Three months ago, I finally broke down and bought a PlayStation Plus Premium membership. I did it after two weeks of frantically looking through the PlayStation store for something new to play, but never feeling confident enough to actually click buy. The membership is what finally killed my executive dysfunction and let me enjoy gaming again.
For some background, I have generalized anxiety disorder, for which I am currently unmedicated. This tends to manifest as workaholism and the aforementioned dysfunction. A game I have been wanting to play for months can be on sale for five dollars and I will still beat myself up over buying it.
What if I hate it? That’s wasted time and money. I’ve spent the last couple of years retreating into replays except for stuff I play for work. It’s turned my favorite hobby into a constant source of monotony, anxiety, and guilt. I can’t overstate how miserable it was making me. I would scroll through the deals section on the store for up to three hours, desperate to find something that would get my frantic mind off daily troubles for awhile. It was paralyzing and depressing.
Gaming is how I would relax. The combination of reward-driven engagement and having something to do with my hands soothes me. I just couldn’t pick something to play because I was terrified of choosing “wrong.”
The PS Plus Premium membership runs about $19.74 a month with tax. It’s cheaper if you buy the year subscription. For that, you can download over a hundred games from their catalog, which updates monthly with new titles while keeping the old. You can also stream classic PlayStation 3 and older games, though even with a LAN connection I still find that to be inferior to just buying them on the PS3 store. Luckily, Sony kept it open after backlash from fans.
Since buying the membership, I’ve played five games from the catalog: Inscryption, Paradise Killer, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, Thymesia, and R-Type Final 2. Across all of them, I’ve logged 107 hours. That works out to about 55 cents per hour played, which is a hell of a good deal on any form of entertainment!
The number would be even more ridiculous if I’d broken down and bought it last year when it first came out. The hours I’ve spent on Blasphemous, Death’s Door, and Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age would still have me spending just under a dollar per hour. All come included with the price.
More than the bargain, I am calmed by the freedom that the membership gives me in choice. For years, people told me I would like The Outer Wilds even though I didn’t think I would. Turns out, I don’t, but I don’t feel bad about trying it out because it didn’t cost me extra. There are plenty of RPGs that were always just a little too expensive for me to take a chance on like I Am Setsuna and the Atelier series. Now I can.
Hell, Inscryption is now one of my favorite games ever, and I would have sworn up and down that would never happen with a deck builder. The ability to take a chance without worrying how it was going to affect the family budget is such a potent calmative.
Only one thing bothers me, and that’s the increasing trend to rent rather than own media. All this goes away if I ever stop using PS Plus. Should the price skyrocket or my circumstances deteriorate, my library of comfort games is gone. This is a long-running problem across all forms of entertainment, from streaming services to Kindle Unlimited.
So far, market forces have kept these systems from being too onerous, but there’s no guarantee it will stay that way. Console gaming already has a wealth gap that is likely to grow. Game companies are addicted to catering to high-paying customers, and that is not going to stop any time soon.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
