Collecting and Games

 Just thinking a bit about collecting. I definitely have a collecting instinct. Whatever I am involved in I like to collect it. One of the appeals of Magic is collecting the cards. But I also have collected baseball cards, chess and go books, role playing books, and video games among other things.

Judging from video games, a lot of other people have the collecting bug as well because there are often collecting mechanics in games and some games center on this idea, like Pokemon for instance with collecting the monsters and whatnot.

But collecting comes with real problems too. First off, it generally costs money and I am not a rich man. In fact, I have debts I should be paying. Secondly, if you are collecting real world things then you need space to put the collected items. We also live in a small apartment and my stuff already takes up most of the space in my wife's and my room. Thirdly, there is a worry about counterfeit items. Fourthly, physical items can be destroyed by fire or disaster or stolen. They can also be difficult to transport. Fifthly, digital items often have the problem that they are trapped in some specific ecosystem that has a lifespan. If I buy Magic cards in real life they are mine to keep and I can do with them what I please. But cards on Arena are trapped in there and if the company goes belly up then I will lose my cards. Sixthly, collecting needs to be satisfying. I think in some ways this is related to the first worry. Basically this has two sides, first there has to be some sense that there is some effort involved in obtaining the items. Either monetary expense or like some kind of effort. But the flip side is that there has to be a sense of accomplishment. One of the problems with collecting Magic cards is just the sheer number of them. It just feels like I will never have a complete collection in any sense.

So, I guess I have tried to come up with a solution to these and other problems. An idea I had just yesterday was to try to focus on collecting in video games. This of course has the worry about an ecosystem with a lifespan. But I was thinking about trying to compare and contrast different collecting systems in different games. So this copes with that a bit in terms of feeling like rather than putting all my eggs in one basket I can try different systems. I was also thinking about doing collecting in video games that doesn't cost additional money beyond the initial cost of the game but rather collecting through playing the game.

So, I think that would be an interesting project but it remains to be seen whether this would truly be satisfying. I guess the purpose of this post is just to try to put this idea down so I can come back to it and see if the project takes off or if it just dies on the vine.