http://www.computerandvideogames.com/32 ... the-heart/

Well you can fcuk right off - if it wasn't for the second hand games market I wouldn't own Fallout 3, and I'd have paid the current RRP price to discover that the game's got crippling bugs, as do all of your games it seems. How do you think so many people have been purchasing your games alongside the likes of genuine AAA titles (as they're known)?

Digital? Great if you're using Steam or want a cheap mobile game from what I can gather, next to bullsh!t for almost everyone and everything else, and only set to get worse by the look of it.

Games are idiotically expensive. I only bought Skyrim last weekend because it was cheap at Game - around half price. I’d happily pay £20 for a game, but £50? No. That’s an idiotic price point really. So I buy my games mostly second hand, or when they get to the point that they enter Sony’s “Platinum” line.

Most of the games I buy these days are older ones in Steam sales or are from GOG.
They're cheap and work on older hardware.
I'd never pay £50 for a single new game. I just don't have money to burn like that.

To put it into some sort of perspective, I know of a 10yo kid who started crying when he thought his 360 was starting to die (RROD). Even that kid knew he had a choice between FIFA 12 or WWE 12, not both. Know what I mean? The average parent walks into the likes of Game or Tesco to buy their kids games, I just wish more of them would order online...

Speaking of online, it really demonstrates just what a massive section of the market is willing to pay - games that are under/just above two months old are now £12-20 (Rage and Deus Ex for example). Joe Average doesn't give a stuff about your development costs (Why should they? You chose to be in the business) or your retarded notion that the second-hand games market equals lost RRP sales

Which it doesn’t. They’ve lost my custom simply because their initial prices are too high. I’m not in the “I must have the latest game now” loop. I am for some things, software I use for work, for example. But games? No.

This may or may not be a link to a GOG sale (don't use the site myself, just a link I saw on my travels):

http://www.gog.com/en/page/xmas11

It does indeed link to them.

I could be tempted by Neverwinter Nights and it's three expansion packs for $5.

I could be tempted to turn "it's only three bucks" into quite a spending spree
Never heard of Gog. Is the process painless? Any "gotchas" I should be aware of?

None at all in theory.
Their games are all legal copies. They're DRM free. They've been edited so you don't need a CD. As far as I can tell they're all pre-patched to the latest version.
Just be wary of really old DOS/Windows 95 games. For example Descent (circa 95) is pretty much unplayable.
Slightly newer games such as Baldur's Gate (circa 98 ish) work perfectly.
I've got all the BG series from them as well as Commandos: Behind enemy lines. They work fine.

I already have that - one of my all time favourites. Used to have to boot from a floppy into DOS to free up enough conventional memory to play it on some machines. My and a mate must have clocked up 1000 late night hours playing D2 multiplayer

There's an open version of it now, although I've had mixed success with it. The graphics are all updated to a more modern standard.

I remember messing about with memmaker, editing autoexec.bat and config.sys so I could as many drivers into higher memory as possible.

I think I once achieved something like 630-635k base memory and it was the highlight of the year!

Loved Descent and Descent 2, though never played MP.

The one I remember was UFO enemy unknown. The game itself was no issue but the installer needed justabout everything loaded into himem or it'd crash. I remember it took me about two frickin' days of tweaking to get the installer to run.

Those were the days.. wanders off into reminisce mode. Having a collection of floppy disks with different auto and config files on them for differing games.

@JJW009 the gotchas you really have to be aware of is how much are you going to spend!
I love GOG and there DRM free philosophy and the fact they try to ensure the games are win7 compatible (where possible)

I never bothered to have different discs. Too much hassle. Far easier to turn off boot floppy seek for faster boot up times.

I did struggled to understand why the base memory would be used up over time. Surely once I ran things, it should have stayed that way? Can barely remember now.

I was enough of a geek to have hacked the startup to give me a menu with different options.

<adjusts spectacles, puts pen back in shirt pocket>