For many years from around the age of 14 my main hobby was playing and collecting video games mainly snes and ps1 at the time, then as I got older and had a family I got more heavily into collecting and the obsession of "ownership" then around mid 2014 my marriage ended and I lost everything I had collected....for the first time in 18 years I was without my hobby and my focus changed to rebuilding my life, a home, my health amongst many other things. Skip forward a few years and I've started to play games again and tbh I'm really just enjoying playing the games rather than enjoying owning them, I have a ps4 for modern games and a raspberry pi for everything else...has anybody else been through a drastic change in how they approach this hobby?
Happened to me as well. Had a rather life changing experience, and just saw the amount of crap I piled into my room. My thoughts were exactly "what the fuck am I really doing here?" So I threw most of it up on eBay and here, cleared it out and been satisfied with emulators for now. Bought a car with what I sold, sold that car but I don't miss any of the gaming stuff I had. Most of it was just accumulated for the sake of owning them. They were never played or enjoyed, same with all the consoles I accumulated. Say what you will about collecting, but when it gets to that stage it's just hoarding. Many say "hoarding is collecting crap or things of no value" but in the end, you're still accumulating for the sake of it. How I see it anyway, maybe I don't understand the hobby anymore.
I'm a member of several retro game forums, and those forums typically have some people that own a huge amount of stuff. I've seen at least three of these people go through a divorce and then offload virtually all their stuff and stop hanging out at the forums (and probably out of the retro gaming/collecting hobby altogether) like quitting cigarettes cold turkey. Not going to put an opinion on whether its worthwhile to collect old hardware and games, (heck maybe hoarder or OCD tendencies were part of the reason behind the divorce) but I imagine any kind of cold water in the face kinda unpleasant life event like a tragic accident or divorce/family matter, can make you re-evaluate what's in your life and what you want going forward. I guess what I'm saying is, yeah, I've totally seen almost this exact scenario before.
Mine was more of a forced situation rather than a realisation but I'm glad it happened, I wasn't happy but kept up the unhealthy mindset which made me even more unhappy.....like everything you need limits. When I think of the amount of games I owned that I never really to the time to play and enjoy it makes me cringe.
Can agree. I have indeed considered selling off my stuff and doing what Hex did and buy a car, but every time I try, I am just overcome by sentimental attachments to everything. Like waiting forever for my boxed NGCD and having it delivered at 1 PM on a Saturday afternoon and taking it apart 30 minutes after owning it, my one heck of a deal X'Eye, and the Genesis that I modded and that started my whole collection. It'd be hard to get rid of all that.
I don't want to focus on the losing my collection aspect, Im more interested if anyone's focus has shifted from obsessively collecting and the thrill of just owning something to just stripping back to the joy of simply playing the games and enjoying the experience like it's the only game you own.
Ah. Yeah, I can see that. Every time I see all the games that I have that I don't play, whether if I paid for them or not, I feel guilty that I don't play them. Its all shifted to more of a collecting for bragging rights thing for me I guess.
Still love games, but I shifted from collecting to appreciating. There are games on my "to beat" list going back to the PS1 era, so I am well preoccupied. When I joined this forum, I lived and breathed games and had a literal mountain of consoles and games ranging from Pong to Xbox 360. Eventually I accumulated too much and got sick of all the clutter. A lot of it was either sold off to pay bills, given away to loved ones, or damaged by circumstances out of my control. I have about 1/6-1/8 of what I used to have. That's alright, too. Constantly F5'ing eBay and craigslist listings around the clock to find the best deal on Saturn Mega Man 8 is fun at times, but there is much more to life.
hehe for me the days of looking for deals daily is already gone. It's addicting. Now I only buy what I'll play. I should also turn off (some) ebay alerts, but I always forget to do that, and just delete the emails without opening.
It's still fun to do some prospecting. It's a game within itself: What's the best PSP import on eBay right now for under $8 with free shipping? ...Well damn, there's actually a lot of them.
