Game Over. Continue? > Yes No

So, right now behind me on my bed is a rather large portion of my video game collection. I'm pondering trading them in. But the gamer I used to be and the gamer I think I am now are conflicting. My old gamer self cries out, "Don't do it! The other gamers will lose respect for you! You won't be hardcore! You won't be the gaming guru!" (Note: XD I've never considered myself 'the' gaming guru. It's just that out of most of my friends around here, I'm the one who is most devoted to the hobby, so whenever someone has a gaming related issue, they come to me.)

But my new gamer self says, "You have the memories. That's what's important. Your massive collection of games will live in in your head. Remember what George Carling [R.I.P] said about memories being good enough. It's the experiences that mattered, not the hoard."

I have a friend named Clay. Next to me he's the biggest gamer in our circle of friends. Our idea of a good time on the weekend is me playing WoW while he plays a game on one of my console systems. Hours can go by without us even talking to each other, and we're cool with that. Anyway, back to the point, he's the collector, and I'm not. He keeps the boxes to his PC games, has then neatly organized, he has gaming posters all over his wall, random extras for certain games. Some of them I gave to him. He keeps the boxes to his console systems. I only do that for consoles I currently own.

Anyway, a part of me says that I should care about that extra stuff. And sometimes I do. I have this cel-shaded poster of the Metal Gear from Metal Gear Acid 2, and another little .. do-dad .. from a game called Tales of the Abyss (a game I don't even own anymore). And, I mean, they're cool, but I don't know why I hesitate to part with them. I don't keep the boxes to my PC games. I rarely buy LE editions of games. Neither does Clay, but that's 'cause he rarely has the money.

I dunno. Maybe that's the difference. Maybe the extra things mean more to him because he can't buy most every game he wants like I usually can.

But I guess the whole thing falls under what seems to be my rapidly changing beliefs on how much I care about the way other people view me. I do take pride in saying I'm a hardcore gamer, but I guess my criteria of what makes a hardcore gamer is changing.

I look at the obscene amount of games that I own. I've beaten some, others I haven't. But I look at them and think, "I'm never going to play that again." Even if the game was remarkable to play through.

A few months ago I was playing Shadow Hearts: From the New World. It's a fun game. I like the series. But when I saved my game and turned it off, I felt this emptiness, and I thought, "What did I just do?" I felt like I'd wasted my time playing that game when I could've been playing others. That's when it started to seep in, I think. I knew I was never going to beat Shadow Hearts. RPGs used to be my favourite genre, but I don't have time to sink hours upon hours into a game like that anymore. I started feeling that when I was okay with beating RPGs without 100% completion, which was something I used to obsess over.

And earlier today I was playing Xenosaga III. I'm nearly at the end. It's the final game in the trilogy. And I felt like I was performing some kind of chore. I'd enjoyed the first game immensely, slugged through the second game, and found the third game to be pretty fair .. only to find that, truly, I think the story is ... just garbage. I knew it the moment one of the characters used the phrase 'reason for existence' half a dozen times in the span of a few sentences.

Still, there are some games in my collection that, whether I ever play them again or not, I want to keep for being truly reverent experiences. Games like Shadow of the Colossus and Ico (to any random gamer who happens to stumble upon this page: bet you totally didn't see those two titles coming .. ), Odin Sphere, Okami, Tactics Ogre, Zelda: Wind Waker, Legacy of Kain .. I could go on. Games that truly mean something to me, I want to keep. Even some of the longer RPGs I'm keeping. Like Dragon Quest VIII, a game I've newfound respect for. Not that I didn't already love it, but .. it's grown on me even now. And Lost Odyssey. I can make time for RPGs. Just not as many as I used to, I suppose. I enjoy where games are going. Games like Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Alone in the Dark. Shorter games, that still take me a decent amount of time to beat, simply because I can't play for twelve hours straight like when I was younger.

Also (and I know I'm not being the most coherent right now), I had to get over 'series syndrome'. Even if I didn't particularly like a game, I'd keep it because it was part of a series. Silent Hill Origins, Blood Omen 2, Xenosaga II, and Resident Evil Zero, for example. (RE:0 actually falls under the catagory of games I knew I'd never play again).

And I've battled with games rare games, and feeling like I need to keep them because most gamers don't have them in their collection and .. other stuff that I don't feel like typing out.

I think all I really needed to do, though, was type out various parts of my 'struggle'. I know in the end where I stand. I love video games. They'll be a part of my life forever. If having a massive collection of games with lots of extras and boxes isn't important to me, there's no reason why I should have to convince myself otherwise.