So, I survived April and the release of Portal 2 and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (I followed the ARG of the former and tried the demo of the latter—both awesome). I guess I was partly distracted by the PlayStation Network being down for the second half of the month, and I've been following that story (all the different versions of it) very closely since the network went down. Shame too, because I was just getting back into playing Super Street Fighter IV online (trying to step up my game with Gouken—I've already learned tons of new, useful stuff about him). I think I'm reinvigorated by the announcement of the forthcoming Arcade Edition update for consoles. Nice! (Although, yes, I will have to wait for next year to buy it).
What else kept me busy in April? Blizzard decided to give me 30 days of World of WarCraft for free (without any expansions). That was nice! (Although it took forever to download the game and updates.) I think it's because I have pretty much every other Blizzard game registered on Battle.net. So, I played about 5 hours of WoW, got a paladin up to Level 10, and quit, I think, just before I would have started to really get into it. Probably for the best, as I would not be able to buy more game time after the 30 days are up.
What I'm really learning from this Year Without Buying Games is that, when I start buying games again, it would really help me if I just bought and played through one game at a time. No matter what kind of crazy sales Steam is having. No matter how many awesome games are coming out in the same month. It's best if I limit purchases to one at a time. Otherwise, I get a backlog of games that I might possibly never wind up playing, because the initial hype of the games wears off, and then I'm on to buying the next set of hype new games to occupy my time and attention. I have about a dozen games that I bought last year that are still sitting, waiting to be played through. And they're good games too: Super Meat Boy, Half-Life 2, Puzzle Quest 2 for example, but even four months into my year without buying games I have so much other stuff to play that they are going to continue waiting, possibly until even after I start buying games again.
On a final note, I think I'm coasting a bit too easily through this year. I know I'm only one third of the way through, but I still decided that I will throw myself a curve this summer. This July (coinciding with my summer holidays) is going to be my Month Without Playing Games. One month. No games. At all. No sweat... I hope.