Fun for free in the digital age

Having recently taken stock of all our monthly subscriptions, we came to one unavoidable conclusion: we let our entertainment budget get away from us. It's a common mistake, and one we see all too often, in that many small subscription services add up to something big. Taking note of this, we decided on an experiment. What would happen if, just for a month, we let all of our entertainment subscriptions lapse, while we tried to get the most out of free offerings? Here’s what we found.

Television and Movies

As avid fans of Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video, this was the area which we figured might be the most difficult to overcome. What we found, in reality, however, is that there are some profound advantages to changing our lifestyle here, and not just in a monetary sense.

Without cable, and without a digital replacement, we turned to two different avenues, YouTube and broadcast television. In their own ways, both of these had a lot more to offer than we expected. When it comes to YouTube, we had long considered it the domain of shorter, funny clips. This is what we watched the most, and our recommendations reflected this.

Putting in the work to searching around, however, gave us a lot to see in terms of full shows. This is especially the case for documentaries and shows which went off the air a couple of decades ago. There are thousands of hours to watch here, all legal and, best of all, free.

Even broadcast TV, which we had long-abandoned, brought back a sense of community that we'd long since forgotten about. Being tied to a specific time-slot might not have the convenience of on-demand services, but it does bring the family together in a way that more modern methods simply cannot match.

Digital Gaming

The other arm of fantastic free entertainment comes from the world of gaming. Free opportunities here can be a little more difficult to track down than with television and movies, but the range available once you do find some key websites is just as profound. For traditional video games, you have a couple of options.

The first is simply download one of the many free-to-play style games on popular platforms like the Google Play Store or Steam. The second is to turn to what is called abandonware. These are full older games whose publishers have closed down or whose rights have otherwise lapsed. This means entire games can be accessed for free.

This freedom doesn't just apply to video games either, as even online casino games have free versions to engage with, if that's more your thing. You can play slots for free, for example, in demo modes, to see everything that they have to offer. This gives the advantage of experience when you come to play them for real money, which can only ever be a positive thing.

Don’t Write it Off

One of the biggest advantages of living in the digital age is the abundance of choice. What we so often fail to keep in mind, however, is the fact that we could never possibly try out everything on offer. Once you understand this, it becomes so much easier to accept cutting back your entertainment budget, or even removing it entirely for an experiment like ours.

Even when not spending a single pound, we still have far more access to games, tv shows, and movies, than any generation that came before. Understand this, embrace it, and you could both save money, and experience something new.