Today’s post is inspired by the awesome 7 Financial Hacks to Avoid from The Free Financial Advisor (also known as Average Joe’s Money Blog) and the beyond generic and boring 29 Ways You Waste Cash article from MSN Money. I am so tired of the same old advice on how to save money. What about those of us who already cut cable and don’t have a morning latte?

At the same time, most of us cannot live with the extreme hacks Average Joe talks about- I mean, really, give up internet at home? Library internet access doesn’t cut it- and this is coming from someone who logged 20+ hours a week in her college computer lab when she couldn’t afford her own internet access. Most libraries can’t give you that kind of time.

So today we’re looking at money saving tips for gamers. Yes, these are specific to a certain group of people and not applicable to everyone- but you know what, that makes them much more useful. (And I bet you could apply them to non-gamer things, too.)

 

Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games

1: Limit your subscriptions. How many subscriptions do you need to have active at once? Do you really need active subscriptions to World of Warcraft, Star Wars Online, and Eve all at once? Do you really play all of the games that often? Or could you get away with maybe not playing WoW for a month, or 3 months, while you try out Star Wars? (We all know you’ll be returning to WoW, eventually, but why pay for it while you’re not playing it.)

1a: Do you really need a subscription at all? If your budget is really tight, there are some great MMORPGs out there that don’t have monthly subscriptions- Lord of the Rings Online and Guild Wars come to mind. You only have to buy the game. Online play is free.

In addition, WoW and STO both now let you play the first 20 levels for free. If you need a fix and can’t afford the monthly cost, then take this opportunity to try every race and class combination in the game.

2: Buy in bulk. But what if you can’t give up your WoW subscription, even while you’re enjoying playing a Jedi? J is part of a WoW Guild that plays every Tuesday night. Even if they only play that one time a week, they all play that one night. In that case, don’t pay a stupid monthly subscription fee. There are discounts for paying for your subscription in 3, 6 or 12 month blocks. For goodness sakes, get the bulk discount.

3: Do NOT automatically renew. And one more money saving trick? Do no set your account to automatically renew. Make it send you a reminder. Yes, this takes 30 seconds of your time to click and authorize the new transaction, but it also means you won’t end up paying for another 3 month subscription 2 weeks after you decided to take a break from the game.

 

Pen and Paper Role Playing Games

4: Split the costs. Sure your gaming group will probably want more than one copy of the Player’s Handbook, as that speeds up making characters, but remember when you first started playing games, when you were a preteen or teen with very little extra money to spend? You didn’t own every 2^nd Edition AD&D book ever made. Your gaming group as a whole might have had every book, but you did not. Go back to that. No one needs to own everything. I mean really, how many copies of the Psionics Handbook do you really need floating around the table?

5: Don’t give in to the latest fads. It started with White Wolf, and Wizards of the Coast has embraced it fully. There’s now a publishing schedule, and planned obsolescence for each edition. I mean, how many years did we all play (or stop playing) 2^nd Ed AD&D? Then 3^rd Edition came out. And slowly, Pathfinder/3.5 formed. And then there was 4^th Ed (my favorite, I’ll be honest), which barely had time to find it’s legs before there was D&D Essentials, which I don’t know that anyone played outside of Encounters. And now there’s playtesting for 5^th Edition. But do you really need to go out and buy all the 5^th Ed books when they do come out? Or can your group be perfectly happy playing 4^th Ed- even if there’s no longer company support?

 

Miniatures Gaming

6: Remember what I just said about not giving in to the latest fad? You do not need to buy a whole new army every time Games Workshop updates your army book. Unless you play in sanctioned tournaments every weekend, it really does not matter if your Terminator model is the one released two weeks ago or two years ago.

7: Buy off brand. You don’t need Games Workshop brand paints. You don’t. Sure you then get a color called Blood Angel Black (I made this name up, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a real GW paint called this), but GW paints tend to come in smaller sizes than most other modeling paints, and, unlike GW minis, aren’t always of the best quality. Hit a local hobby shop instead of the GW store, to buy your paints.

 

Collectible Card Games

8: You do not need to “catch them all”. They call the card games “collectible” to make you think there is some sort of value in just having the cards. There’s not. The only value comes in playing the game. Do not try to get a complete collection of all the Ventrue cards in Vampire: The Eternal Struggle. Get enough cards to make yourself a Ventrue deck you like, and have fun with it. Even the Magic Grand Champions only own as many cards as they do because WotC gives them cards for free.

And think about how much fun it is to play in sealed deck tournaments? You don’t even know what kind of deck you’ll be playing, let alone what cards will be in it.

 

Board Games

9: Learn to use what you already have. If you have a wall of board games that means you could play a different game every day for almost 6 months without repeating, stop buying them. Stop buying the expansions, stop buying the latest game from your favorite intellectual property. Play the games you own- more than once. Figure out which ones you actually like. Just like with the cards, games are meant to be played, not collected. What’s the point of owning all those games if you don’t get a chance to play them?

 

PC Games

10: Shop the sales. If you don’t have a Steam account, get one. C and J split a Steam account and have gotten some amazingly fun PC games for great prices. Yes there’s a trade off that only one of them can be playing on the Steam account at a time, and that you have to be logged in to play (instead of having the game on your computer), but that seems to be the future of PC gaming anyway, at least of the Diablo III model is anything to go on.

11: Spend money where it matters. For PC gaming or MMORPGs, or even just Facebook games, your internet connection matters. If you have a slow or bad internet connection, you will feel like you’ve wasted any money spent on your computer or your games. Buying new games or upgrading your computer won’t fix the problem. So don’t be afraid to spend money where it matters.

The same with your computer. Most geeks build their own now, and it’s less expensive than buying a pre-built, but know what matters and what doesn’t. Know where your dollars are best spent for maximum enjoyment.

 

Play Your Games

12: Don’t go out, stay in. Maybe this isn’t as common anymore, but we used to go to a game store to play, or sometimes a Dennys- places where we were tempted, even expected, to pay money. Why? Stay in. Have your friends over for a game night. Make it a pot luck, or even a bring your own snacks event.

And trust me, you will have more fun sitting around your dining room table playing Cards Against Humanity with your friends than just about any other activity you could think to do. (And honestly, you don’t want to play Cards Against Humanity in public.)