4 Tips For Gaming On A Budget

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Once upon a time, gamers could simply buy video games at fair prices, go home, and play to their hearts’ content. The same is true today, but with the gaming industry as a whole having grown enormously in the past several years, it feels more like a business than ever. And as such, the gaming industry is now more expensive to enjoy.

Whether you prefer buying console or PC games, downloading mobile apps to play on the go, or even engaging with online casinos and arcade platforms, you’re now likely to encounter raised prices and various little gimmicks designed to make you pay more to play your games.

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Of course, one way around this is to just put in the work to become a professional gamer, because as we noted recently, the good ones aren’t exactly hurting for cash. But if you’re looking for more realistic options for keeping your gaming habits affordable, here are a few tips that might come in handy.

Be Wary Of Freemium Games
Once viewed as the simplest and cheapest gaming options, mobile games have been overrun, to a large extent, by the freemium pricing model. Basically, games following this model are free to download, but then offer in-app purchases. Sometimes the purchasing options can be easily ignored and there’s no harm done. However, some games are hard to enjoy thoroughly without spending a little cash—and once you play the free download, you’re too hooked not to spend said cash. Try to avoid falling into this trap by reading reviews and figuring out which freemium games can be enjoyed on the cheap. For example, PikPok‘s Flick Kick Football Legends is one freemium app that offers an alternative to in-app purchases in that you can watch advertisements for in-game credits; or, alternatively, I might recommend Plants vs. Zombies 2 or Marvel: Contest Of Champions as freemium apps that are huge, enjoyable games whether or not you spend any money.

Take Advantage Of Promotions
This idea is relevant largely to online gaming, and specifically the casino genre that seems to occupy a larger corner of the video game industry every year. Naturally, real casino gaming involves spending money—or at least risking it. But some of the most established online casino gaming platforms offer enough promotions and start-up deals to make them fairly appealing anyway, to those playing on a budget. At betfair bingo online, you can earn as much as 50 to 300 percent returns on gaming deposits with various promotions, with one offering a free £30 for a £10 entry and another giving out a weekly £10 for every £5 used toward the slot machine game of the week. Depending on the site, and how lucky you are, you can even run into bigger promotions than these. At the end of the day, it’s still hard to play casino games without spending a little bit of cash, but these offers make the games far more affordable.

Buy Bundles
This isn’t a huge idea, and it’s one you can only take advantage of every so often. But it’s still worth considering! Most every time a new console comes out, or sometimes even when a major new gaming title is released, stores offer bundle purchases that can save you money. For example, right now the Xbox website lists the Xbox One at $349, with the same exact price for the Assassin’s Creed Unity bundle, which also includes two Assassin’s Creed games. You can either purchase the bundle and enjoy the included games (effectively for free) or, if they’re not your favorite options, re-sell the games to make the console effectively cheaper, or to finance other games. Again, these sorts of options won’t pop up often, but they’re well worth taking advantage of when they do!

Find Alternative Game Sources
This is probably the most effective way for modern gamers to operate on a budget. Unfortunately, the foundation of the idea is that you may be better off dealing with used games for the most part. But the bright side of the concept is that there are numerous services available for exchanging or renting games, or simply buying used ones for fair prices. About Tech‘s Xbox section actually has a fairly comprehensive list of these services, including Gamefly, CheapAssGamer, etc.

If you’ve found your gaming habits to be particularly expensive in recent years, hopefully some of these tips can help you to get back on budget!