If I don't want to play a game or I know I don't have time for a game, I don't buy it.
That's a damn important distinction.
Back at the beginning of the decade, I saw a lot of stuff coming out and thought "Heck, I'll buy it, and be able to play it later." Some stuff was bought so I could experience some unique game design (this joke gets funnier as time passes). Some stuff was for continuing on with franchises that I loved as a kid. Others were because I thought that the stories were worth my time.
Looking back on it, a lot of it is just data written to optical media that, in a more admittedly sadder sense of the idea, hadn't even been played. It's dead weight. And since there probably won't be much time to play it in the near future, there isn't any compelling reason to keep most of it.
Just yesterday I was at Costco, and saw a copy of
Okami for the Wii. "14.99," I thought. "I remember playing this game when I borrowed it from a friend, and kind of enjoyed it." But then I thought about the time commitment. And the fact that 14.99 buys other, immediately useful things, like beer or tomatoes. I came to the conclusion that it would just become more dead weight, and just left it there.
Then there are economic and cosmic questions that concern things like opportunity cost and overall quality of life stuff. Can I live a full life having not played the entire way through
Okami? I'm quite certain of it, yes.
And that's a certainty that casts my past buying behavior in such an 'illuminating' light.