Keying into the Addiction Centre

Things got a little silly with the Steam Trading Cards last night.

The thing is; Steam Trading Cards are de facto silly, right out of the (virtual) box.

For the uninitiated - lucky you - Steam is an online store that allows you to buy and download games directly to your computer. Thanks to Steam, I haven't actually bought a game physically for, I would say, at least four years.

This is fine and dandy; Steam provides a good service, keeps your games patched and up-to-date and, of course, there's the Summer Sale.

The Trading Cards, however, seem a little too odd.

Certain games allow for Card Drops, wherein if you play for a certain amount of time you'll receive a trading card. These cards form sets, and you can either sell them - for what seems to be a uniform almost 10p per card - or collect them to make a set. If you complete a set, you get three rewards; a custom emoticon for chat, a background for your profile and, currently, a trading card for the Summer Sale set.

You also get Experience Points for your profile, which increase your Steam Level.

Now, you can never get enough cards from card drops to finish a set. So you have the choice; either you can buy them from the community marketplace, or trade for them.

Last night, I got suckered in. I blame Reus for blasting my addiction centres right open; but I ended up completing the Summer Sale badge twice, the Civilization 5 badge three times and even...

... Gasp...

Made the schoolboy error of completing the Civilization 5 Foil Card set.

(Foil Cards are like normal cards, just at about 50p instead of 10p.)

So I levelled up a few times, and now have badges and a thing I can put on my profile page to make it look more unique and a few custom emoticons and backgrounds and...

It's entirely pointless. It's randomly generated flair, as in:



Oh, it was fun at the time. But I spent money on that that could have been spent on, say, Food. Even, maybe, given the sale, Games. 

My profile does look kind of shiny now, though...