Guestblogger week : 7 rules for gamers on a budget.
Feb 12On day 3 of guestblogger week we are very happy to welcome Belgian Blogger Matthew to the scene. As an editor of Belgiums biggest online gaming magazine and a gaming aficionado, he gives you seven golden rules for ‘Gaming on a tight budget’
7 rules for gamers on a budget ( By Matthew )
As somebody who plays video games on a professional level, it’s easy for me to get all the latest games without any cost. But I have to admit: gaming is a expensive hobby. When you want to buy a title early after launch, you’ll be charged at least sixty euros. And then we aren’t even talking about the machines we’re playing on. But there are some tricks to game for not even half the price. And it’s completely legal!
Tip 1: Don’t buy games immediately
This is one of the basic rules. While I understand that you want to get your hands on that new title as soon as possible, it might not be a bad idea to wait a while. High prices are set for the early adopters and while some companies give you an advantage if you buy them early, like double experience weekends, free extras or a limited edition, it’s not always worth it. Actually, a lot of games drop at least twenty euros just a month post-release. That’s a 33 percent discount for just waiting. The latest Call of Duty instalment is for example available at 44 euros, while it launched at 64 in November, just three months later. And less than two months after Gran Turismo 6 went for sale for 69 euros, it’s now yours for less than 40 bucks. Waiting is good for you. And the longer you wait, the cheaper it gets. It’s something that you really need to think about. Is it worth to play that awesome title immediately? I sometimes buy my games over a year later at a 80 percent discount. Those games aren’t rubbish just because they’re a year old. Great games stay great. No matter what. So just wait a bit.
Tip 2: Choose the right store for boxed copies
Most people like boxed copies. This way they are able to show off their collection. If you really need your game in a neat case, plastic wrapped and with a instruction booklet included, then you need to find the proper store. First of all you have to know that the game publishers will set a advised price, so that the stores know what is a good deal. But Sony for example sets those prices way too high for their exclusive titles, so a lot of stores will charge you 74 euros for new games. Specialised stores also tend to pick higher prices, because they will charge you there professionally and knowledge. Less known stores who sell about everything else, won’t lower their prices immediately because they have no clue what a game is worth and they just want to make profit. So look around. Don’t buy your games in a single store but compare prices and locate the best deals for your bucks.
Tip 3: Buy online
You might know this already, but buying stuff online is usually cheaper. There are many online stores who sell video games and there’s a lot of competition between each other. So when you check the local online stores, you will definitely find games a lot cheaper. That’s usually because they don’t care about the advised prices set by the publishers and their marketing managers. They lower their prices to raise awareness and sell more stuff. Unlike retail stores, they do not buy their games through official distributors, so their stock prices are usually lower too. They do not need to pay rent for their shops or employees to sell. So they do not need those higher prices.
Tip 4: Why not choose to import?
So if buying online is cheaper, why not choose to use international exchange rates to your advantage? Games in England usually cost 40 pounds when they are just released. But that’s just a mere 48 euros, while here we will pay 60 or more for that same title. To be honest, you will be charged more for shipping, but some international online stores might have some great deals too. The British shop Game.co.uk for example sends everything internationally for just 2,95 GBP. Buy more than one game and you’re good to go. And they even have a points system. You will quickly collect enough points to lower the price sensibly. Importing doesn’t harm your consoles or games. Just make sure your system will run imported games. The PlayStation 3 and 4 both will play games from over the world and are not region locked. The Xbox 360 will play about half of the imported games, but there are a lot of compatibility charts available online. Also make sure your targeted game is available in your language! French and German stores usually sell games only in their languages so please take notice!
Tip 5: Digital is cheaper
When you buy a boxed copy, you will not only be charged for the game, but also for everything that happened until you took the game off the shelves or the mailing service delivered it at your door. So you’ll pay for the employees, the distribution and the boxing. Buying a game digitally – without the packaging – is a lot cheaper. Every available console comes with a complimentary online store with great prices. You might save five to ten bucks on games, you can buy them at home and they will be downloaded to your system immediately. You will need a proper internet connection and some patience though until those games have been downloaded. Some games might take up to 40 GB, so don’t download games unless your internet provider doesn’t shut you down for downloading this much. On PC there are much more possibilities. Steam is a online store powered by the great people at Valve. They sell their games at a much lower prices then you would online, and they drop their prices reasonably quickly too.
Tip 6: Wait for digital sales
Steam also has another advantage: they sometimes tend to throw everything at your face, just because they want to. About every three months they will organise the Steam Sales weeks. Nearly every recent title will have at least a 20 percent discount, with additional daily and hourly sales. It’s sometimes a gamble to choose the right time for buying a game during the Steam Sales, because the amount of discount can really change every few hours. Valve also has weekly and daily sales all over the year and sometimes has discounts on whole franchises, up to 70 percent. There are also other ways to buy games for less. Online stores like G2Play.net buys Steam keys in bulk and sells them with huge discounts, up to 60 percent off! Gamers with a console also have occasional discounts. There are weekly sales for both Xbox and PlayStation, so just check the online stores for the best deals, usually up to 70 percent. Even better are the Humble Bundles and Indie Royale Bundles, where you can buy four to eight games in one collection… and you can choose the price! If you want to, you can buy them for just one cent, but all the proceedings go to charity, so I tend to pay about 15 bucks. Then my conscience isn’t messing with me afterwards. And if you beat the average donation, you will receive more games. Ka-ching!
Tip 7: Streaming and subscriptions
Last but not least, there’s also another option if you do not care about owning games but just having fun. Like Netflix and Spotify, it’s possible to stream video games. Some supercomputer in a datacenter will have the game set up for you, while you will only watch a video stream of it. You actually do not need a powerful PC to play those games. Even better: you can game in your tablet or smartphone. It’s just watching a movie really. OnLive is a great example where you can stream video games. They “rent” some games for just a few bucks a week, but you can also subscribe to the PlayPack for 9,99 a month and you can play over hundreds of games. While PlayStation is busy with their streaming service called PlayStation Now, they also have something called Instant Game Collection as a selling point for their PlayStation Plus subscription. If you pay 6,99 a month (or 49,99 a year), you will get access to about fifteen games each month, selected by the company. And if you think those games will suck, then think again. Most games have been nominated for Game of the Year before, so I can guarantee that this is a must-have subscription if you own a PlayStation 3, 4 or Vita. And even better: you will have a ten percent discount on the PlayStation Store too. The Xbox 360 has the Xbox Live Gold subscription which grants you two free games each month. While they are great too, they are usually older titles. And you can keep them, while you can’t on PlayStation. If you want to quit PlayStation Plus, you will lose your ability to play those downloaded games.
Matthew Deboysere is a video game journalist for several Belgian media. Is the co-founder of G.Mag, a free digital gaming magazine, but left for a new adventure. Previously wrote for GUNK and 9lives. Loves video games with a great story that reduces him to tears. And cat videos.
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Game week : Closing up with suggestions from the Wiseguys.
Feb 01Well, we hope you enjoyed “game week” on the Knightwise.com blog. We had a great time in the comments section and on the different Social Streams ( Like our Facebook group , our Twitter channel and our Google+ community) We didn’t want to keep THEIR submissions from you trusty blogreaders .. So here come the suggestions … from the Wiseguys.
- @mcvries suggested Estranged on Steam and Urban Terror.
- Matthew Williams suggested Desura.com (an alternative to Steam) and 0 A.D.
- Kristof Cools found this great page with 25 Cross platform games.
- Joris Hermans told us to drop everything we were doing and go play Thief, the dark project and Hitman.
So to close it all off I want to share with you, 8 minutes of standup comedy that has inspired me to do this series of posts. Askit that had me in tears with laughter and , at a certain point, nearly cost me my spotless non-incontence score. Enjoy Dara O Briain at the “Night at the Apollo”, taking about gaming. Forgive me if I stole ONE of his jokes .. When you hear the rest , you will thank me for it.
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GAME WEEK : Cross platform terraforming with Minecraft.
Jan 30
I started off playing creative mode minecraft this is where you have access to every block and item that is currently in the version you are playing. With all these blocks available to you, you can craft anything and the only limit is your creative self. The first thing I did in minecraft was to build a house and a bed so I was nice and safe from those pesky little monsters. Little did I know in
creative mode there are no monster mobs spawning at night and therefore is a nice mode if you just want to create a massive tower; a nice house or even create your own mini games.
When you get used to minecraft on creative mode and looking for a tougher challenge the next step is Survival mode, with 4 levels of difficulty which are peaceful no spawing monsters up to difficult. Unlike creative mode here is were the real game gets you hooked. You will start with no tools, blocks or information, you are however given a map which is empty. From this point on the game will only progress with the work you perform within the world. Sit back and wait for dark and monsters will keep attacking you. Get in early and start building your house and a bed and in no time you will be safe from the onslaught you will see when the sun sets.
Singleplayer minecraft is a lot of fun as you can move along the timeline of your world as quickly or as slowly as you see fit. You are mining and crafting items for yourself which can take up precious time you need to collect other valuable resources if only someone could help you. Well in Multiplayer the entire experience changes, not because you have a friend to mine resources you also have an enemy waiting to attack you. Be careful if you find gold or diamond your friend might want those for themselves. With a few swings of a stone sword your hard work might just become someone’s ill gotten gain.
There are so many features in the game that just need to be experienced by the player, with the game still in development there really is a lot more content that can be added. With the over world (main seeded world) which contains villages, dungeons and very different biomes (Rain forest, Forest, Desert, Sea, Caves, Solid Ground, Mushroom) all these biomes have different creatures and blocks you would need to mine in order to build your wildest creations. The current version 1.7.2 has most of the features above along with many types of animals, all of which are interact able and can be used for food, security(Wolves), or just to admire.
So to sum up Minecraft the game is endless fun for all ages I spent roughly 2 hours a day playing Minecraft with my niece over christmas. I must say it was one of the highlights of my holidays. Fishing a close second.. I want to finish off with my top 5 favorite things to do in minecraft.
1. Wolf Pack: Using bones collected from skeletons to be-friend a pack of wolves, then running around and attacking other animals to watch the wolves attack. Same with monsters spawned.
2. Pet spawning: this is where you get two animals of the same kind and you fence them. Then you make them enter love mode. After a few seconds a smaller younger version of these animals appears.
3. Creepers: While these are monsters the creepers will just pop up on you, you will here a hissing noise followed by a big explosion. Normal reactions are “Oh Crap!”, “ARRGGHHH!” , and “NOOOOOO”
4. Traps: Setting up pressure pads connected to TNT, which can be used to destroy someones creation or simple to have fun with dispensers.
5. Mini Games: I have seen many YouTube videos with free maps you can play that have multiple mini games, designed to use normal minecraft items to advance through levels.
About Matt : (A.K.A Turtlez) Age: 26
I have been a gamer for quite a few years now close to 14. I enjoy playing both online and offline games with friends. I have been mainly a PC and Xbox gamer with a tendency to play mostly First Person Shooter games, however I have branched out recently to third person hack and slash games. I also have been enjoying 2K’s NBA2k range of Basketball games, as well as Formula 1 games. Growing up in my household my father enjoyed working with computers and IT equipment which meant I spent loads of time doing the same as a kid. I now have an IT Based job in Australia working with an IBM Mainframe as a performance tester. I still to this day enjoy getting a gaming session in on a weekend or even after dinner when the time suits me. I first cut my gaming teeth on the good old Counter Strike 1.6 and Team Fortress 2 (A.K.A Team Fortress Classic). I then moved onto the newer versions of these games years later and expanded to Battlefield 2. Now I have a list as long as a stack of cases with all the games I currently play. The major of my time is spent playing the following: Battlefield 4, Team Fortress 2 (Source Edition), or Counter Strike Source , NBA 2k13 or 2k14 Formula 1 2013 (Usually driving in full GP length races with my cousin online) GTA IV, Forza, Ryse when I feel the need for change. Matts online coordinates : Xbox Live: TurtlezPantz – Steam: zyther (Screen Name Turtlez!) – Raptr: TM_Turtlez
About Minecraft.
Minecraft is a cross platform game. (to play it you just need Java on your machine) You can DOWNLOAD IT HERE.
There are also many completely FREE and open source alternatives to the “original” minecraft that might be more suitable for your system (or your budget) : choose from one of the many other alternatives out there in THIS list.
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Game Week : “Frag the Axis” on “Return to Castle Wolfenstein”.
Jan 29Loooos Looos Loooooossss !!!! We used to shout it across the office at lunch break. Our boss didn’t even notice anymore and our cleaning lady tended to leave the building whenever we were playing. I am of course referring to the endless lunch breaks at my old job, spent playing “Castle Wolfenstein” in multiplayer mode. Forming small teams of German or Allied soldiers and trying to invade bunkers, steal documents or liberate prisoners. I LOVED Castle Wolfenstein, both in its Single player mode (Fighting Nazi’s and Zombies) or in online multiplayer mode. Ok : Nazi’s and Zombies does make it sound like Wolfenstein was a mix between “The Walking Dead” and “Allo Allo”… but it is nothing like that.
In multiplayer game mode every teammember in our office-battalion had a specific function. Engineer, Medic, Soldier … and “That guy with the bazooka”. That guy would be me. From a tactical viewpoint you used the bazooka to gain entrance to a bunker. Once inside you would dispose of the Bazooka and respawn as a medic or a soldier .. Not me : I used the Bazooka everywhere. I was lethal in close quarters, both for my enemies, my teammates and my own health. This strategy turned me into a “loose canon” on the battlefield, terrifying both my teammates and my enemies equally. I built up quite a reputation that way 🙂 Good times , Good times indeed.
Now YOU can have a crack at Zombies, Nazi”s and Allied forces. Fire away on your Mac, your Linux machine or your Windows desktop. Download Castle Wolfenstein Enemy Territory here … LOOSSS LOOSSS LOSSSS !!!!
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Game week : “Open Arena” Cross platform Quake3 Fun !
Jan 28If I say the word “Rocketjump” and you have no idea what it is ? … Then you seriously need to read the next post. In day two of our cross-platform gaming week we point you toward the reincarnation of one of the best first person shooters ever created. We are talking about Quake 3. A fantastic, high speed, fast moving, addictive, life-eating, relationship-destroying, girlfriend-infuriating game that kept us ALL up till dawn back in the year 2000. Quake is one of those “shoot anyone that moves” games that had a massive online following. No matter what part of the world you were at, there was always a server where you could log into and fire frag and respawn to your hearts desire.
I remember fondly how I would “get rid of my girlfriend” by taking her home at ten .. coming back to my apartment and start playing Quake 3 till 4am while eating Nacho’s and drinking coke. Quake is fun, addictive and has eaten a big part of my life I can never get back. And i had such a good time… I don’t even care 🙂
Now you (and your cross platform buddies) can have a go with “Open Arena” a free, open-source and cross platform friendly port of the old Quake game. It might not be as fancy as your newest Xbox one game, but EVERY first person shooter is in some way or form a descendant ( I feel the urge to say “Derivative”) of the original Quake 3.
Feed your dog for the next three weeks and kiss your job goodbye. Download and play Open Arena .. for free HERE.
