and hated it the last few. It wasn’t half the game Luigi’s Mansion was.

1) Goat Up 2 (iOS) – Again, not a bad game. In fact it’s quite a good game, and a fun spiritual throwback to the C64 days of yore. But it was disappointing for two reasons: i) It’s not as good as Goat Up and ii) It’s apparently Minter’s last iOS game. Boo hoo. I played this one for an hour maybe. I played Goat Up for at least ten times that.

So what were my favourites of the year? Well in a year of truly great games three stood above all others and gave me hundreds of hours of fun. In reverse order:

3) Dragon’s Dogma (Ps3) – This was the game in which Japanese developers tried to ‘out Skyrim Skyrim’ and in my opinion they succeeded. A massive open world RPG with complex battle systems, a fascinating story and – honestly – almost unbelievably good graphics (watch that video!). This had been out for ages when I bought it (for about $15!) and I was just amazed by how good it was and how much I enjoyed it.

2) Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3DS and Wii U) – A game that deserves the ultimate in it’s name. The biggest and by far the best MH game yet delivered in spades and when I finally put it aside I’d spent over 300 hours playing between my 3DS and Wii U (since the game allowed for save file transfer to play on the small or big screen). The online multiplay in particular was amazing, especially when you got into a group of skilled players and worked together to defeat one of the mega-bosses like Dire Miralis or a Stygian Zinogre (as in the above video).

1) Puzzle and Dragons iOS (iOS) – Yes, you read that correctly. A free iOS puzzle game is what I consider the game of the year. I can just hear Florence shaking her head in disgust! I was aware of this game before our Japan trip, but didn’t know quite how popular it was over there. I have since learned that ten percent of Japanese people play ‘PazuDora’ and I believe it: everywhere I saw people playing it, especially on trains. I downloaded it during our trip and… well today was my 200th consecutive login day! You can see from the video this is more than a match-3, since it involves monster collection, team building and a lot of skill making matches during the rounds (the player in the video is no amateur!). The game starts easy but quickly becomes very, very complex and in addition to it being fun I enjoy the challenge of team-building and beating the often very difficult ‘descend’ dungeons. I don’t see myself giving up on this game any time soon either. It’s as far as I am concerned, the ultimate phone game 🙂

So how was your gaming in 2013? Did you play more or less? What were your favourite games of the year?