I recently bought the game Egglia for $10 for my iPad, and now I regret that purchase. 10 bucks is relatively expensive for an iOS game, and the game turned out to be far from what I wanted. The description, as an JRPG with turn-based tactical combat on a hex grid, looked like exactly my sort of game. But in reality the combat system is so simplistic (you roll a six-sided die, which both tells you how many spaces you can advance, and how hard you can hit at the end of the turn) that it simply isn't much fun at all. It just feels totally random, there are no tactical decisions to make, and after a short while of hoping that it would get better, I just got completely bored with the game.

Of course that isn't the first time that I regret buying a game. I bought my first computer in 1981, and in the 36 years since I have bought a lot of computer games, some of which certainly disappointed. But the regret about Egglia stood out because it was going against a trend: Over time the percentage of disappointments in buying computer games has massively decreased. That is not because computer games are somehow better these days than they were before. Well, in technical specifications they are obviously better, but the games of 2017 aren't necessarily better games or more fun than the games of the 1980's. However two things changed since then: It is now much easier to get information about games before buying them, and the financial stakes are lower.

If today I buy a game on Steam, I first look at the user reviews. Not just the simple percentage of positive reviews, but what exactly the people who gave negative reviews are complaining about. I also check game reviews not on a single publication, but aggregated on Metacritic, again looking what are the strong and weak points mentioned. A game where somebody else gives a bad score because it is slow and makes him think too much might be a game I value more highly. A game that gets bad scores for being an unfinished mess full of bugs might be better to stay away from, at least for the moment.

Time is an important factor. I bought No Man's Sky nearly a year after release, and haven't regretted the purchase. I paid far less than the full price, and with the various patches the game had enough content by then and less problems, so that I felt that I got a reasonably number of hours of entertainment bang for my bucks. I'm pretty sure I would have regretted buying the same game on day 1.

On the iPad there are even less games I regretted. That starts with the fact that the majority of games is free to try anyway. And the "buy to own" games on the Apple app store frequently cost very little money, single digit amounts. Hey, maybe you don't like the game "Dawn of Crafting" I recommended. But as it costs only $3, it is unlikely you would deeply regret the purchase. A $10 game like Egglia in the app store is already relatively expensive.

As a customer and consumer of games, I feel as if I am living in golden times. I am not sure that this will hold forever, because as a hobby economist I feel as if there is an oversupply of games, fed by an oversupply of people willing to code games during long hours for very little money. I can't imagine that going on forever.