RF Generation Message Board

Hi everyone. Hope you're all having a great weekend.

Do you think it's possible that some of us are obsessive compulsive about collecting games? Someone with 1500+ games just spat their drink out, didn't they? I heard it.  ;D

But seriously, my name is Richie and I'm a game-a-holic. I just had a "oh ****" moment. This weekend alone I have bought 18 games off Ebay and some of them cost me a pretty penny. I'm spending my spare (savings) cash like there is no tomorrow. But on the flipside:

a) I'm not a druggie snorting my money up his nose.
b) I'm not an alcoholic pouring my cash down my throat.
c) I'm not yet at the stage where I'm staying up all night, tapping my veins with a Genesis cart......... forehead resting on the TV whispering "pretty, pretty pixels..."

But perhaps I need to slow down... just a little. Maybe I can get into a pattern of buying once every so often. At least it's money I have, not money I'm borrowing so that's all good.

Anyway, I don't know what I'm trying to say here but it feels slightly confessional and for that, I thank you for reading. In a few years I might be married and will need to rely on you guys to get me in a drunken embrace and say "sheeee doesn't getchu bro.... those carts you bought were rare as ****"

Alrighty then. Hope you're all having a great day.

Cheers

Richie

I kind of get what you're saying.

Every once in a while, I think about all the money I've "wasted" on games and think about all the nice stuff I could have bought instead, hell, I could probably afford my own place if I didn't buy so many damn games. But, everything I buy is at a price lower than what I could sell it for, so I can always at least get my money back if not make a profit. And if I could afford my own place, and I didn't have the games, I wouldn't need the space anyway.

And like you said, spending money on games is a hell of a lot better than spending it on useless stuff like excess alcohol and drugs.

Hey NES_Rules. Thanks for the reply! :) I guess spending money on any hobby can be seen as a waste. I have a girl friend that spends all her money to the excess on DVDs (not watching them etc). Another girl friend spends money on shoes like there is no tomorrow (not wearing them). I guess we all spend our cash on our hobbies and interests no matter what. It's good to have hobbies.

OCD? yeah, probably. I doubt I'd have as many games as I do if I wasn't. I look for video games almost every day and it's pretty much a given that I can't go a week without buying at least one game. It's usually more than that too.

Lately my new thing is to print at least 4 copies of the weekly Gamestop coupon and use them all. It's a challenge to stifle the expletives when the coupon of the week is for store credit.

At the moment I've still got 2 more 25% Off Any Used PS2 Games coupons burning a hole in my wallet.

I get like this once and a while. I actually had a stretch like this during the site's downtime. I probably spent $400-500 on games. It happened to coincide with me getting my Stimulus Rebate, so thankfully I'm in debt because of it.

If you have to justify your spending habbits by comparing your activites to extremes, perhaps you yourself feel that you have a spending problem.  The problem is expanded on when you try to rationalize it by saying things like I'll cut it down to x amount or x games per x time frame.  It rarely works because most game buying is completly impulsive and spur of the moment.

That said, I'm already there dude.  There's been some times I've spent so damned much money I'd blow thru my paycheck in like half an hour.  It feels so great when your gettin the games.  Then there's the down side.  The rest of the two weeks when your broke as hell, trying to figure out how your going to afford some smokes (or worse, food) and all those pretty little games you got for such a great deal, well you dont have the time to even play them.  I guess the best I can say is do what I am trying to do.  Force yourself to have some self control.  Learn what you realy want and dont accept any less then the games you want most, not the ones you just kinda want.

I don't think they are extremes, or if they are, by chatting about this here I've realised that everybody does it. They just have different hobbies and interests. I can't think of a single person that doesn't spend excessively on a hobby or 'addiction'  :P. My dad is into gardening and spends all his money on that (including illuminations/lighting etc). My mum is into kitchen accessories, foods and coffees and the usual shoes and handbags. A close friend is into gambling at the casino. So everyone I know spends money (often too much money) on something. Mine is linked to my Ebay watchlist. If I can cut it down or stay off it, I save cash pretty quickly. But then, what to spend it on? haha.


I think part of it is that I have most of the games I want but I read reviews for older games or see some on here and think wow, that looks amazing! Or often find out that games I love on a particular platform are out for another system I own. Getting a 'set' of games is my latest thing. But I guess that's part of being into video gaming... to learn about new stuff and see what you like. Luckily I'm not addicted to smoking (never even tried it). But yeah it is funny when I'm thinking about the week ahead and think... I wonder if I can just eat dust and save important grocery money for games, haha. :) PS2 games have taken a lot of my interest lately I think partly due to the fact that the prices are so low right now. But I've hacked away at my watched list today and will take a break after this... to save for more games hehe. Games do have that great feel good factor about them.

HEy  man, im  with you  as well,  im new to this whole collection thing, but have so far over 400 various games, alot arent posted on here though. I think the thing is with  me, that truly got me interested in  all of this is my childhood memories, thats the link  that got me hooked. WEll that  and the fact that one day, my parents gave up long ago the atari they have, i said well, let me look at  it,  ill see if i can get  it working, and i did. From  there  on, it began haha. I  started looking at  old nes games, i only owned about 4 or 5 from  childhood, turtles and the marios.  I picked up  the turtles 2 game, and said wow, i rememebr this, then i started wondering about the rest i forgot. I  started viewing ebay.... made an account and away i  went. Bouht games immediately that i remembered like bubble bobble, turtles 3,  adventure island 1 2 3, and especially snow brothers. I truly loved snow brothers, one day  i searched ebay, i found a seller had it with box and manual for sale, i offered a price of 60, she said i  got another offer, i said ok then how about 80, She sold it to me then. So thats how it began  lol. Memories of games like road rash, zombies ate my neighbours, sonic, rush 2 n64, duke nukem lol the list  goes on. but you know w hat i  mean ....

Addiction, yes.  OCD, I dunno.  With OCD you would more have the compulsion to continuously buy.  Worst case would be that you would never allow yourself to cross the threshold to your home without some new piece of software in hand.

Personally, I know I can go on bad spending sprees at times, but games are my one guilty pleasure, and I tend not to buy a lot of movies, concert tickets, or other things that interest me less.  To reach a good balance, I try and set myself a budget for a given week.  It makes me think a bit more between short and long-term collecting goals, and not just filling up on infrequent opportunities that may or may not be a good deal. 

The OCD thing was slightly tongue in cheek and not a particularly serious comment by me. I have over 400 games which is around page 4(?) on the all time list but it is a decent collection so I must identify a little with what I'm saying. If anything, I'm poking fun at myself.

Being obsessive does not mean you do something every time you come home or everytime you go out. When someone states that their goals for their collection are to own x hundred or so number of games then I would say that is a little obsessive. But BEFORE everyone gets their RF cables in a twist, I'm saying I don't care! I love it! I want more! I want us all to have more games lol. Who better to have a game on their shelf than a serious collector? I hate seeing games, especially classic games being rained on or just rotting away in a pile at a flea market. It's good to look after what is OUR culture and when we're all old gits (*cough* now for some ;)) this is what the young kids will read about as their Tekken 4000 or whatever is about to be released.


Great post SparkB. Really enjoyed reading it all and seeing how you got interested again from your childhood memories. Just the sort of thing I'm always happy to read about here and it makes me think about those games too. :) I wish I'd kept my games instead of selling them when I was a kid. It was always about the next best thing and I had no concept of time, as kids don't and shouldn't have! (too busy having fun). But I'm getting there again with my collection and absolutely loving it.

I used to be pretty obsessed with collecting as many games as I could. It didn't matter to me how bad it was gameplay-wise; if it was cheap, and would bolster my collection, I'd buy it. Now that I'm in another stage of my life, married and graduated from college, my budget is a lot smaller, and my outlook on collecting has changed. I still love collecting, but I now limit myself to games I actually want and know are quality.

However, that being said, I still feel a brief surge of temptation when I see a game like Superman Returns or Vampire Rain for $4.99 brand new at a store, that I know are not good games, but the price still grabs my attention. I've learned to resist that temptation, but I guess the fact that it's still there could be considered a little OCD.

Sounds like you Kimosabi, as OatBob and many others posting here have a good control over spending. Nice to hear that you still have your love for gaming though. :) Cheers!

That's exactly how I am. I really don't want to buy every game ever released, I just want to get stuff I'm interested in. Lately, I've been trying to cut down on my game buying to focus on playing the games that I actually have.

I probably buy games more often than I should, but meh, I could be spending money on drugs or something like that.

Even doing this it doesnt always work for me.  I tend to buy too many games as it is.  This year alone I've already got over 200 games.  Either I need to stop buying games or get better taste?

If you like all those games, then who is to say whether or not 200 games this year is too many? Just because you have broad taste doesn't mean you have bad taste. Unless you do, but only you'd know that. :P

Yea the low price always gets me, i mean  the other day i  went into a pawn shop, and found motorstorm  for ps3 for 12$. I  mean to me thats a deal, so i bought it,  even  though im  not totally into racing games all the time. Also, at zellers, ghost recon ps3 was on sale for 20$ new,  got that  as well,  seems i go for the deals more and more lately. EB games had stuntman  ps3 new for 9$?? Thats a steal lol, but i missed the deal by 2 days... but next  time lol.

Having OCD myself, I can see where you are coming from; but as OatBob said, you would have more of a compulsion to buy games for the fear of something bad happening. I really don't have rituals with my game collecting other than wanting to have everything and be the best collector out there, but I know that will never happen. I usually only buy old games when I find them really cheap, which I somehow have a really good job finding a lot of games worth some money for pretty cheap (Mario RPG, Super Metroid, Yoshi's Island for $5 each and Digital Devil Sage 1 Box Set new for $10).

But yeah, this is coming from a collector with OCD. Just putting my two cents in there. :)

I have some thoughts on the subject, as I have ADD, which while unrelated to OCD, still influence my game buying and collecting habits.

I will buy pretty much any game under 5$ that I am interested in to add to my collection, even if I probably won't actually play it.  I keep lists of every game I have in my collection (554 so far), and every game I am interested in picking up some time in the future (at 553 currently, very odd...).   The collection/wishlist is on Gamespot, and I am in the process of transferring my collection data to RF, but likely will keep the wish list on GS for its ease of use.

I have a ritual whenever I get home with a new game purchase.  First I add it to my collection, and remove it from my wishlist, then I open up my Game History txt document.  I record the info of the game title, system, price purchased, store purchased at and the date for each game bought in that particular day.  Then I write a short paragraph about the circumstances under which I bought it "was out and happened to check a thrift store I never go to and found X game, which I have been looking for" to give a bit of backstory on my purchases for later reading. 

It seems really OCD, and it kind of is, but I find it very rewarding to keep this document of game aquisition.  Not only does it let me brag (to nobody in particular, actually) about what a cheap price I got my new games for, but in this way I can track how much I am spending on game purchases in a month or year. 

Does anybody else use this kind of thing?

I've tried doing something similar but it usually only lasts a couple weeks. Right now when I buy a game, I first photograph everything then add it to photobucket and put the price as the title and I usually add the date too. Then I add it to my database here and clean them at that time too. Then I add any duplicates to a spreadsheet of games for sale and then I put the prices of each thing I bought in another spreadsheet that I track my spending/selling on. Finally, I add it to the shelves of games and once a week I add all the games purchased that week to another spreadsheet that I keep on another computer.

Pretty impressive method, NES Rules.  I haven't gotten into photographing everything (although I am tempted to post pics of my lastest score, 51 CIB ps1 games for 50$)

All those spreadsheets would be confusing to me, but that doesn't take much.

I am a little confused about your response, when you said you tried doing something similar, but it doesn't last, did you mean the stuff that followed with the spreadsheets?  Or something else?

That 50 game score is quite tiring to catalogue.  I should ration it out over a few days to savour it I suppose.

I tried keeping detailed track of everything I bought, kind of like a treasure hunting diary. A picture, where I bought the stuff and how much I paid and when I bought it. Similar to what I'm doing now just all in one place. For some reason, my new method is easier for me.

My "Treasure Hunt Chronicles" blog has kind of been like that, but I'm only going to do it this year as no one seems interested in reading it.

I love reading them!!! They are teh cooliest things on teh plan3t!!! :P

Don't be discouraged if there isn't an insane number of comments in each post. Not everyone who reads the blog entries comments on each one, as evidenced by the ratio of hits versus comments for the front page. Besides, blogging isn't about numbers, it's about having fun! Good 'net traffic to this site comes partially as a result of blog posts being written on the community blogs and the front page which in turn become Google search results. It helps the site grow, recruit new members and brings variety to what we have to read week to week.

I wish more people would blog as you do. We have a lot of variety in terms of region, tastes and age groups and I think the RFGen blogosphere would be a great thing to cultivate and expand upon. Whether it be off the wall posts, non-gaming journal entries, or gaming related news stories that could potentially be promoted to front page material, the blog has a lot of potential if more members were willing to try it out.