When it comes to PC games, I’ve learnt that unless I can give it away to someone who will actually enjoy them, trying to sell them at, say, half price bookstores, is just too painful. No awesome game should suffer the ignominy of going for $2 or being refused at the counter.
I seriously have no clue how many games I have, but I do know that I’ve hit the point where I’m starting to feel like it’s too many. The problem is I think I’d rather get a bigger house than downsize the collection. :)
I’ve been tracking my games with the lists at Gamespot, and according to there, I still have 361 games I’m still “now playing” (the category I’ve been using for unfinished games). Even if I complete a game a week, that’s still nearly seven years to work through all of those. I should trim a bunch of them off the list, that I never intended to play in the first place (i.e., part of collections) or lost interest in partway through, but it’ll still be a pretty big list.
I’m just too lazy to get rid of old games (who really wants to deal with eBaying/trading/giving out hundreds of individual games?), but I continue to buy new ones since, well, I’m not going to miss out on Forza 3 just because I haven’t finished the original Far Cry.
But what really hurts me is impulse purchases just because something looks interesting or is on sale. It started out innocuously enough, picking up the odd used PS2 game that looked interesting or had good word-of-mouth, but it’s really gone into overdrive with digital distribution and these frequent sales. That’s where I really need to apply some more self-control…
OMG I know! I refuse to buy a game until it’s on sale nowadays, but the DD people have so many damned good sales it’s awesome and ridiculous at the same time!
I am mystified by people who own books or movies that they haven’t read or watched. Games I understand more because of the time commitment, but why would you buy a movie and not watch it?
I know exactly how you feel!
If I only had 237 games, I would have a lot more room in my house. I probably would have been better off had I slowed down on purchasing games when their numbers reached 237, but then I would have missed out on a few unknown or obscure titles that turned out to be pretty good. I own more than my share of “stinkers” though.
This week isn’t going to help me at all. Torchlight, Borderlands PC, the L4D2 demo, and Forza 3 are all dropping this week. Ugh!
I may actually try to catalog everything this week. I’d kind of like to know everything I own. I used to keep spreadsheets with purchase prices on them to gauge how much I spent. Those get ugly.
I am definitely a collector though, so that’s one way I justify it. Plus I really don’t like emulation too much, so I prefer to have original cartridges for the old console hardware it plays on. It’s just a lot more satisfying to me playing Genesis games on a real SEGA Genesis with an original 6-button controller than it is that same game on the 360 with the crap d-pad, etc.
All that said, I’ve really cut back. I only buy around five games a month now and usually only at deep discounts with one or two exceptions a month. This month’s top dollar game was Demon’s Souls. Last month it was Muramasa: The Demon Blade. Other than those two, I haven’t paid full price for anything in at least 60 to 90 days. All the rest were $25 and below and there weren’t many of them.
Actually in my case it’s a question of I never throw anything away.
Also, we are talking roughly 20+ years of building game collection here.
Probably a quarter of my games there is no way to run even, 5.25" floppies and such.
A couple of people mentioned Emperor : Battle for Dune, somehow I have the discs for this, but not the case. No case=no CD key= fuck EA cause I can’t play an 8 year old game cause I lost my CD Key.
Oddly enough I was wanting to play this about 8 months ago.
You sound like an Audiophile talking about LPs. I say that, as a guy who has shelves of LPs and Games that he hauls around with him every time he moves.
But that is an active decision that you have continued to make for 20+ years. How long have you been carrying around that Dune game unable to play it? What good has that done you? There is no difference between having held onto it for all these years and having given it away after the last time you played it.
Having a collection of stuff you like is a fine hobby, I collect foreign currency myself. I just dislike collections building up for no reason.
You can declutter your life without throwing away the content as well. I have all my games in a couple of three ring binders and CD keys in a spreadsheet, all my DVDs ripped to a hard drive. I don’t have to look at them every day taking up space or even spend hours searching for something that I want.
Actually, I’ve had people ask me why I have so many books. I don’t know how many I have, but it’s a lot, and people ask me why I bother keeping them. In the case of books, many of them are kept for reference (I’m in academics, after all). But I can’t really jump into a video game and just play a particular scene very easily (unless I keep a save file reader for such things). I’m far more likely to use a book I’ve read again, in some way, than a game, though I have replayed some games too.
I think the reason I keep games is because I hardly ever finish them. Usually, they hang around for a while because I still plan to finish them at some point, but then some other game comes along and takes its place. I still plan to finish, so I hang onto the game, but at some point, I miss the window. And now the game is just on the shelf. I haven’t sold a game used in a long time, so now they are starting to collect. I guess it’s time to hit Amazon marketplace and clear them out a bit!
But there’s totally a reason. Sure, I’m pretty guaranteed not to get to a large portion of my game collection. Hey, I know that. But I go back to games all the time - or dig them out for the first time years later. I usually don’t know ahead of time which titles I’m going to want to do this with. And if I skip acquiring it to begin with or dump it, I might be in the position of having to shell out $100+ for it later, if I can find it at all. So, no, I’m not going to buy everything I might possibly want to play the moment it comes out for $50 or 60 or whatever ridiculous price they want now. But if I’m interested at all, I’ll keep an eye out, and if it hits a reasonable price for my level of interest, poof, it’s mine.