Steam Game Library Stats

I was prompted by a conversation with a friend this weekend to take a look at my Steam game library and whip up some stats. The handy Steam Calculator says that I have 77 games with a (current) retail value of $1098.18. That does not, however, tell the whole story. This ugly Excel chart was generated with the help of my Steam receipts:

It shows that almost none of the purchases I've made have been at the full retail price. My actual total cost is $298.11, which for 77 games comes to an average cost/game of $3.87. Now, this number is skewed by factors like expansions (what must a box set include to be considered one game or two or more?) and a few indie titles ($0.49 for The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom), but you can see it's consistent across the chart. Essentially, I've bought award-winning, critically acclaimed games at indie-or-less prices, and I'm not going to complain about that. Steam sales have saved me $800.

Interestingly enough, this post ties in well with an article and discussion on Ars Technica about the correlation between price and expectation in indie games, where the authors point out the hypocrisy of paying $60 for a retail game, making CoD: Black Ops a billion dollar business, and refusing to pay $5 for indie games, whether on Xbox Live or Steam itself. It's a good read and made me question whether the price I pay for a game influences my enjoyment of it or if I am willing to pay more for a game based on the assumption that I will enjoy it. However, these stats seem to show that I am the exception to the premise; I don't pay more than $5 (on average) for either.