Collecting for the sake of it?

[angelx]

i have the following formats

psone
ps2
ds
psp
gameboyadvance
gamecube
xbox
xbox360

Ive now limited myself to 10 games per system, and to buy 1 i have to sell 1, well tbh that was my wife who said that, but hey she's right......
ok i have a bald patch from her thumb

To be honest shes very right, owning a few titles on each is the way to go because sometimes you have too many to play, also limiting consoles is what I tend to do just the main 3 do me well and those Im not playing just may get sold like my PSP, great waste of money that was.....
Oh yes frag why do you keep a ps1 & gba when you have a ps2 and DS?

[Samurai Matt]

i am now at the stage where i have "little Projects", current one being JAP MD games

I'm doing the same actually. I just found that there was too many games I wanted to get poping up at here and rllmuk that I couldnt get all the ones I wanted, so now i've decided to do one console at a time. also a good way of clearing my wish list in a stasifing and productive way .

[Rsdio]

Best thing I ever did was sell off my stuff, I limit the amount of games that I have at once now and I enjoy them a lot more.. Plus I made a couple of grand selling them that I put towards stuff I'd been wanting, which sweetened the deal even more .

[Matt]

I own 3 games on the 360, only keeping those that are good multiplayer games for when my mates come round. Anything else I want to play, I rent.

I started to get quite a large GC collection a couple of years back, but I reached the same conclusion as some others here - ultimately collections are pointless, and I don't need to own these items to "define" my life.

So I sold most, and kept the few I both still enjoy playing and WILL play. I've got a soft spot for some gaming series like Worms, so I'll keep those, but in the end I can only play so much and having piles of games on a shelf is just money sat there doing nothing.

Back in the PS2 days I'd buy anything, and rarely completed anything. I now enjoy what I have far more, with the recent bonus of 360 Achievements encouraging me to fully explore those games that I do have.

And it's not as if I have to be that careful with my purchases, as I tend to trade everything anyhow. So I'm spending less money and getting more enjoyment

End of the day, each to their own. Some of the collections I've seen here are huge, but that really isn't my thing anymore. Just remember there is another way!

[sj33]

I'm actually trying to cap my game buying now. I've got such a huge backlog that I actually want to play but just don't have the time. No more game buying unless totally necessary.

Of course, not going to cancel the games I've already preordered like Ico/SOTC... and if Twilight Princess comes out then everything goes on hold for that game... but yeah...

[JazzFunk]

It would be interesting to know what current gen (especially PS2) stuff will turn out to be collectable in a couple of years. That's one of the reasons why I've got a ****load of semi-obscure Jap-programmed PAL games, most of which I don't play and DON'T want to trade, just in case...

[jono]

I started collecting about 3 years ago but i soon realised that i was doing it primarily for the prestige of owning certain titles or machines. After about a year i had had enough (Had close to 250 titles spread across 6 systems) and i sold the lot, keeping only a virtual boy (I've had it for about 7 years) and my xbox stuff.

[Bada Bing!]

The 360 achievements are going to change all this. People will play games for longer in order to boost their gamerscore. Owning tons of games wil just fail to makes sense in time,

[MikeRox]

even jus buying stuff I genuinely want, there are far too many games out and coming out for me to get thru >_< I did go on a mad buyin everything phase at one point, but I've recently been whittling everything down to games I genuinely want to keep. Goin to hopefully have another mad selling phase next week when I go home. I've played my 3 Xbox 360 games more than my last 20 or 30 current/last gen purchases, and tbh it feels great to be playing games properly again.

[angelx]

yes to the last two posts! I have about 5 360 games and the last thing you can claim about them is being short they really are huge tasks to complete and really do give you your moneys worth. I am noticing that that is too many I dont find the time to play them all. Especially with the ff11 beta which is amaing since it cost a mere ?5

[Dezm0nd]

There are LOADS of games out that I want to play, but I only ever have a maximum of 3 games on the go. Once they're done they either are traded in for the next lot i want or kept because the replay value will resurface one day.

I used to buy anything i was slightly interested in, wasting all my money on games i never touched. Now i've gotten myself a HDTV a 360 and i've even been to florida and paid for me and the missus. You can save alot, and even if there is a game out that you want but cant afford due to blacklog just wait and get it once your shelf is clear. (unless it's vital, like Katamari or Shadow Of the collosus).

[CosmoKramer]

This is a fascinating thread. Like everyone else, I too have allowed myself to get caught up in it all, ony to have an Epiphany and drastically cut back on my collection.
The problem with games - and this is probably more true now than ever - is that they are very easy to get hold of and are mostly quite inexpensive. This makes collecting games a very easy pass-time; as easy as clicking 'BuyNow' on eBay. Secondly, it panders to the instant gratification that everyone finds so agreeable. We all have a 'hole' in us - a yearning for something. If we don't know what or why it is, we try to fill it with other things; be it food, alcohol, shopping, whatever.
Alright, I'm getting a little heavy here. Suffice to say that I found myself buying games for the sake of it, only to end up with a mountain of games I didn't have anywhere near the time I needed to play them. I told myself I would work my way through them; but after seeing some games gathering dust for a couple of years in my 'to do' pile, I admitted defeat and sold them. I'm still selling them, in batches. I currently have a clutch of GameCube games going on eBay. Some I did play, others I never touched.
Still, one advantage of buying and selling in the second hand market is that it costs very little; sometimes I even make a few bob!

[ryodi]

I think I have been hit with the collecting bug recently after spending the latter half of 2005 pruning my collection. A couple of examples. I enjoyed Tony Hawk American Sk8land on the DS and saw that Wasteland for the GC was reasonably priced in the Gameplay so snapped it up. After enjoying it along with the DS game I decided I may as well pick up the rest of the series. So I now own THPS3, THPS4, THUG and THUG2 all picked up relatively cheaply but nothing I really needed to own. It was the same with Resident Evil. Bought RE4 for the GC and really enjoyed it (but still haven't completed it yet) so seeing the rest of the series cheapish on GC I decided to pick up the rest and am now the proud owner of RE0, REmake, RE2, RE3, RE:CV and even the RE4 PS2 Ltd edition because it was cheap in the play.com new year sale. I have even't taken its shrinkwrapping off yet!

I really should stop buying games that are in the series because as soon as I buy one, even if I only slightly enjoy it I will buy the rest of the games in the series.

[Darwock]

I think a lot of us probably amass a collection 'for a rainy day'.. maybe it stems from being a kid and not having new games to play very often? Anyway I've come to realise that this is an ever-changing industry, there never is going to come a time when the new stuff doesn't interest me so when will I ever have time for the old stuff? Probably never. So what's the point in hoarding it.

[Peekay]

Definitely a lot of my collecting stems from all the PS1/Saturn stuff I read about as a young teenager but couldn't afford to get. The PS1 and Saturn are the only systems I "collect" for as such (ie buy games that I'm almost certainly never gonna play, or only very superficially - good example would be a sealed copy of Wachenroder for the Saturn; I'd read about it in SSM years ago and had always remembered it. Will I ever play it? Doubtful).

Equally, like many men, I'm a bit obsessive - I collect comics too, and I have some I'll never read (crossovers and limited series) which I've bought because they relate to main series I collect. With my comic collection I'm in the stupid situation where I still pay money for comics I'm not gonna read, because I've already spent so much money on them previously (X-Men at the moment is a good example - the quality has dropped so much but I'm still buying them).

So... I suppose I'm an example of the worst type of sad collector.