Packrats and Gaming

I am not a packrat... I am not a packrat

Some of you are probably already wondering what packrats have to do with gaming. Of course, I don't use the word in the literal sense; I am a self-professed packrat, but in a figurative sense. I generally loathe to throw things away despite the obvious fact that the item in question has generally outlived its usefulness.

I'm willing to bet many of you reading this can identify with this sentiment. We've all been faced with situations where we thought, "... if I'd only kept that so and so then I could have easily taken care of this." So somewhere in the back of my mind, there is a little voice telling me that someday a situation will present itself when this item would come in handy. So I pack it away against such a day.

This habit extends to my gaming as well. Over the past 8 years, I've picked up probably over 130+ console titles for my Xbox 360, and a good half-dozen for my PS3. I got the PS3 rather late in this console cycle so I haven't purchased as many titles for it. This in addition to some PC purchases, and I've got a pretty huge collection. In fact, I've been collecting games since the good ol' DOS days when all my gaming was done on the PC.

I am normally quite busy and don't necessarily have a lot of time for gaming. My gaming comes in spurts, sometimes on weekends but normally during long holidays. Still I regularly pick up highly rated games, again, against the day that I have enough time to play them.

I live in Taiwan, and the local distributors will only carry a limited number of newly released games due to the size of the local market. Unlike the US where you can order online or find older games in bargain bins, generally when a newly released game sells out here, you're not likely to see it again. So by necessity as much as by habit, I will pick up a good game even if I don't have time to play it right away.

At current count, I'm looking at about 100+ games I haven't played yet and next gen hardware is just around the corner. I'm not planning on buying a next-gen console this holiday season. There are likely hardware and manufacturing issues on these new consoles which will take at least a few months to iron out, so in all likelihood I'll probably bite by summer or fall of next year.

That gives me about a year to go through all these games, and there will still be more games to get before this year is out: XCOM Declassified, GTA V, the next COD and Battlefield 4, and titles which will come to both current and next-gen machines such as Titanfall and Bungie's Destiny.

I've got years and years worth of great games to go through and I'll certainly enjoy all of it, but this packrat mentality of mine certainly doesn't make things any easier for my gaming habit.