Yes, but the stakes are higher. A movie takes $10 and 2 hours of your time. (New) Games cost $60, and occupy a variable amount of time. Since I'm bootstrapping

Yes, but the stakes are higher. A movie takes $10 and 2 hours of your time. (New) Games cost $60, and occupy a variable amount of time. Since I'm bootstrapping my startup i.e. poor, I only buy games with a high expected value. I typically look for $1 / hour of entertainment, or better. This means I buy games that I can expect to play for 50+ hours before getting bored. Modern Warfare 1, for example, I played for hundreds of hours, making it a great bargain. The game review scale is also highly compressed. The difference between 8/10 and 9/10 is often the difference between "good game" and "unplayable".