Things to do in gaming when you’re unemployed

Yes, folks. Unemployment has reached out and grabbed me like it grabbed so many Americans. So how does the gamer cope when one’s funds are at a stranglehold?

The gamer does DLC, MMOs, and goes back to old games unfinished. For me, that means: World of Warcraft (50cents a day for one account, people, you don’t get cheaper entertainment then this), Red Dead Redemption, Final Fantasy XIII, Little Big Planet, Dragon Age: Origins, Fallout: New Vegas, and wrapping up the last missions of Mass Effect. So, seriously? Not going to be hurting for keeping myself occupied into the wee hours while I wait for the phone to ring or my unemployment check to hit.

Ironically, I had just bought the Dead Money DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, and loved almost every minute, except for that cheese-ass fight at the end and the race against the clock, which I did not love at all, and which is why I stopped playing it for a while. I have a ton of unfinished or unplayed DLC for Dragon Age. Hell, I think I still have unfinished DLC for Fallout 3.

All of these were pretty cheap, and they provide me with several hours of entertainment. But nothing, nothing beats an MMO subscription. With the average cost about $15 a month, that’s a pretty good per-day cost. Now, not everybody will consider keeping their internet as a non-luxury, but around here if you want to job search without trucking to the library (with gas prices rising, also a craptastic option) you’re going to keep your internet, and cut just about everything else.

Tabletop gaming also remains free, so long as you have the books or can find them on the internet for cheap, or whatever. PDF downloads can be cheap or free, depending on the company, and hey, you just need some pals and some dice.

So I think I’ve got enough to keep me relatively entertained between waiting for rejection letters and interview calls. Here’s hoping I’m not unemployed long enough to finish playing them all, though. That would be quite some time to be unemployed.

~Amanda