Author Topic: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:  (Read 1708061 times)

Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« Reply #16470 on: April 14, 2024, 12:16:24 pm »
I'm picking up about one game a month on average, and it's typically a new release of some kind. Video game collecting has all but lost its appeal to me, and it's been that way for at least a few years now. I've owned nearly every game I ever wanted to and the idea of paying a ton of money for the ones I still would like to have sounds very unappealing. If game prices were to crash hard tomorrow and you could go to a thrift store or a flea market and pay Contra for $5 again, or Earthbound for $15, I don't even know if that would get me excited about collecting again.


My journey as a collector was one of the most fun, exciting, and rewarding periods of my life, and like all good things I wish it could have lasted forever. I've put a lot of thought into why I'm no longer into collecting, and while I could list half a dozen reasons or more why I stopped caring about it, I think it can be summed up by saying people and their interests and priorities naturally change over time. It happens to everyone, and aside from game collecting it has happened to me easily 10 times in my life so far. While video game collecting was certainly the most involved I ever got in one of my interests, at the end of the day it was still just a hobby. I tired for years to find new avenues to stay excited about game collecting, but every time I did this I was faced with greater and greater diminished returns on my overall enjoyment of the hobby.


Regrettably, I have yet to find a hobby to replace game collecting in terms of how passionate I was for it. I have focused on other interests, but nothing yet has kept me up until 3am researching interesting retro games I'd never hear of, getting up at the crack of dawn to beat an army of other resellers and collectors to the flea market, or spending all my disposable income (and then some) on games I wanted. I miss that feeling and I hope I discover something else that can ignite passion in me the way collecting used to. I still love playing video games, probably more than ever, but I just wish I was as into it as I was when i was paying all these games that I'm not actually clearing from my backlog.

Warmsignal

Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« Reply #16471 on: April 14, 2024, 02:40:53 pm »
I'm picking up about one game a month on average, and it's typically a new release of some kind. Video game collecting has all but lost its appeal to me, and it's been that way for at least a few years now. I've owned nearly every game I ever wanted to and the idea of paying a ton of money for the ones I still would like to have sounds very unappealing. If game prices were to crash hard tomorrow and you could go to a thrift store or a flea market and pay Contra for $5 again, or Earthbound for $15, I don't even know if that would get me excited about collecting again.


My journey as a collector was one of the most fun, exciting, and rewarding periods of my life, and like all good things I wish it could have lasted forever. I've put a lot of thought into why I'm no longer into collecting, and while I could list half a dozen reasons or more why I stopped caring about it, I think it can be summed up by saying people and their interests and priorities naturally change over time. It happens to everyone, and aside from game collecting it has happened to me easily 10 times in my life so far. While video game collecting was certainly the most involved I ever got in one of my interests, at the end of the day it was still just a hobby. I tired for years to find new avenues to stay excited about game collecting, but every time I did this I was faced with greater and greater diminished returns on my overall enjoyment of the hobby.


Regrettably, I have yet to find a hobby to replace game collecting in terms of how passionate I was for it. I have focused on other interests, but nothing yet has kept me up until 3am researching interesting retro games I'd never hear of, getting up at the crack of dawn to beat an army of other resellers and collectors to the flea market, or spending all my disposable income (and then some) on games I wanted. I miss that feeling and I hope I discover something else that can ignite passion in me the way collecting used to. I still love playing video games, probably more than ever, but I just wish I was as into it as I was when i was paying all these games that I'm not actually clearing from my backlog.

You might wanna look into vinyl or even CD collecting, if you're a fan of music. It's something you can take at a more casual pace than game collecting, because it doesn't feel like there's millions of people competing and scalping a finite thing, like with physical games. It does go on, but to a much lesser extent.

I'm not gonna say that I'm not interested in games or collecting anymore, because I am. There's just many factors now which work against actually doing it, it became stressful for me at a certain point. I felt like I was trying to rush to complete goals before they became even more cost-prohibitive, and then my goals would get reworked and become even broader, and that would add to the stress. I have a clear path to competition as far as retro. It's just hard to jump back into it now.

I feel like a lot of the regulars here are very down on not just collecting, but also modern games. That's one area where I disagree totally with the sentiment. I'm still pretty motivated, and excited for collecting modern releases. I absolutely don't care about Limited Run, or any such similar company. I think they're all borderline fraudulent. I'm just talking about like standard publisher / retail level games. For me, there's been plenty of games in the past several months to come out, and I still enjoy the pursuit in staying on top of those releases. I've picked up Alone in the Dark reboot, Rise of the Ronin, South Park Snow Day, AC Mirage got discounted down to $30 recently. I've picked up Princess Peach Showtime, and there's plenty of others I've had to pass up on, that I want to go back and pick up. I've got Stellar Blade pre-ordered. I wanna pick up Dragon's Dogma II, Pacific Drive looks really cool... and so on.

To me, modern collecting is almost as fun as it's ever been. I know there are concerns about the long-term sustainability of modern game discs, but there's resources like "DoesItPlay?" that are quite useful. A surprising amount of releases are functional without updates. If you're into collecting DLC, there's external HDDs and all of that jazz with which to store all of your update revisions and data on. I'm personally not worried about any of that, and I feel like it's all kind of beside the point of collecting, anyway. Ultimately, we all recognize the best and easiest route to playing any legacy platform or game is just flash media and emulation, and yet so many of us choose to keep buying old cartridges and discs that we don't necessarily need, why not buy modern discs that we won't necessarily need down the road, as well? It's all for the love of the collection, which is something that hasn't yet become totally lost on me. I'm still having fun with buying new games.

Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« Reply #16472 on: April 14, 2024, 03:48:09 pm »
I'm picking up about one game a month on average, and it's typically a new release of some kind. Video game collecting has all but lost its appeal to me, and it's been that way for at least a few years now. I've owned nearly every game I ever wanted to and the idea of paying a ton of money for the ones I still would like to have sounds very unappealing. If game prices were to crash hard tomorrow and you could go to a thrift store or a flea market and pay Contra for $5 again, or Earthbound for $15, I don't even know if that would get me excited about collecting again.


My journey as a collector was one of the most fun, exciting, and rewarding periods of my life, and like all good things I wish it could have lasted forever. I've put a lot of thought into why I'm no longer into collecting, and while I could list half a dozen reasons or more why I stopped caring about it, I think it can be summed up by saying people and their interests and priorities naturally change over time. It happens to everyone, and aside from game collecting it has happened to me easily 10 times in my life so far. While video game collecting was certainly the most involved I ever got in one of my interests, at the end of the day it was still just a hobby. I tired for years to find new avenues to stay excited about game collecting, but every time I did this I was faced with greater and greater diminished returns on my overall enjoyment of the hobby.


Regrettably, I have yet to find a hobby to replace game collecting in terms of how passionate I was for it. I have focused on other interests, but nothing yet has kept me up until 3am researching interesting retro games I'd never hear of, getting up at the crack of dawn to beat an army of other resellers and collectors to the flea market, or spending all my disposable income (and then some) on games I wanted. I miss that feeling and I hope I discover something else that can ignite passion in me the way collecting used to. I still love playing video games, probably more than ever, but I just wish I was as into it as I was when i was paying all these games that I'm not actually clearing from my backlog.

You might wanna look into vinyl or even CD collecting, if you're a fan of music. It's something you can take at a more casual pace than game collecting, because it doesn't feel like there's millions of people competing and scalping a finite thing, like with physical games. It does go on, but to a much lesser extent.

I'm not gonna say that I'm not interested in games or collecting anymore, because I am. There's just many factors now which work against actually doing it, it became stressful for me at a certain point. I felt like I was trying to rush to complete goals before they became even more cost-prohibitive, and then my goals would get reworked and become even broader, and that would add to the stress. I have a clear path to competition as far as retro. It's just hard to jump back into it now.

I feel like a lot of the regulars here are very down on not just collecting, but also modern games. That's one area where I disagree totally with the sentiment. I'm still pretty motivated, and excited for collecting modern releases. I absolutely don't care about Limited Run, or any such similar company. I think they're all borderline fraudulent. I'm just talking about like standard publisher / retail level games. For me, there's been plenty of games in the past several months to come out, and I still enjoy the pursuit in staying on top of those releases. I've picked up Alone in the Dark reboot, Rise of the Ronin, South Park Snow Day, AC Mirage got discounted down to $30 recently. I've picked up Princess Peach Showtime, and there's plenty of others I've had to pass up on, that I want to go back and pick up. I've got Stellar Blade pre-ordered. I wanna pick up Dragon's Dogma II, Pacific Drive looks really cool... and so on.

To me, modern collecting is almost as fun as it's ever been. I know there are concerns about the long-term sustainability of modern game discs, but there's resources like "DoesItPlay?" that are quite useful. A surprising amount of releases are functional without updates. If you're into collecting DLC, there's external HDDs and all of that jazz with which to store all of your update revisions and data on. I'm personally not worried about any of that, and I feel like it's all kind of beside the point of collecting, anyway. Ultimately, we all recognize the best and easiest route to playing any legacy platform or game is just flash media and emulation, and yet so many of us choose to keep buying old cartridges and discs that we don't necessarily need, why not buy modern discs that we won't necessarily need down the road, as well? It's all for the love of the collection, which is something that hasn't yet become totally lost on me. I'm still having fun with buying new games.


I never really collected music, but several years before I got into video game collecting I was a regular at various used CD shops and record stores in my area. I mostly went out looking for CDs of bands I knew I loved, or ones I'd recently discovered on YouTube or Pandora. It was a ton of fun and it was something my future wife and I bonded over when we were still just friends and early on when we began dating. I still get on music kicks, however my desire to go out like I used to and look for CDs is something I don't have the same drive to do. Unfortunately I never caught the vinyl bug and it's a format that doesn't appeal to me that often. I know it's digitally compressed, but I'm fine with CDs or streaming audio services.


I partially agree about modern gaming, but it's increasingly becoming harder and harder for me to justify it based off some of the things you mentioned. I don't like the idea of paying full price for something that might end up being a paperweight in a decade, or the idea of needing to pay an extra $50+ more for DLC that more or less completes the game. And then of course there's the likelihood that everything goes digital only in the next 10-15 years at which point I'll only be buying games when they've been significantly discounted and only when i plan on playing them right then and there. With all that said, there are still some very high quality titles coming out and some of my favorite games I've ever played have come out in the past 5 or 6 years. It's just a shame we're getting nickel and dimed, and being deprived actual ownership by an industry that has become increasing more greedy.

dhaabi

Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« Reply #16473 on: April 21, 2024, 02:38:48 pm »
I recently created a Discogs account to manage my small collection of music. After cataloging everything I own that's already present on the site, I've begun submitting new items. For my first submission, it took well over an hour to finalize it as I tried to understand their system and UI alongside additional (unwarranted but welcomed) feedback which was quickly given from other members.

Discogs has an in-depth database with an incredibly active community to help build it. Something like that for VGCollect seems nice, but the experience also felt a little overwhelming. I can't imagine many casual collection-tracking members—especially new ones—willing to go through that process to catalog a simple CD or game.
« Last Edit: April 21, 2024, 03:47:29 pm by dhaabi »

turf

PRO Supporter

Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« Reply #16474 on: May 15, 2024, 09:41:25 pm »
How y’all doing?  Just saying what’s up to you fine folks.


Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« Reply #16475 on: May 16, 2024, 11:28:00 pm »
life is exhausting and generally sucks, but you know, that's life.


turf

PRO Supporter

Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« Reply #16476 on: May 19, 2024, 11:40:33 pm »
life is exhausting and generally sucks, but you know, that's life.

Man, I really hate to hear that. Anything I can help with?


tripredacus

Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« Reply #16477 on: May 20, 2024, 12:01:03 pm »
I recently created a Discogs account to manage my small collection of music. After cataloging everything I own that's already present on the site, I've begun submitting new items. For my first submission, it took well over an hour to finalize it as I tried to understand their system and UI alongside additional (unwarranted but welcomed) feedback which was quickly given from other members.

Discogs has an in-depth database with an incredibly active community to help build it. Something like that for VGCollect seems nice, but the experience also felt a little overwhelming. I can't imagine many casual collection-tracking members—especially new ones—willing to go through that process to catalog a simple CD or game.


Discogs is extremely annoying for adding missing items. Since I had previously worked in the music industry, I have some CD and record releases that are not on there, and getting them to be added onto there was such a pain that I stopped using the site.

dhaabi

Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« Reply #16478 on: May 20, 2024, 05:16:26 pm »
I recently created a Discogs account to manage my small collection of music. After cataloging everything I own that's already present on the site, I've begun submitting new items. For my first submission, it took well over an hour to finalize it as I tried to understand their system and UI alongside additional (unwarranted but welcomed) feedback which was quickly given from other members.

Discogs has an in-depth database with an incredibly active community to help build it. Something like that for VGCollect seems nice, but the experience also felt a little overwhelming. I can't imagine many casual collection-tracking members—especially new ones—willing to go through that process to catalog a simple CD or game.


Discogs is extremely annoying for adding missing items. Since I had previously worked in the music industry, I have some CD and record releases that are not on there, and getting them to be added onto there was such a pain that I stopped using the site.

After submitting new entries for items I own, I've begun to understand their site's specific rules much more. In hindsight, the submission process itself is straightforward, but supplying additional information will be a challenge to understand for someone unfamiliar to the system, although that's mostly in regards to documenting specific identifiers like matrix numbers and SID codes.

Two things I really appreciate about how information is inputted to Discogs are that, first, any formatting errors, new artists, and new credits are automatically recognized and, second, any new data submitted at any point prompts the user to confirm it. For the former, new pages are automatically created, which makes it easier to act as a hub to add and connect other information to it. So, if one artist is a feature on a compilation album, that specific release can be tied to the artist page itself. This system is especially useful in regards to individual members of a band, too. Other features worth mentioning are the detailed history log (with comments) attached to every individual page and that new entry pages may be voted on by experienced contributors which judge the quality of the page.

Overall, the system is thorough and expansive. I've submitted about twenty new items so far which is for everything I own that was previously missing, and what's most time-consuming is simply scanning or photographing images. For just one vinyl release I made an entry for, 23 images were submitted.

Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« Reply #16479 on: May 20, 2024, 11:10:13 pm »
life is exhausting and generally sucks, but you know, that's life.

Man, I really hate to hear that. Anything I can help with?
Nope just been sick a lot and to be blunt my kid is a terror.


turf

PRO Supporter

Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« Reply #16480 on: June 07, 2024, 12:41:10 am »
Happy Birthday to my brother from another mother, Kashell,Mr Kash if you’re nasty.


tripredacus

Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« Reply #16481 on: July 30, 2024, 11:58:28 am »
I am going to have to go back to using a daily schedule for games because I keep getting stuck in traps of playing just one thing for months on end.

fazerco

PRO Supporter

Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« Reply #16482 on: August 03, 2024, 10:11:06 am »
I am going to have to go back to using a daily schedule for games because I keep getting stuck in traps of playing just one thing for months on end.

Thats because we are to old, we used to clear games in a few days....

tripredacus

Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« Reply #16483 on: August 05, 2024, 11:15:38 am »
My results from the 4 days of pinball tournaments. Please note that 1) I feel I am not as good as I was last year, and 2) there were a few top 10 world ranked players to compete against, including current #1, so I don't feel too bad.

Pre-tournament finished 40 out of 58
Main finished 83 out of 123
Classics finished 49 out of 113
Post-tournament finished 29 out of 72

Main games were set up extremely hard, like the game tilts when you plunge type of tilt. I didn't focus on those really because I was doing better in Classics which is usual for me. I was in qualifying for Classics B around 1pm on Saturday but I hit a plateau and couldn't improve on anything enough before I ran out of time so I dropped about 20 places. The post-tournament was a weird thing where you could only play 14 times on 18 games and you had to play 8 unique ones. So that is a real crap shoot, if you have a bad game then it is a complete waste.

Hopefully get some good points from this.

Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« Reply #16484 on: August 12, 2024, 12:14:46 am »
My results from the 4 days of pinball tournaments. Please note that 1) I feel I am not as good as I was last year, and 2) there were a few top 10 world ranked players to compete against, including current #1, so I don't feel too bad.

Pre-tournament finished 40 out of 58
Main finished 83 out of 123
Classics finished 49 out of 113
Post-tournament finished 29 out of 72

Main games were set up extremely hard, like the game tilts when you plunge type of tilt. I didn't focus on those really because I was doing better in Classics which is usual for me. I was in qualifying for Classics B around 1pm on Saturday but I hit a plateau and couldn't improve on anything enough before I ran out of time so I dropped about 20 places. The post-tournament was a weird thing where you could only play 14 times on 18 games and you had to play 8 unique ones. So that is a real crap shoot, if you have a bad game then it is a complete waste.

Hopefully get some good points from this.


I'm very hot or very cold when it comes to pinball; I either am kicking ass and posting high scores on them or being absolutely terrible and losing all three balls in under a few minutes. A few years ago I was at a pinball convention and demolished the high score on Iron Maiden Premium. I posted it to Pinside and was still like #127 on the ranking lol. The idea of competing though intimidates the hell out of me.