The Start of a Journey

Hello and welcome to Twenty Pound Gamer.

This blog is about my journey into the wonderful world of being tight sensible with money when it comes to gaming.

The reason I’m doing this is mainly to prove a point to myself that I do have self restraint and that I can go on sites like Amazon, or to shops like GAME and not come away £40 poorer. You see, my problem is that I’m easily influenced and very impatient. It's 9 at night and I pop on a forum and see someone talking about how great Metal Gear Solid 4 is and I’ll want it immediately. The sensible option would be to go online, look for the best price, order it and wait a couple of days for it to come through the post. What do I do? Drive to the 24hr Tesco in town to buy a copy which is probably £5-£10 more expensive and slap it on the debit card along with some snacks I’ve also just picked up on impulse. IDIOT!!!

The start of this year has been no exception, already I’ve spent far too much, mainly due to the replacement of both a PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (Damn this generations poor reliability!) but also through the purchase of games like Mass Effect 2 and Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time, and don't even get me started on the amount of money wasted through rubbish on the App Store; god knows how many 59p games I’ve downloaded, played once and then deleted. If my calculations are right the total I’ve spent is over a whopping £550 on gaming, and it's only February. 

With that depressing fact in mind I’ve decided to game on a budget. The first decision is what the budget should be. First thoughts are £40, but that seems too easy, it’s one new release every month, hardly seems like a challenge at all. £30 is good. There's not too many new releases you can get for that, but once again it didn't seem like that big of a challenge; just wait a couple of weeks when the price drops and bingo, I’m sure there’s plenty of deals for 2 semi new releases for thirty pounds as well. £20? Perfect. A quick look on the web shows there plenty of games for £20, I can even buy relative new releases like Bayonetta for £17.99. 

A Suitably realistic but challenging task. Brilliant.