![]() ![]() ![]() From 2004-2008, he was the co-owner of Atlanta Game Factory, a brick-and-mortar retail store. He has written for a number of international hobby gaming periodicals and popular Web sites. Michael has been involved with writing professionally about games since 2002, when he busked for store credit writing for Boulder Games’ newsletter. It turned out to be a terrible idea, because the game was TSR’s Dungeon! - and the rest, as they say, is history. Sometime in the early 1980s, MichaelBarnes’ parents thought it would be a good idea to buy him a board game to keep him busy with some friends during one of those high-pressure, “free” timeshare vacations. Maybe 2-3, but now I'd be surprised if I bought one any time soon. The funny thing is, I'm not even one of those people who buy 5-6 games a month. That you've probably wasted a lot of money, like I did, on buying the same thing over and over again or on shelfwarming titles that have a lower ROI than AIG stock. But then I realized that the real message, the one that was from the heart, was that you shouldn't even be worried about buying more games when the whole economy could go belly up. This week's column started out as a lighthearted "Ten Tips to Survive the 2nd Great Depression" thing with advice on how to keep a steady flow of games coming in without spending a lot of money. I'm all for spending money on what makes you happy and supporting businesses in the hobby, but I think I hit my breaking point where a game just has to be DAMN good for me to want to buy it. But also because I'm pretty tired of owning a bunch of games that I either will never get to play for whatever reason or that I would choose something else over if given an opportunity. Part of it is because I was laid off and buying a new game suddenly became tantamount to buying a ski jacket in hell. And on top of that, I've been getting rid of board games at practically a 2-for-1 ratio. In fact, I haven't bought a game since October of last year. Are you still spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars a year on hobby gaming even in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression? ![]()
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