QUEUE UP

Gaming can seem like an expensive hobby, but fear not, we’re here to help! Don’t buy that $4000 gaming PC (because there are better, less expensive options out there 🤑) and 90% of the time the game that your kid (or you) are looking for is on-sale 📉somewhere in the world. Solely going through Amazon or a big box retailer probably means you’re paying more than you have to. Especially, as nearly all games can be purchased digitally now. Gone are the days of grabbing a ticket off the wall at Toys R Us (also gone 🦒 🥹) and bringing it to the counter to get your new game.

1. HOW TO SAVE MONEY ON GAMES

2. ICYMI

3. SCREEN STUDIES

4. GAMING ON VACATION

5. LEARN THE LINGO

6. LOAD OUT

HOW TO SAVE MONEY ON GAMES

If your kid is always asking you for games, or you’re just looking for ways to save a buck in this economy, here are the best websites to find discounts and promotions:

1. Slickdeals

   The mother of all deals sites. A community-driven deals site where users share and vote on deals across many categories, including video games. You can find discounts on games, consoles, and gaming accessories. Set up deal alerts for specific games or consoles to catch deals as soon as they pop up.

2. CheapAssGamer (CAG)

   The first website specifically focused on video game deals. The community aspect helps in identifying and sharing the best prices across the internet and physical stores. Follow their socials for the latest and greatest deals.

3. Isthereanydeal.com

   This site aggregates gaming deals from multiple online stores and presents them in an easy-to-navigate interface. It also offers price history charts and notifications for price drops on specific games so you can be sure you’re getting the best deal.

4. Humble Bundle

   Offers unique bundles of games (and ebooks) where you can pay what you want for a selection of games. Purchases support charity, and you can often find high-value bundles for low prices. It’s been hit or miss over the last few years, but good bundles still pop up. They also have a store that runs great sales during normal holiday periods.

5. Cheapshark

   Similar to Isthereanydeal.com, CheapShark is made to help you find the best prices on digital game downloads for PC. They track game prices on a number of stores such as Steam, GreenManGaming, GOG, and Humble Bundle.

6. Steam

   Probably the largest place to buy digital PC games. Steam is known for its massive sales events (Steam Summer & Winter Sales especially - Usually July and Holiday time), Steam offers steep discounts where you can grab games at significantly reduced prices. Set up your wishlist and be notified when games are on sale.

7. Epic Games Store

   Another online store marketplace - (this is how you play Fortnite on PC) - so they do sales, but the best part is they offer up a free game every week 🤩 and during their holiday sale they usually have daily free games, and these aren’t shabby offerings but solid titles from the past few years.

8. Xbox GamePass

   Similar to Netflix but for games, this gives you the ability to pay a monthly subscription for hundreds of the best games available to play on PC, phone, tablet, TV, console, and more from the cloud. If you or your kid play a lot of games, this can be an incredible value and alternative to buying them.

9. Prime Gaming

   If you have Amazon Prime, you can get a free game to download and keep every week. Plus extra in-game items for many different games (EA FC, Madden, Valorant, League of Legends, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, etc). And linking to a Twitch account, gives you a free streamer subscription every month.

10. r/GameDeals on Reddit

    This subreddit is dedicated to sharing all types of game deals from the digital and physical realms. Users post deals, and the community upvotes the best ones, ensuring you see the top deals on the front page. If you are a Redditor, then this one is easy to use, if you don’t use Reddit, ignore this one.

We’ll have some money saving tips on gaming PCs in a future newsletter, but Slickdeals can be used to find great deals on those.

ICYMI

• Gamers make bank: The generation learning finance skills through screens

• DARK & LOVELY Joins Forces With 'The Sims' To Get More Black Women Into The Gaming Industry

• 10 year old staying up late gaming, saves his family from Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

SCREEN STUDIES

Call of Duty: Warzone

One of the most popular game titles of all time has a free to play battle royale mode where 100 players are put into squads and then dropped onto an island where they must find equipment and guns and battle other squads and a slowly collapsing circle of toxic gas to be the last person standing.  This is very much like Fortnite but Call of Duty.

Warzone is available on pretty much any platform from PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and there’s a mobile version too.

• The Mini Map - Very important. It shows your location +  your teammates, visible opponents in red, special locations, as well as the closing circle and red areas which = ☠️. It also provides the time until the next circle closes.

• The compass shows you directions to align yourself and for callouts to your teammates. So instead of “They’re over there!” say “They are at 86” or “They are NE of us”. You can also pin something on the map and then see it on your compass

• In the top right is key info on how many squads and players are remaining in the match

• Killstreaks are picked up on the map and give you a special one time use ability (UAV Radar or Precision Airstrike, for instance)

• Field Upgrades are special equipment that help you (ammo boxes so you can reload all your ammo for instance)

• Your squadmates have different colors so you can know where everyone is at all times (green = good in pretty much all games)

• The squad info keeps you up to date on your teammates. Plus you can see if someone shooting with the blue “fire” symbol. Money is important because as an individual or squad you can buy upgrades

• Warzone is unique in that if you get eliminated you go to the ‘Gulag’ where you get a chance to face off against another eliminated player with the winner coming back to the match. Your squad mates can also use money to buy you back.

GAMING ON VACATION 

Going on a long, summer trip 🛳️ and looking for something for the kids to game on or just to take your gaming on the road 🚙 ? Here are my 4 best options in order of complexity from a total tech noob to super tech savvy:

1. Amazon Fire Kids Tablet - Comes with Kids+ a monthly service for free games, super safe and durable (the cover is awesome), works just like an iPad. Tons of kid safe games, you can load movies onto it (and other apps), there are great parental controls and screen time limiters too. We have one for each kid and they have been amazing.

2. Nintendo Switch Lite - A more portable version of the Switch - plays all the latest Nintendo games (all cost extra). The next step up - this is this generation’s Gameboy. Tons of great games, easy to take on a road trip or on a plane. Charges with USB-C.

3. Steam Deck - A portable PC that with a Steam account (Free) plays nearly any game you have in your collection - use my above tips to find deals on Steam Games and you can load this up with more games than you have time to play. Very user friendly to set up out of the box.

4. NEW ANBERNIC RG35XX Plus - If you are tech savvy 🤓and want to play retro games and ROMs - this is the portable device for you. A high-tech throwback to the Gameboy! You definitely need to understand a bit about loading an SD card with ROMs (which are emulated version of video games) but it’s an incredible piece of technology.

LEARN THE LINGO

LOAD OUT

A lot of people just don’t know where to look to find games. Unless you or your child have to have a game the day it comes out, there’s going to be a deal! Be patient and you can snatch great games for a few bucks, many games even drop 10% after a few weeks.

GLHF,

Chris

[email protected]

What I’m playing right now:

Okami HD on PC