As with everyone else at the moment I’m currently locked up in my house trying to stay safe from the deadly Coronavirus. Of course this means (and quite rightly so) that I can’t continue to fuel my hobby of video game collecting. Obviously we can’t go out and the shops are shut even if we could! Safety and health before everything else.
So the next best thing is to talk about it. So here we are.
Why do I collect games?
To be honest I’m not really sure why I collect them I really aren’t. In retrospect you buy a game and in most cases it sits on your shelf and is perhaps played maybe once in its lifetime with me. Unless it’s a fantastic game and I want to replay it I probably never will. I have a large collection of over 500 physical games and 1000s of digital games (see the Wii Blog to see why) and quite honestly they take up a lot of space. In fact it a very large cupboard full of physical games!
All this so far looks quite negative really and you are probably wondering why I do it. Well I like it. I really enjoy going to the local shops (or further away ones depending on my mood) and scouring the shelves to see which game I want to add to my collection. I enjoy the fact that the games I collect (usually from Playstation 1 to 3, xbox original to xbox 360, the Wii,the Gamecube and the WiiU and the handheld consoles from GB to the Vita), are incredibly cheap to buy currently and there are masses of them on sale in a lot of locations. Then there’s Ebay and Amazon not to mention Facebook marketplace to boot. The good thing that comes out of newer games console releases is that people consider older generations to be worthless and to some extent they are. A lot of gamers aren’t interested in the older gen stuff and stick with whatever is current. That leaves a lot of games for the collectors. As there are a couple of new consoles coming out soon (the PS5 and the Xbox Series X) then the current gen games will start to drop in price as the newer gen makes its library larger over time. I do collect Xbox One and Ps4 games but only if they are cheap or I fancy playing them! I’m just waiting currently.
Is collecting worth it?
Well that depends on how you perceive the gaming industry. Gaming is a very personal hobby, generally people will only buy what they want to play. A lot of gamers either trade in or sell their games once they finish the game and want to buy another game. I guess this is natural. It’s similar to DVDs really, most people watch a film then either pass it on or sell it. I collect both to be honest (only the films I really love though). With the inevitable conversion to completely digital gaming ( and indeed films) collecting games, I believe, is quite important to make sure that they are preserved and not lost to everyone. I don’t collect to add value to them because quite frankly it would take a long time for any of the games I own to be valuable in the first place. I buy because I enjoy it. There are many collectors out there who do collect the rare games and sit on them for a long time until they are worth a lot of money but that’s up to them really. It happens in all sorts of hobbies so why should Gaming be any different?
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My Instagram Gaming site
Should you do it?
If you are considering collecting then you need to ask yourself the question above. If you like games and like having a collection you can access whenever you want then I would say yes. Again this hobby is very personal. Part of my collection is sets of games which I like to make sure I have the complete set. What I mean by that is take Dead Space on the PS3. I have all three games in the set released on the Playstation 3 plus I also own Dead Space Extraction on the Nintendo Wii. I happen to love these games and have completed all of them. However I do have some series, such as Halo on the Xbox, that I have completed just one of the games (Gears 5 on the Xbox One as a digital copy through gamepass). The reason I bought the others was off the back of Gears 5 because I really enjoyed it. I decided that at some point I would like to work my way through the rest of them. There are some other collections of games that I own as a set but probably won’t ever play. I’ve collected them to be a set nothing more.
The future
As a collector the future really isn’t that bright for physical media. As the developers of games move to digital only in the near future the obvious problem is that physical media will die out and games will dry up. That place won’t be for a fair few years to be fair but it is inevitable and I find that sad really. Not everyone has a great Internet connection and not everyone likes the digital copies. For me they don’t feel like they are yours and to be fair they aren’t, you are just paying to use them. It will combat piracy I’m guessing but what worried me is what happens to your games if the company stops trading? Also what happens if the internet goes down or you move to an area where the internet isn’t great? I play a lot of Gran Turismo Sport currently and I’ve noticed quite often that the internet connection sometimes isn’t there and you cant save the game. You can play it but that’s all you can do so all your progress will be lost the instance you turn off the console.
The consoles
Consoles are changing too which will have an effect on physical media. Microsoft offer a digital only console as part of their line up to encourage you to purchase digital media only (it can’t play physical). The Xbox One S All-Digital. I think that Microsoft are looking into removing the console all together and steaming games over multi platforms such as mobile, Pc and tables in the future.
Other console manufacturers will follow suit at some point. Sony offers their PS Now service which is digital downloads and streaming (more streaming than downloads), Xbox offers their Gamepass service and Nintendo have started with online subscription on their Switch (Snes and Nes services). It’s all coming in the future and we currently (if you like it or not ) are testing it for them with these services.
Buying duplicate games on different consoles
There are some downsides to buying games. I’ve fallen for this on many occasions. That is duplication of games. Because I have multi platforms in my home I sometimes forget that I have purchased some games on other platforms. A good example is that I have purchased several games on the ps3 and on the xbox 360 of the same game. Its more to do with a few reasons really. Sometime I just don’t realise that I already own it, sometimes the game is so cheap that I buy it anyway and sometimes the different console versions offer some extra features that aren’t on the other platforms. I really don’t mind buying or owning several of the same copies, they are so cheap to buy it’s not worth worrying about. I could sell them if I wanted to but don’t tend to do that. I may in the future if I run out of space. There’s also the issue of developers remaking/ remastering games that seems to be the trend currently. Take for instance Resident Evil 2 and 3. At the time of writing RE2 is already released and RE3 is nearly ready. Both these games were originally released on the Playstation 1 and are fantastic games but they have decided to release (to be fair I believe both are now different games) them again. I will be buying them at some point as a) I love RE games and b) I collect games!
Conclusion
Collecting games as a hobby for me is a way to relieve tensions of my busy stressful world. I look forwards each week to visiting the shops to buy the games I want in my collection. I like the idea of bringing back to my home new adventures for me to discover, untold masses of baddies to shoot, unlock new cars as I strive to be the best racing driver I can and platform the hell out of Mario. I would recommend collection, it won’t be around forever and you wouldn’t want to miss out on games you’ve yet to discover would you?
Now Coronavirus please do one so we can get back to doing what we all do best. Stay safe people.
Retro Gaming Mad 