Steam hit a new stride this year, causing me to open my wallet thirty-six separate times. I don’t want to count how many games that translates into for just this year – but the total game count on my Steam account is now at a sickening 195 titles. I didn’t start on Steam until late in 2007, so that means I’m averaging a disturbing 1.6 games a week.
Nothing can illustrate what causes this than the current front page of the Steam store. Right now, there’s a midweek sale for Psychonauts – a well received game from 2005, that I do not currently own – for $2. I am trying to write this post and *not* take the 30 seconds it would take to purchase it.
Steam has leveraged, on a slightly broader scale, what has made the iPhone app market so dynamic and prone to impulse purchasing – the ability to quickly drop prices, sometimes up to 90%. When you shave an award winning game down to $2, price conscious gamers will react strongly.
Most of my purchases this year were either games from past years or multiplatform titles, so much of my PC playing has already been covered. There were a few standout titles that haven’t quite shown up anywhere else, as well as some awful ports, so let’s make notes below: