When I was going through the items in our garage loft as part of a spring cleaning of the garage, I came across a small shoebox that’s been a part of our camping gear for years. When I opened the top of it and peered inside, I got excited. There’s more fun in that small box than in almost anything else that I own.

That shoebox contains a gaming travel kit, perfect for rainy days when you’re stuck in a tent or a long evening near the light of a campfire with friends. It has about $10 worth of components and a small stack of printed sheets lining the bottom. It’s something I want along on every camping trip I ever go on, and if I ever had to sell off my game collection, this would be the one thing I’d keep.

Not only that, this can be a wonderful thing to have tucked away on your shelf somewhere for a rainy day. There’s enough good entertainment in this box to last a lifetime, and you can pick up everything in that box for mere peanuts.

What’s inside?

Three decks of playing cards These are just ordinary Bicycle cards with identical backs. Why identical backs? Some games, such as canasta, use two decks mixed together, and some (such as samba) mix together three decks with the same backs. Having three decks makes it easy to modify them as needed for pretty much any card game you might want to play.

A few pens and a thick pad of scratch paper These are included for keeping score, but also as components for other games like tic-tac-toe or the “dot game.”

A small chess and checkers combo set Our board, when folded, is about as wide as the shoebox, and we keep the pieces in a small baggie.

A small set of poker chips These are obviously useful for games like poker, but they can also be used as components for other games, particularly for score-keeping or any type of wagering.

A set of dominoes This allows us to play a quick game of dominoes. For us, this is probably the least essential component of the box, as it only allows for one game and doesn’t have the multiple uses of the other pieces.

A baggie full of miscellaneous dice These were scavenged from various places and collected in a baggie. With a few cups from the campsite, one can quickly play many different dice games, such as liar’s dice or Farkle.

A well-used copy of Hoyle’s Rules of Games This contains the rules of most common games. We picked up our copy via PaperBackSwap.

The rules for a number of games, printed off and lining the bottom of the box However, there are certainly many games that aren’t covered within Hoyle’s that we quite like, such as Arimaa and Chess960. For these, we’ve printed off rules sheets, folded them in half, and used them to line the bottom of the shoebox.

There’s enough magic in this box for hundreds of hours of entertainment, and it’s portable enough to take with you on pretty much any road trip. Enjoy.

In a corner in my office on a single shelving unit rests a collection that I’ve been building for fifteen years, my board and card game collection.

The collection has been built from a lot of sources: gifts, trades, thrift store finds, ding-and-dent sales, and contest winnings make up a significant portion of what you see, as do more than a few of my own purchases.

Here’s the thing with this collection, though: when I look at it, I don’t see a collection of stuff.

I see a set of experiences: games played in the past, games yet to be played, and often, the choice of what game to play right now.

I see a lot of time spent with friends and family around the table, talking about life, pondering the game a bit, and simply enjoying each other’s company.

I see the friendships I’ve built over the years because of this collection – people I’ve played games with and used that opportunity to get to know them better and allow them to get to know me better.

In January 2011 alone, I played 28 games off of this shelf. By the time you read this, I will have already logged a game or two in February as I’m planning on having lunch and playing a card game with a friend. This is a collection that gets used. This is a collection of experiences.

Here’s the truth, though: it wasn’t always like that.

Let’s take a look at that picture again.

Do you see how there’s a second empty shelf on the right? Well, it’s nearly empty – there’s a single cardboard box on it that contains some stuff headed to Goodwill.

Once upon a time, that second shelf would have been loaded with gaming material, too.

You see, it wasn’t too long ago that I was more of a collector than anything. I would go into thrift stores and buy any board games I could find. I would receive a game, play it once, decide I didn’t like it, but then just add it to the growing mountain that was my collection. I was an avid collector of several types of trading cards, and I used to buy quite a few games, too.

At some point, it all became overwhelming. I had lots of games that sat around unplayed and instead of actually playing them, I would go hunting at thrift stores and other places for some great undiscovered item for my collection.

Why? I had completely lost touch with the reason why I had such a collection to begin with, which was to play with friends.

I finally begain to realize after a while that it had gone from a collection of great experiences to a collection of stuff. It had moved from a wonderful collection of shared experiences that I could indulge in quite frequently to being a self-absorbed chase for more accumulation that actually stood in the way of actually enjoying the games themselves.

Over the past few years, I’ve pared things down substantially, even as friends and family have gifted me new games. I’ve sold off quite a few games and traded many, many others for different games, ones that I picked up solely with the thought in mind of how likely they were to be played with the friends I have.

My reward, in the end, is a smaller volume of stuff, but what remains has value. I don’t have to dig through overstuffed shelves to find games – I can see everything I have at a glance. My focus is on playing the games rather than accumulating more. Perhaps best of all, it’s now quite accessible for everyone to just grab a game if they want to play rather than being crammed in with many of the games being trapped behind others.

It went from being a big pile of stuff to an easily-accessible grouping of experiences.

If I turn that type of perspective to everything in my home – the idea that something that isn’t accessible and isn’t being used with any regularity needs to go – I find myself quickly getting rid of things. In fact, this type of purging has become something of a routine around here. About every six months, I’ll purge a lot of things – clothes, the contents of closets, and so forth. I usually pick some specific type of item or specific area and go on a purging.

When I’m finished purging, I usually have a lot more space, a great pile of things to sell (or give away), and best of all, easy access (and less maintenace) of the stuff that I’m actually keeping. This gives me time to experience what I have instead of spending my time maintaining it or accumulating more.

What about your own collections and storage spaces? Can you easily retrieve any item of your collection that you wish? If you can’t, why do you still have that item if it’s difficult for you to reach? How are you gaining value from that item if you can’t utilize it and experience it?

Stuff gathers dust. Experiences live forever. Stuff costs money. Experiences just use what you already have.

Experiences trump stuff, every time.

Charlotte writes in:

I just wanted to suggest that you write about MMOs. My husband and I have been playing World of Warcraft since we were in college for about five years. We play about two hours each evening and maybe three or four hours on raid nights (two nights a week). We don’t have a television or cable or anything and we mostly read or go on walks when we’re not working or playing or sleeping and stuff. For us, it’s pretty cheap entertainment. It costs about $70 for the initial software and then $13 a month for the subscription. Considering the time spent and the deep enjoyment we get out of it, it’s a pretty nice bargain.

I’ve played World of Warcraft off and on myself since its release (for those who play, I have a level 80 hunter on Galakrond and a few other characters here and there). Much like Charlotte and her husband, when I’m actively playing, I’ll play a bit each day (to do daily quests) and then maybe one longer spell once a week (to participate in a large group raid).

It’s cost-effective. I agree that, in terms of bang for the buck, World of Warcraft is a pretty dollar-effective hobby. Let’s say a person plays for an average of one hour a day. That means the cost per hour for software and for subscription fees over the course of, say, two years is about forty cents an hour. That’s a pretty cheap hobby, any way you slice it.

It’s also an inherently social activity. In the past, World of Warcraft has enabled me to maintain friendships with people from college (one of my old friends has even called it “Facebook for fantasy geeks”) and helped me to build a few new friendships, too. A MMO like World of Warcraft is built on the idea of being social – there are lots of people playing at the same time and the players communicate with each other, often building amazingly complex social constructs.

It’s also addictive. When the most recent expansion came out, I spent several hours a day playing it for a few weeks, often staying up until late into the night playing. That’s an extremely mild case of it.

I have had friends who literally do nothing else besides work, eat, sleep, and play World of Warcraft. They’ve played ten hours a day for month after month earning achievements, building up characters, and so forth. I know one person who has lost a job and a girlfriend because of his addiction to the game. (Here’s a long thread filled with World of Warcraft addiction stories).

Why is it addictive? I think the biggest thing is that it does a great job of doling out microgoals and microrewards for those goals. If you can complete some objective that takes an hour or two, you’re given some reward – a stronger character, a better horse to ride on in the game, and so on. Since the game is inherently social, there’s also a big “keeping up with the Joneses” element to it – you want to have a character with weapons and armor and a mount and achievements that top your friends. Not only that, such games offer up engaging storylines that keep you interested in the story.

In moderation… The solution, thus, is in moderation. When played in reasonable amounts, MMOs like World of Warcraft can be a great way to relax and be social at a very inexpensive price. The problem comes in when this relaxing social activity begins to interfere with other aspects of your life – your personal relationships, your other activities and interests, your work, and so forth.

For me, I pretty strictly cap my World of Warcraft play time. I’ll go for months without playing at all (usually during the summer months when I’d rather be outside) and play more in the winter, but during those winter months I balance my gameplay with other activities. For me, the surest sign that things are out of balance is if I find myself making little progress in other areas of my life.

If you can’t keep things in balance, you have an addiction. If you find yourself spending the majority of your free time playing, you have an addiction. You are far better off just deleting the game from your computer and walking away from it than letting your life’s energy be sucked away into a computer game. Don’t let it happen. Check out WoW Detox, uninstall the game, and find something else to do with your life’s energy.

Right now, I’m looking outside at the nice weather and at the books on my bedside table. I think I’ll uninstall World of Warcraft for the summer while I finish up this post and re-install it again in the late fall, maybe when the next game expansion comes out. It’s an inexpensive, fun hobby, but it’s just that – one little element in a well-balanced life.

One of my biggest time management weaknesses is gaming. I love taking breaks to try out a new free computer game. Most of the time, though, the game’s not engrossing enough to hold my interest.

This list is filled with the exceptions.

Here are six free computer games that are so filled with incredibly enjoyable game play that I find myself going back to them time and time again for just one more play.

League of Legends
http://www.leagueoflegends.com/
League of Legends is a fast-paced competitive online game that mixes fast-paced game play and careful planning in an interesting mix. In the game, you play as a champion who battles other champions in online matches. The gameplay is really straightforward – mostly, you’re competing on a large map (that’s extremely reminiscent of Warcraft III) where you move your character around with the mouse and order it into combat against the enemy. As you battle, your character grows stronger, learning new abilities, and it also picks up gold, which you can use to buy better weapons and armor within the match. Usually, you play in groups, where two teams of five players compete against each other. The game also includes a really smart matchmaker which pairs you against people of a similar skill and experience level as you.

What makes this game so interesting is that as you play more matches (win or lose), you slowly earn experience points, which allow you to not only unlock new champions to use in the matches, but also allows you to make your various champions stronger. The addictiveness of the gameplay is immense – you find yourself improving your character a bit, then you want to jump back in and play some more.

If you play League of Legends, you might see me on from time to time. My summoner name is Volarus (a name I sometimes use in online games).

Desktop Tower Defense
http://www.handdrawngames.com
I’ve mentioned Desktop Tower Defense before, but I’ll mention it again here for two reasons. One, after four years, I’m still playing it. Two, they have a new “pro” version with a ton of scenarios and other features to play through.

Desktop Tower Defense is a very simple game in which you place towers within a small rectangle while little critters run across the screen. The towers you place shoot the critters and, with each critter taken out, you earn a bit of gold. However, each wave of critters is a bit stronger than the next, so you have to use your gold to either upgrade your current towers or place new ones.

It’s really addictive and plays quite easily in your web browser.

Line Rider
http://www.official-linerider.com/default.aspx
Line Rider isn’t really so much a game as it is a creative sand box. With your mouse, you draw a line, then you click start. A little guy appears and begins to slide along your line, being pulled downwards by gravity. When he reaches the end, he leaps off into the abyss.

Then you try again, with three or four lines – or whatever you want. Then you click start and see what happens.

And again. And again. And again. Until you make something like this. Well, maybe not, but you’ll almost assuredly make something goofy and elaborate.

Bridgecraft
http://www.candystand.com/play/bridgecraft
Bridgecraft’s name basically says it all – you build bridges so that a person can easily cross it. The first few are easy, then suddenly the difficulty goes way up. You have to step back and think about the problem for a while – thus, it almost becomes a puzzle game of sorts.

Never mind the cartoony graphics, there’s a ton of gameplay to be had here.

The Space Collective
http://www.casualcollective.com/#games/the_space_game
A simple version of Starcraft, playable in a web browser? That’s probably how I would describe this one, as it’s a real time strategy game in which you gather resources, defend your resource-gathering structures, and build structures to attack the resource-gathering structures of others.

The learning curve is a bit steep, but if you play around with it, it’s pretty easy to figure out, particularly if you’ve played games like Warcraft and Starcraft in the past.

Fantastic Contraption
http://www.addictinggames.com/fantasticcontraption.html
This is a very addictive little puzzle game in which you’re simply building contraptions in order to move a ball into a goal. As the game goes on, the required contraptions become more and more elaborate and require more and more forethought to assemble.

Like DTD, above, this is a game I’ve played for years and keep coming back to time and time again.

I actually had an seventh game on this list, but I chose to remove it because it featured a very loud ad for a feminine hygiene product as the game was loading. No matter how good the game is, I’m just going to click away from that. (And, no, this isn’t sexism – I have similar feelings about any male ads along similar lines.)

If you reach the end of this post and haven’t enjoyed yourself for several hours (for free, no less!)… well, you need to go back up there and try out some more links.

I’m a video game fan, and I’ve been one since I was tiny. During my life, I’ve owned an Atari 2600, a Nintendo Entertainment System, a Super Nintendo, a Sega Genesis, a Game Boy, a Game Boy Advance, a Nintendo 64, a PlayStation, a Game Cube, a Playstation 2, a Nintendo DS (and a DSi), and a Wii. It’s a hobby I’ve enjoyed pretty much my entire life, and I still enjoy it, even in my thirties.

About two years ago, I wrote an article detailing my Wii: how do I maximize my gaming dollars on it? This was a popular topic, one I’m often asked about by people my age who still want to play occasional video games but don’t want to break the bank. Many other readers have requested similar notes on a Nintendo DS, either for themselves or for a friend or a child.

What I’ve found is that for my gaming dollar, my Nintendo DSi is the best bargain I’ve yet found. The Nintendo DSi is a handheld console that easily fits in a pocket. Let’s walk through the details.

First, why a handheld console at all? If you’re a video game fan, why not buy an Xbox 360 or a Playstation 3? If you’re more into casual games, why not just play the games available on your cell phone?

The biggest factor that improves upon the consoles is portability, obviously. Most of the time, when I do actually play with my DSi, I’m out and about. I’ll play it on a long road trip. I’ll play it at the doctor’s office. I’ll play it whenever I’m in line. Although those situations make up the vast majority of my playing time, I can also play it at home on the couch if I so choose.

Why not just play the ones on the cell phones? Frankly, it’s the quality of the games. I’ve played a ton of different cell phone games and not many match up to the quality of even the worst games on the DS. The only cell phone that has even a few quality games is the iPhone, and if you’re looking at the iPhone because you want a cell phone that plays good games, it’s vastly cheaper to just get a low-end Verizon phone for your calls and a DSi for your games – and you’ll get both services better than you would with an iPhone.

Obviously, there is the option of simply not playing at all, which is completely worthwhile as well, but I’m fairly obviously writing to people who enjoy gaming and value it as a hobby.

Second, why a DSi instead of a DS Lite? A DS Lite is currently $40 less expensive, plus it has a slot that lets you play older Game Boy Advance titles – a feature that the DSi lacks. So why is a DSi a better value?

The biggest reason is the downloadable software. The DSi allows you to download very, very good games for just a few dollars each (more on them below), with more appearing all the time. Even better, you’re able to download two of them for free when you first get a DSi, and it comes with a free web browser, too (which I’m using in the picture at the top of this post).

The second reason is it functions as an mp3 player. All you need is an SD card loaded up with mp3s and headphones and the DSi functions as a portable music player – another solid argument for simply getting a dirt cheap cell phone in conjunction with this device.

The third reason is a bit of a knock against the old Advance games – the worthwhile games for the Advance are getting difficult to find. At the used game stores I frequent, it’s almost impossible to find any worthwhile Advance games for a reasonable price.

Finding a bargain on a DSi A DSi currently has a list price of $169.99. How can you shave a bit more off of that?

Suggestion one: trade in any older video games or consoles you don’t play with. I traded in my Nintendo DS Lite and several Advance games that I had thoroughly played to get my DSi for free. Another friend of mine traded in several old played-through games to get one. If you have any older games sitting around that you’ve already played through, gather them up, take them to the local gaming shop, and trade them in.

Suggestion two: wait for a sale on Amazon. If you’re interested, use this trick to automatically find a deal on a DSi at Amazon. You’ll have to be patient, but it’s a great way to dig up a deal.

Suggestion three: be patient. Do some comparison price searching yourself and decide if you really want one or not. Spending some time thinking about the purchase has a good chance of talking you out of it if you’re not truly interested.

Starting Out With a DSi
Unlike any other video game console I’ve ever tried, you can get quite a bit of enjoyment out of the DSi without buying anything else. Pick up the console, take it home, and fire it up. When you log onto the DSi Shop, you’ll automatically be given 1,000 free points, which you can use to download software. I strongly recommend spending those 1,000 points downloading the web browser, Art Style: Boxlife and Art Style: Pictobits.

Boxlife is a puzzle game in which you are given a piece of “paper” with tons of squares drawn on it, like a piece of graph paper. You cut the paper along the edges of the squares, then fold the pieces you cut out into cubes – which means that the pieces you cut out have to be of certain shapes. It also features an amusing simple storyline detailing your rise through the employee ranks in a factory. This is a highly addictive puzzle game.

Pictobits is another addictive Tetris-like puzzle game where you have to match up colored pieces. When you do, the pieces disappear and then reappear above, filling in colors automatically in a picture.

Both of these are great ways to spend five minutes juicing up your brain while you’re sitting at the doctor’s office or on the bus, and since you can get them both for free with the purchase of a unit, why not?

Before I discuss any other purchases, I should point something out: I don’t think a video game is a worthwhile purchase unless you get the cost of the purchase down to $1 per hour of playing it. Ideally, I can do better than that, which I’ll discuss below.

If you decide to make an additional purchase with your DSi, I’d recommend getting a single Nintendo points card (SRP: $20), which gives you 2,000 more points with which to download games – and there are plenty of additional worthwhile games to download. I recommend Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again (800 points), Dr. Mario Express (500 points), and Art Style: Aquia (500 points), then just hold onto the other 200 points for the future.

What about the DS cartridges? There are a ton of games available for the DS, many of which are awful and many of which are incredibly worth playing. My strategy for maximizing my gaming dollar is pretty simple: I buy and trade used games. Occasionally, I’ll receive new ones as gifts (because my wife and my family know what kinds of games I enjoy) and I’ll cycle them in as well.

Here’s how I do it. Let’s say I go to the used game shop and buy two used games which together cost about the price of one new game. I play through both of these thoroughly until I’m truly tired of both games. Along the way, my kids get me another game for my birthday and I play through that one, too. I’ll then take those three games to the used game store and trade them in for two others that I haven’t played. I’ll play through those two thoroughly, then I’ll take those into the used game store and trade them in for two more. Along the way, I might stumble upon a huge bargain (like recently, when I found a game I really wanted to play for the DS, Fire Emblem, for $5 new) and add that into the mix.

I recently calculated that I’ve invested an average of $6 out of pocket per game I’ve played through for the DS (and that includes the cost of the console averaged into each game) – and I’ve played some games nearly to death. That drops a game down into the used paperback range, since I’ll spend much more time on a game than on a single book.

If you’re looking for games to pick up that really maximize bang for the buck, the six best values I’ve found in DS gaming are Advance Wars: Dual Strike (war strategy; I’ve spent more hours on this game than any other, ever), Elite Beat Agents (rhythm tapping game, often inexplicably available for $5-10 on the discount rack at Target), Mario Kart DS (kart racing with a lot of variety, plus this is a must-buy if you have multiple DS owners in the household), Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (distinctive and very fun adventure), Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift (adventure/strategy mix, a HUGE game), and New Super Mario Bros. (if you ever enjoyed playing a Mario Bros. game, this will be tons and tons of fun). All of these were well worth the price, especially if you can get them used.

I’ve had tons of fun with my DS Lite – and now my DSi. The best part is, if you’re careful, it can be a real bargain.

If you have a spouse or a close friend and you’ve both recently made a commitment to saving money, why not try making it into a competition?

First, a big disclaimer: my wife and I are naturally competitive with each other. We compete at the most absurd things – who can blow up a bigger balloon without it popping, who can win the most in a series of twenty five board games (yes, seriously), and who can eat the most “El Gordo” burritos in one sitting.

I lost that last one. My wife has a hollow leg, especially for such a small woman.

Anyway, the point is that if you can turn frugality into a mutual challenge, you can turn something that you might otherwise view as drudgery into something quite fun.

Five Examples of Frugality Competitions

1. Starting from zero, who can have the lowest credit card balance at the time of the next statement?
This challenge forces all competitors to not just bust out the plastic for all of their needs and instead carefully plan their purchases.

2. Over alternating weeks, one person is in charge of the meals for a week. Which person can spend the least preparing enjoyable meals for everyone?
Want to learn how to cook cheaply? Doing this will teach both of you how to shop for inexpensive foods and prepare them in a delicious fashion. It’s through competitions like this that my wife and I have discovered the delicious and inexpensive nature of the humble bean.

3. Who can go the longest without spending a single red cent on entertainment?
My wife and I went for months doing this. We read through our entire book collections, watched every movie we own, and devoured the contents of the library like ravenous wolves. I finally broke down and spent money to re-subscribe to a magazine, but it taught us both how little you really have to spend on entertainment to enjoy yourself.

4. A great competition to have with someone else: who can make the most homemade stuff to save money?
Homemade laundry detergent, homemade oatmeal packets, home-grown food – doing stuff yourself saves quite a bit of money. Start a friendly competition with a neighbor or a friend to see who can find the best home do-it-yourself savings. Share ideas with each other and see who can come up with the best stuff.

5. Who can make the most at their yard sale?
A yard sale is a great way to spend a weekend, clean out unwanted clutter, and earn a few bucks from the stuff you don’t want. Why not make it a competition? Make it a challenge with a friend of yours: have yard sales on alternating weekends and see who can earn the most? It’ll challenge both of you to clean out your closets and take a serious look at downsizing those unwanted possessions – plus put cash in both of your pockets.

A race for the prize? If you want, you can add some sort of prize to the competition. My wife and I have competed for book store gift cards before. Perhaps you and your yard-saling friend can agree to ante up a portion of your yard sale earnings in an effort to make you both try a bit harder.

The key thing here is to make saving money fun and interesting by turning it into a social situation. A friendly competition where you both end up with extra money in your pocket and perhaps a better idea of ways to save money is something that benefits everyone involved.

Even better, you might discover how cheap and tasty beans actually can be.

The photo above depicts Warren Buffett and Bill Gates at a bridge event in Omaha, Nebraska in 2006. They were spending an afternoon playing bridge, an intellectually challenging and quite enjoyable card game that only requires you to have a deck of cards, three friends to play with, a pencil and a pad to keep score, and a sharp mind. It’s also been a closet passion of mine for many years, though I rarely have as many opportunities to play as I would like.

What’s Bridge?
Bridge (short for contract bridge) is a trick-taking card game like countless others out there. It’s similar in a lot of ways to games like hearts, spades, pitch, 500, euchre, and so on – any of those can be a great substitute for bridge, but bridge is the most widely played game of the lot and perhaps the most interesting from a strategic standpoint. Rather than just explaining the rules in my own language, take a look at Wikipedia’s detailed entry on bridge, or you can try playing bridge online at Yahoo! (I play on there occasionally as “trenttsd,” especially on lazy afternoons when the kids are napping, but I’m not exactly a strong adept and I’d rather play it face to face so I can read people).

Bridge is usually a game best learned from someone who already knows how to play, but in most social situations, you can just choose any trick-taking game that at least a couple people at the table know. For instance, with my own family, a pitch variation is often played, and my in-laws play a version of 500 (which is only a slight variation on bridge), and in each case I learned from playing with and against family members and friends.

Five Reasons to Spend an Afternoon Playing Bridge (or Another Card Game)
A card game like bridge is one of the most frugal ways you can spend a lazy afternoon. Here’s why.

It’s practically free You just need a deck of cards and a pen and pad to keep score on. No equipment, no anything – just the cards, the score pad, and the people. That’s almost no cost at all.

It makes you think Trick-taking games are deeply mentally engaging. You have to keep track of the state of the game, read other players, formulate a strategy, try to understand your opponent’s strategy (and often your partner’s), and make a play that takes into account all of this. That forces you to be mentally sharp to play well at all.

It’s inherently social Four people sitting around a table playing cards is a social situation. You get to interact with people and can often develop interesting conversations while the game is being played. Once, over a card game, my partner (who I didn’t know well) taught me a great deal about the business of building an organic farm – fascinating conversation.

It can take as little or as much time as you want You can just play one quick game and be done with it in just a half an hour, or you can burn the entire afternoon and evening playing, keeping it fresh by rotating partners and players. It can expand or contract to fill the time as you need it.

It can be played in pretty much any situation with any four people (provided they’re willing to learn) All you really need are the cards, the score sheet, and enough space to lay the cards down. Thus, it works in countless situations: lazy afternoons at home, camping, family reunions, or about anything else you can conceive of.

The next time you’re bored and itching to do something, call up some friends and bust out a pack of cards. You’ll have a fun afternoon and it will scarcely cost you a dime.

As an owner of a Wii and a Nintendo DS, as well as a fairly frugal person, one of my biggest challenges is to figure out how to maximize my dollar – and my time – with a video game system. To this end, I use a wide array of tactics. These tactics also work if you’re buying video games for others as well, so keep them in mind if you’re a parent or a grandparent buying games.

My goal is to reduce the cost of the system and the games to a dollar per hour. This means that over the lifetime of the system, the total dollar cost of the system and all of the games is less than the number of hours that I’ve played with it.

Let’s look at my Nintendo DS, for instance. The system itself cost $129, and I own six games which cost me an average of $20: Advance Wars DS, Brain Age, Tetris DS, Planet Puzzle League, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Mario Kart DS, and Picross DS. Thus, the total cost here is $269. In order to get the value out of this system that I want, I would have to invest 269 hours in playing these games. Now, I’ve owned my DS for quite a while and I play it quite a bit while traveling, in waiting rooms, perking up my mind with puzzles, and so on, but has it added up to a total of 269 hours? I’m not sure, but I feel like I’m close enough to that number to be unsure about it.

The only way to get to that “dollar per hour” rate is to seek games that you can play over and over again. For me, that’s puzzle games and rhythm games, and that’s almost every video game that I own. I like games that are quick to pick up and offer a lot of replay value – a huge number of puzzles or a lot of songs to play.

For example, I was able to find how much time I’d sunk into my most played game of all, Advance Wars DS. It was a close companion of mine on many, many trips and many, many office visits. All told, the game reports that I’ve played it for a total of 105 hours. That’s replay value – for an original cost of $20, that’s quite a bargain, actually. Much of the value of owning the DS itself comes from this one game. On the Wii, the most played game of all is Guitar Hero III, which my wife and I both play regularly in the evenings and which has been played at countless social events at our house by a huge variety of people.

The aspect of video game ownership that makes it expensive are the “lemons” – games with very little replay value. Sadly, most games fall into this category – they don’t offer much repetitive gameplay, making them very expensive for the enjoyment and time that you get out of them. Almost all “crossover” games – ones that are tied in to a movie or other media brand – fall into this category, for starters.

The best way to find highly replayable games and to avoid lemons is to do the research. The best way to do this is to look at a wide variety of online video game reviews. Visit Metacritic and read a wide range of reviews. Although the reviewers talk a lot about graphics and such, one of the real consistent “make or break” factors is replay value – does this game have enough interest to keep people coming back for more? Gaming store advice is usually solid – they have no reason to point you in a bad direction and the people working there usually have a good grasp on what the “best” games are in most genres.

The biggest key, though, is knowing what you like (or what the person you’re buying for likes). The only way to find that out is to pay attention. If you enjoy doing puzzles in the newspaper, you’ll probably enjoy the surfeit of puzzle games for the DS. If you like playing strategic board games like chess and such, games like Advance Wars would be right up your alley. If you constantly find yourself drumming your fingers in time to music you hear, try out a rhythm game like Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero (or try learning your own instrument, though that’s a very long slog).

Buying used is one good way to reduce the cost… Many game shops have a large used game selection, usually at a pretty good discount below the new price. Usually, the games are there because someone strapped for cash liquidated their video game collection. These games have been pre-tested to make sure that they work and they usually have a return policy, so if you do get a faulty game, you can often return it.

… but the best way is to buy old. My Nintendo Wii plays GameCube games. I can find most of the top GameCube games for just a few dollars by looking around. Similarly, my DS plays Game Boy Advance games where the same rule applies. Gaming reviews often refer back to the “cream of the crop” from earlier generations, so if you read a review of an exciting game and find that there’s a predecessor out there, try seeking that one out first. I found the original Advance Wars (for the Game Boy Advance) for just a couple dollars and played that one to death before getting the newer one for the DS.

If you think you’ve truly played a game to death, don’t be afraid to trade it. Since I’ve defeated all of the cases in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, I’m considering trading it in to get a discount on the next game in the series, reducing the cost of that game. Since I picked up the original for just $15 and played it for 15 or so hours, I feel like I got a good deal out of it and I’m eager to play through more cases (it’s a detective/courtroom drama game), and by trading in the original and getting the next one, the cost of the next one in the series is reduced, improving the value.

What are my “best buys”? In terms of value for my dollar, I feel that the Nintendo DS is the best bargain out there. It has a huge library of titles (since it can play older Game Boy Advance ones as well, the total count is several hundred) with a lot of gems in there. I’ve played the following games for at least 40 hours each for the DS: Advance Wars DS (perhaps my single most-played game of all time), Brain Age (because it includes a ton of sudoku puzzles, which I often do in the morning to limber up my brain), Picross DS (another puzzle game that I use in the mornings to limber up), and Planet Puzzle League (perhaps the easiest pick-up-and-play-for-three-minutes game ever made). Those four games, plus the DS, cost me less than $200 total, and I’ve gotten at least 200 hours of play out of the set – it’s entertained me on flights, in the doctor’s office, at the DMV, in the mornings when I’m trying to get my thinking cap on, and so on.