Gaming The System - The Feminist Gaming Podcast

217 Gamer Guilt Part 3: The Cost - Spending, Regrets and Justifications

• Gaming The System - The Feminist Gaming Podcast

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Welcome back to Gaming the System, where three intersectional feminists examine gaming and games through a feminist lens! In this third installment of our Gamer Guilt series, Jem, Alex, and Matt dive into the financial side of gaming—how much we spend, how we justify it, and the guilt that sometimes comes with it.

💰 Gaming vs. Other Hobbies
We rarely question the cost of sports, music, or collecting hobbies, but why is gaming spending scrutinised? From consoles to digital libraries, our hosts break down the real costs of gaming and compare them to other pastimes.

📈 The Cost of Games: Then vs. Now
Is £70 for a game really that steep considering the time-cost value? Or is it just the ever-rising price of entertainment? The team discusses how gaming expenses have changed, why some titles feel “worth it,” and whether digital ownership is truly ownership at all.

💸 Regrettable Purchases & Money Well Spent
From Steam refunds to unexpected subscription traps, Alex and Matt share their biggest gaming purchase regrets, including a mysterious musical pigeon misadventure. Meanwhile, Jem reflects on the psychological pull of in-game spending and the ethical concerns of microtransactions.

📚 Games, Books, and the Changing Meaning of Ownership
What happens when companies remove access to purchased content as digital storefronts dominate? The team touches on the recent Kindle controversy and how it mirrors the gaming world’s shift toward subscriptions and live-service models.

🎧 Tune in Next Time!
There’s still more to unpack! Our Gamer Guilt series continues, and we’d love to hear your experiences. Have you ever felt guilty about your gaming spending? Drop us a message and let’s keep the conversation going.

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Hello and welcome back to another episode of Gaming the System, the podcast where three intersectional feminists examine gaming and games through a feminist lens. I'm your host for today. I'm Gem and I'm here with my friends Alex and Matt. So before we get started, if you want to support us, you can subscribe to our patron at patreon. com forward slash gaming the system for some exclusive content, or you can send us a one off donation via PayPal to our email address. We are gaming the system at gmail. com.

Jem:

welcome to what will be our third episode on Gamer Guilt. We had expected to get it all done in one or two episodes, but there's obviously a huge amount to talk about around this topic. because it's a really important issue and something that I think most of us have experienced at some time or another. So last two episodes we talked about priorities, time and the choices that we make about our games and this time we'd like to talk a little bit about Our game preferences, and spending, and the idea of completion guilt, this idea that you can't start that new game or buy a new game until you've finished the ones you've got piling up. And I have a similar issue with reading, actually. I don't know about you guys, but I have piles of books scattered about the house, and I think they're more like art installations these days than anything that I know I'm actually going to get round to. And in fact, just reinforcing that I. physically own a book that I just bought the digital version of because I can't read it in the evenings because I need light. So, I think it's just gone crazy and I have the same issue with games and I'm really bad at completing games. So I'm going to be really intrigued to listen to how you guys feel about this topic. So first of all, I wanted to ask you about. Finances, like, how do you. balance what you spend on your gaming hobby. Because if we played golf, or road, or I don't know, cycled, or many other, played football, many other, or watched football, many other hobbies out there. That costs a lot of money. It costs a lot of money. People buy season tickets, they buy kits, they buy memberships and all the equipment that goes with whatever their hobbies are. And we very rarely question the amount that people spend on those kind of hobbies. It's almost as though we're We think that's acceptable spending. Hobbies are generally a positive thing. If you have a hobby, it's one of the things that they list to put on your CV, to have in a conversation, an interview, or a anything like that. It's the sort of thing that we talk about a lot. but when it comes to gaming, We've talked a lot about the cost of games, and we know that some of the games can cost sort of 50, 60 and up. And we were talking not that long ago about how some of the new games are potentially going to start hitting 100 when they're coming out.

Alex:

mm

Jem:

how Do we justify the money that we spend on those games? How do we feel about that? How do you balance that in your lives?

Matt:

For perspective, it's a question I've not considered before. Over the course of your lifetime so far, what do you reckon the amount is you've spent on gaming? Because I was thinking recently I've had, I've always had, and this includes money spent on gaming for you, like when you're a Having Every playstation, so that's four playstations, I've had two PS3s a playstation five, two PS4s actually and then all the games that go along with them and then moving on to my PC and monitor and Steam games and all that sort of thing. It does start to build up, Probably between 5, 000 and 10, 000

Alex:

Yeah.

Matt:

Over the course of a lifetime so far

Jem:

I didn't used to be into consoles. and I think PCs have a longer lifespan when it comes to gaming in a lot of ways, but they often cost more, well, they used to cost more upfront. the hardware in itself is a cost and then the game, so yeah. Hundreds, thousands of pounds in my lifetime, for sure.

Alex:

Yeah. I'd say at least a couple of thousand for me as well. When I think about, started out. at the very youngest on PC and then moved on to the Playstations and then there was also things like the Nintendos, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, before that there was Game Boy as well, so there's all sorts of different gaming hardware and software, but also When you think about the cost even of a SSD for the PS5 that's a substantial amount as well. So yeah, I'd say at least two to three thousand or more up to this point in my lifetime,

Matt:

And it is useful to compare the activity of gaming to other pastimes because that Made me remember I'm watching Well recently been watching a lot of Warhammer 40k content And they were talking about the amount of money that they've spent over the course of their hobbying career on it. And just, some things cost money, more different money. So, if you play a sport, then that's gonna be, depending on what the sport is, if it's badminton, it's very cheap. it's cricket, it's going to be more expensive. If it's tennis, it's going to be more expensive. And that includes all of the training that you have done at the start. Most people, they, you only get to train when you're a child, and then you're that way for the rest of your life. Whereas, if you want to train when you're an adult, it's much more expensive, because there aren't any adult training clubs. And then you have the, into the wankier side of sports, like golf. Where you can spend thousands of pounds on one club.

Alex:

Oh yeah.

Matt:

Literally one club. And the I suppose it comes down to some value for money as well. I suppose. And the, You get a lot out of the hardware, For gaming. Because there's the gaming side of things, which is either console or PC. And consoles, there have been 5 Playstations in the last 30 years. So it's every 7 years or so you buy a new one, and it lasts you for 7 years. Whereas with PCs, I don't know what it's been like. The thing that had always put me off getting a PC as opposed to a PlayStation was that they Well, I didn't understand them. I didn't understand anything about computers. And I struggled to see how a computer that was made Because only until very recently computers have actually Gaming computers have actually looked like they are gaming computers. Whereas before, when I was growing up, all computers were great big fat Massive boxes and you go, but this is my sleek little beautiful ps2 How could it And then now you get these awesome nuclear power station like blinding supercoolant cooled Behemoths, you look at it and go. Oh, yeah, obviously that's gonna be a billion times more powerful than a PlayStation But then, I'd be interested to get your guys thoughts on buying habits of games themselves. Because that's changed a lot.

Alex:

Yeah.

Matt:

since we've gone digital, but

Alex:

It's always interesting thinking about the changing costs of games in relation to everything as well because obviously what we pay now about 70 is pretty normalized just because that's how the costs have been going when we were younger it was less than that but in the same way so it's the cost of everything else is going up everything's going up no matter what hobby it is what's interesting I always like to think is how I can hesitate to buy certain things if they cost a certain amount. Because of what they are. I feel very differently about how much money I spend on clothes compared to how much I spend on games. And it's really weird how we assign different values to different things as well. I remember chatting once with one of my best friends about the cost of a game saying, oh, it's a bit steep. It's 60 pounds. And this was going back like a decade or so. And she said, well actually, if you think about how much it costs to go to the cinema to watch a movie that's two hours long, it was at the time, for 3D, IMAX, it was like what, 15 pounds. And she was like, how many hours is this game gonna be? And I was like, I don't know, maybe somewhere, it was one of, a big one, it was probably one of the Assassin's Creed's like upwards of 100 hours or so. And she was like, well when you think about it that way, in terms of time cost, it's actually a real bargain. And that's how she saw gaming through that time cost kind of lens, which I thought was really interesting to think about as well.

Jem:

just to give you some figures, there's around 37. 7 million gamers in the UK, And there's 7. 8 billion pounds spent on games in 2023. it works out at about 200. Pounds a year per gamer but that obviously doesn't include your hardware, I think, because realistically, that's, what, four, three, three or four AAA games,

Alex:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jem:

maybe, That's probably not an unreasonable amount of games for a gamer to get through at that, of that level in a year, your average game. in Europe, that's slightly lower actually. It's about 194 euros, But they reckon that there's a generational difference, that Millennials spend more

Alex:

Mm.

Jem:

Gen X gamers. So the Millennials they reckon are spending about 86 dollars a month on gaming, whereas Gen X are spending about 62 dollars a month. So, it's it varies dramatically, but it's definitely in the hundreds. I know when I was playing World of Warcraft that had a monthly fee. Which I don't know if that's very popular anymore. I don't Gone to a sort of end game. In game, because You paid up front for the game, and then on top of that you paid a monthly fee

Alex:

Yeah.

Jem:

servers, yeah. And it wasn't huge, it was about 10 a month, this is going back 17

Alex:

Mm.

Jem:

no, it was a lot to spend on a on a game on a monthly basis. And I remember at one point, Daniel had to stop playing for a bit because he couldn't afford the ten pounds a month. So it, so there was that and I remember thinking about, can you justify it? When you're trying to, check all your finances and you're looking at how much money you're spending on the weekly shop and yet you're spending 10, 20 pounds a month on a game. And I justified it because it was my social outlet. It wasn't just a hobby, but it was also a social space for me. And I've had a similar kind of conversation with myself about spending money in games. So if I'm playing Silly mobile games and stuff. Sometimes we, we've talked about the evils of in game purchases and I'm completely against them in that way, but if you're enjoying the game and you want to continue enjoying the game, then I think it's fair enough to pay money if you can afford it. It's problematic when it's the only way to succeed. there's been times when I've been like, well, yeah, I can pay that because I'm enjoying this and it's no different from buying a magazine, 10, 5 quid, 10 quid. How do you guys balance it? How do you justify the money that you spend?

Alex:

It's interesting, isn't it? I think for me it really depends on how badly I want whatever game it is that I'm looking at buying. I've spent actually quite a lot on gaming this last month, but I think part of that is almost like To help cheer myself up, honestly. Because I'm not going through the winter and things, is, it can be quite a tricky time of year for a lot of people. So I have been using gaming as a sort of mood booster. And also I think, It is true, it doesn't have to confine itself to shop, like retail therapy can be for buying anything, can't it? So in a way, I suppose that's one way of looking at it, which isn't necessarily healthy, necessarily. But then it's also like, I don't tend to spend money on a regular basis, like I don't buy games every month. I will only buy a game if I am keen to buy it or if I've been waiting a very long time to buy it and I'm like, yes, you know what, I'm gonna buy it right now, I have to wait for a point in time where I'm like, I need this game now or if I've been waiting, obviously, for it. for a long time and I've I've, I'll tell people I want certain games for my birthday depending on if they're coming out around my birthday but I don't, I'm not the type of gamer that's oh, this is my budget for the month, what am I going to buy for this month? I don't tend to do it like that, I'll just tend to buy based on, which games I've been looking at and if I could do with. Something new to take my mind off things and yeah, some novelty is always good, I think. But yeah, it really depends on, I think, just how it will impact on me and my mood. Which I think is a good enough way to justify spending on

Jem:

good investment, isn't it? Yeah.

Matt:

I've had more disposal income to play with, and it's not enough to, I'm in that place as most people are of going, I could afford to buy this game, but do I really want to, is that, just, should I get what I've should I read the book that I've got there The ones I've already got? Whereas, so I used to have I'd have a wish list that would just, you'd just keep on adding to it. And it's just right, I've got these seven books, and for all I've seen, I've got on my phone at the moment reading, I've read a book about autism, which I'm really I've, because I've been I've known nothing about it, and now I know a little bit about it, which is good, and the other things I'm looking into is Othello, I love Othello, I had an idea for a video game based on Shakespeare plays, and Othello is my favourite one, so I thought I'd start there.

Alex:

Yes.

Matt:

The end. Law, the massive law manuscript, beautiful, stunningly illustrated, beautiful book that has been released recently, so I've got that as well. Then, I've got 12 books about propaganda and how propaganda works, so I'll make a game about propaganda as well. And then unfortunately, I've I'm committed to learning about rape in World War 2, because It's one of those things where I go, oh, I really do need to know. I need to know about that because it's one of those blank spots in history that I've never found. And that's just the books that I've got sitting on that list there ready to go now and I don't know where to start and I don't know if I'll feel like starting whereas so I might go a month and then I haven't touched half of them and then I'll instead of going right they stay on the list I throw them off the list and I look at what's around me at the moment and I do that with gaming so with my steam wish list it'll grow to about 15 different games and then I'll reset reassess every now and then going If I had infinite money, I would just buy all of them. I don't have infinite money, I've got some money. If I've got 70 to spend on gaming, do I want to buy a 60 game? Now, that I think I want to play, that's a big thing as well. The difference between what you actually want in the moment, that you go, Oh yeah, this is the perfect thing right now. And it's impossible to know what that's going to be. So you don't know whether it's going to be the new 70 pound game that comes out that you'll pay for 100 hours, or whether it'll be Baldur's Gate 3, where I bought it and then didn't play it for a year and a half, still playing 60 pounds on it, and Then you can ask yourself, well there are so many cheap games now, like less than 10 pound games that you can go for, do I want to play one of them? And taking, then that, Trying as much as I can to remove the woulds and shoulds and coulds out of what I'm doing. So at the moment I've got I've been playing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and that was released at the end of January for PC a year after it came out for PlayStation and Out of nowhere. It's a hundred hour game and I've loved every second of it Completely out of nowhere, it's 50. There's a wonderful Habit that PlayStation games are having, consistently, is that they only charge 50 for the games that they've ported from PlayStation to PC. And, so it's 50 for 100 hours, I was expecting maybe a 6 7 out of 10, but it quickly climbed up to a 10 Apart from the combat's dreadful, but everything else is wonderful. And, the other things on my list at the moment are Stardew Valley. Which is 11, but then I think, do I want to play that now? It's not how you go, it's easier to go,

Jem:

Yes, you do!

Matt:

if you, I, yes I'll, again, that, but that's still something that I'll go, is it worth 11? I'll wait till it comes down to 6 and then I'll get it. And I've got God of War Ragnarok, Spider Man 2, and Kingdom Come Deliverance.

Alex:

Nice.

Matt:

And I've had God of War Ragnarok on that wishlist for the last five And I've, because I've not, I know that if I had infant money I would buy it, but I don't, so I don't know what I'm, what, you never know what you want next.

Alex:

Nice.

Jem:

have you ever regretted uh, a gaming purchase or an, you know, expensive one?

Alex:

one for me. It was quite an unusual one, really. Tom and I were looking for something fun to play together. And it turned out, I don't think you could play it co op in the end, but it's a game by Team 17, who, if you don't know who they are used to make the Worms games. I think they still make Worms games nowadays. But yeah, they're a very good developer, and this game was called Headbangers. And it was all about pigeons, and they were musical pigeons, and you basically steer their heads around and they go, Waaaaaaaahhhhh! And you like make musical notes with them and stuff. It was really very funny, and tang and cheek, and stuff. And it was like basically a rhythm action, set of small rhythm action games, similar to Fall Guys but with rhythm action games. And we had great fun playing it for one weekend. And then it got to the Monday, we tried to go on it, and it locked us out. Because it turned out it was a PlayStation Plus only, and somehow we had access to it for that weekend. And then it had realised that we didn't have PlayStation Plus, and kicked us out. So we'd bought a game that we can't play now.

Jem:

Oh

Alex:

so that was a bit of a bummer. It was only 4. 99 I think. Or maybe it was slightly more. I can't remember. But I felt like there was no. way we could complain because there was like no evidence to say that like It was just really weird. I don't know what happened, but it was quite disappointing. Admittedly, we probably experienced all the game had to offer in that weekend, but we wanted to progress through the levels and stuff, and get more of the little outfits and things, as you progress through. and getting XP you could unlock different hairstyles and different outfits for the pigeons and different noises for them to make and stuff. In terms of the actual games, like the mini games, we'd probably done pretty much 99 percent of them. So all in all we'd probably done it. in that one weekend but it didn't mean they'd had to kick us out just because we weren't subscribed to playstation plus it was so it was a bit of a bummer so yeah that was a regretful purchase not that we knew at the time but yeah

Jem:

about you, Matt? You said very emphatically said yes.

Matt:

And then it's interesting, because I immediately went, there's a, there's, from my entire 30, almost 31 years of life, I think I've only properly regretted one game related purchase. And that was only because I didn't realise you could get refunds on Steam yet. And that was Suicide Squad. Killed Justice League. 60. Day 1. Probably the worst game ever created. Not just because If it was just a first game of a studio coming out of nowhere and doing something new That's one thing, you go, an unknown quantity, but the, just like with Dragon Age Valeguard, what it wasted, what it destroyed, is as devastating as the game itself not being very good. So that was just 60 down the toilet, but then I, but had I known that you could get no questions asked refunds from Steam. As long as you've played it for less than two hours, that would have neutralized that. But then, outside of that, I don't think I feel like I've wasted a single penny in my gaming life because there'll be, we had a positive, well, we're fortunate to have lived through various generations of the way that money can be spent in gaming because it started off just discs and PCs and discs and consoles. And there were always second hand shops, that was a massive deal as well because if you spend 30 on a game but you know that you could return it the next day if it's rubbish, and get it. maybe half, half the money back. That's a big impactor in your mindset when you're coming to spend money on something when you know that if I play this solidly for a month I'll still be able to just put it back in the box and return it if I want to. And then we moved on to the hybrid period if you could buy it online and have an online version or get the disc when now we're almost exclusively online stuff. And then it became online stuff and in game purchases. And that's the, that's my stopping point with, it's like the point of no return thing thin end of the wedge, where you go, once you've stepped into that world, there are no limits on how much money you can spend because it's all just arbitrary stuff

Jem:

yeah.

Matt:

that makes sense. untold amounts of money and is what I think one of the most destructive things about the gaming industry at the minute is because the big, the biggest companies look, they're looking for the next Fortnite or the next Marvel Rivals because they just want that microtransaction money. They don't want a game that will make a modestly successful modest return on investment. They want the untold billions.

Jem:

Yeah, they want minimal amount of effort for maximum amount of stuff back. I think that's, I don't mind in game purchases if they are things that make the game just little things, add ons, little extras that you can get. It's fine. It's when it, when you have to purchase in order to progress, that's what really annoys me. When they design games with, with uh, Where, again, I don't mind games that have a time limit. you have to have a pause, because actually I think that's in some ways that's quite a positive mechanic because it makes you step away. It annoys me when they put those pauses in such a way that you can never complete an activity without paying money. I played Evermerge for over a year and I never completed any of the tasks because the only way to do it was to pay money and I just refused. So I always got just almost to the edge of doing it. And I did buy a couple of boost packs in a couple of times, but not to finish tasks just because I wanted to keep playing and I wasn't able to for various reasons, but I literally spent probably 10 on it over the course of that year. But it, it frustrated me because I think if you. Had a different personality or had a different sort of background or whatever, different attitude. It would be really hard to resist it when it's popping up constantly saying, spend money, you only need to spend this much, you only need to spend that much. And it feels like small amounts. So, it lures you in. Roblox, which we've talked about before that, it's aimed, I know they, they claim it's for older kids, but it really isn't it's targeting kids from the age of five and up, and it has, they have their whole Robux thing, and you can do all sorts of stuff with Robux, you can buy skins, and you can buy little things to carry around, but you can also, gift them to your friends. They have a game, where you can set up a little stall and ask people to give you money for It's all in game money, and there's no way for gamers to convert that money into real money. But, obviously the game, are, making Heaps of real monies out of the efforts of the programming being done by younger people. that's a whole separate episode but my point being that I don't fundamentally disagree with the idea of spending money. on your gaming experience. I just fundamentally disagree with it when it's forced down your throat or when it's impossible to play the game without doing it. So I think you're right, Matt. I think it's absolutely the thin end of the wedge, and I think it's a real problem. But As you said about Steam accepting returns now, that's a really positive shift because it has been a concern of mine that before you could buy the physical game and then you could resell it once you've finished with it, and that's environmentally good, it's socially good, it's financially good, there's all so many benefits to doing it that way and moving everything to a digital set system takes that away from you. And it also, I you don't have to pay a Monthly subscription fee to Steam, but let's say you did. Let's say they suddenly brought that in. You have to pay your 20 quid a month to us, or you lose access to your whole game library. That would upend everything for people,

Alex:

it does bring up questions around how ownership has changed for the consumer. I think it was in the news this week about the Kindle you only have about four, three or four days left to download all your Kindle books before Amazon takes them away, essentially so you, when you purchase a book, an ebook on Kindle, you don't actually own that ebook anymore, you're leasing it for the time that you're a member of kindle or whatever. I'm not quite sure how it works, but yeah, essentially they're removing the ownership that you have of those e books. And also, they have the ability to change the content of those e books and remove any e books from the overall massive library. So they've removed, I can't remember exactly what it was, things like Animal Farm. I've heard they've taken it out in the past. Which says something. And also they've put in the corrected editions of Roald Dahl books, where they've updated the language in Roald Dahl. So it's, yeah, that's probably another episode, isn't it?

Jem:

And that's all that we have time for in this episode of Gamer Guilt Series. We've got one more episode coming up, so we really hope that you've been enjoying it, and we would love to hear your thoughts on our episodes and also your experiences of gamer guilt. We'll hope to see you soon and just enjoy your games.