Collecting Video Games

[civvver]

Are you a video game collector? Do you continue to purchase games despite having 25+ you've not even loaded yet? Do you buy every humblebundle even with multiple games you own in them? Do steam holiday sales make you feel like a kid in a candy store? I answered yes to all of those. It's my conclusion that I simply keep buying games because I like the idea of collecting them. At first I was buying all these steam sales, running out of harddrive space and asking, why am I still doing this if I literally have 30-50 new games I've not tried out yet? I could also easily survive the next five years gaming replaying a handful of games I love (civ series, mass effect, skyrim among others). Yet for some reason if I see Hitman Absolution for $6.49 I gotta have it. Just seeing them in my collection gives me a strange sense of joy that I can't really explain.

I kind of see similarities to other types of collections like movies and music. Most people who buy tons of dvds and blurays don't rewatch them all a hundred times. They sit on a shelf looking good and you might say hey let's have a star wars marathon now and then, but for the most part you're not replaying forrest gump every weekend. And movies are generally far more expensive than games. I think like me the movie buff just likes the idea of having those titles in his collection.

Music is similar. Buy 1000s of songs, have them on shuffle on your ipod. How often do you really get to each one?

I used to play world of warcraft and pay at least $12 a month (depends on your subscription term, month to month is $15). I spent slightly more than that last year on games. If you only buy stuff on sale you can build a huge library on $5 a week. This isn't an expensive hobby anymore like the days of console games where even used ones were $20+.

That's kind of where I'm at with games these days, I love finding sales and buying them just to have them. Digital distribution and discounting I think has launched this craze for a lot of gamers. I think this is becoming a lot more common. What do you guys think?

 

[Maniacal]

People buy music? (I mean like more than a handful of it from your most favourite artists).

I doubt most people who buy a lot of digital games are really collecting them, at least on purpose. Mostly we buy them because they're cheap and we will "play them eventually".

 

[scheva007]

I tend to "collect" full games, ai: i buy special editions and all the dlc that comes with it. But no, im not quite a bundle buyer. I have a few games i still have to play fully, and i will only buy in sale what is on my wishlist, nothing more

 

[civvver]

People buy music? (I mean like more than a handful of it from your most favourite artists).

I doubt most people who buy a lot of digital games are really collecting them, at least on purpose. Mostly we buy them because they're cheap and we will "play them eventually".

Well people collecting music, even if they don't pay for it always.

I though I was just buying games to play them eventually but it dawned on me I'll never get to all of these eventually and I'm really just buying them because they're like digital pokemon- gotta catch em all.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I don't really collect games in the way you do civver, but I do keep all of the games I have long after I've stopped playing them. Particularly with my old N64 console games, I hope to pass them on to my kids to play one day. I'm not sure most of my PC games will still be playable on Win10...

 

[civvver]

I was stupid and sold my n64 and 12 games for $20 to a friend. Wife said I had to get it out of the living room!

 

[hobbsyoyo]

hehehe my wife quite enjoys my n64 and she buys games for it from her childhood like DK64

 

[Sonereal]

That's kind of where I'm at with games these days, I love finding sales and buying them just to have them. Digital distribution and discounting I think has launched this craze for a lot of gamers. I think this is becoming a lot more common. What do you guys think?

I don't think deep discounts and digital distribution is leading to an increase in video game collecting anymore than deep discounts at Wal-Mart lead to people collecting more slacks.

Half the point of a collection, in my mind, is having something you can physically show off. For example, I have a Nook, and I like using the Nook, but I also still buy physical copies of books because I like having a physical collection I can fill my shelves with.

I currently have 74 games in my Steam library, but I don't feel like I'm collecting them. I didn't get those games to fill out some virtual shelf but because I wanted to use them and, if I could, I would probably resell half of them (oh the disadvantage of digital distribution!). The uninstalled, unplayed games in the library are simply there because they came with a bundle. If I had 74 hard copies of those games on one of the shelfs in the next room, maybe I would consider myself a collector, but even then it would probably be a case of me being too lazy to find sellers as is the case of my library of Xbox, 360, Gamecube, and PS2 games.

Likewise, I don't think people who have thousands of digitally-obtained MP3s on their iPods are in the same league of "collecting" as somebody who has hundreds of CDs on a shelf, or dozens of vinyl records.

 

[civvver]

You don't have to show something off to have it be a collection. It's just how you admire it, and maybe it's just me, but I do look at my steam library and admire.