Games were made to be sold for profit, that's what they were made for.

Games were produced in hopes that they would be sold. The publisher doesn't care and for sure the game doesn't care if the owner never plays them. 

And “I hope the bubble bursts so i can buy color a dinosaur for 5$ To play it”

Games are meant to be played!
Stamps are meant to be mailed!
Coins are meant to be spent!
Baseball cards are meant to be... collected. I guess?

Anyone who hates on me for shelf collecting dank is just jealous.
Will someone pat me on the back? Me doing it to myself is getting old....oh, wait, no it isn't. Man I'm awesome. So many people are hating on me because I can afford to shelf collect dank. It feels so good. Actually my weeny grows a lil every time I buy a sealed nintender tape.

You put the card on your bicycle so it makes that sound.  You know.

You would think people want to buy videogames to play them cause they like playing videogames. Maybe even to collect. I guess not... I just leave it at that haha.

Tell them you do what you want, and you don't care what they think.

If that don't work, just go for the old classic attack on their personal traits! It's easy!

Use yer tapes as coasters. There's so many super Mario racing tapes out there. You only have one coffee table. Don't get rings on the table boys.

Tapes were also made so you'd have somewhere to put be kind please rewind stickers

Coins are meant to be spent
Comics are meant to be read
Baseballs are meant to be hit
Coke bottles are meant to be recycled/tossed
Toys are meant to be played with
Stamps are meant to be mailed
Legos are meant to be built
Cars are meant to be driven

Life is only to be assessed by utility.

I just tell people that stamps are meant to be licked, and if they find an inverted Jenny I fully expect they will slap it on a postcard and mail it.

I would love to play all my games....but i only have 1 life left...

Well... what's the point of not playing games you buy? I mean, I understand if you buy it for someone, of course. People can obviously do what they want with their money, but still.

No hard feelings! I just like to make discussions. It's part of the gamer/collector in me that has nostalgia for those times I had read those gaming mags from the 90s and reading all those letters/editorials. If you take more notice, you'd eventually see that my topics are all random off the top of my head. I don't really follow any particular pattern of controversy  

It's a shame I've only joined since last year, as topics these days are likely to be rehashed in various forms. Still, it's always nice to see if trends and thoughts change over time with similar topics every year or two.

 

The idea that they are shelf/eye candy and meant for collecting/displaying rather than using.

Here's my personal answer to the OP topic:
Games are meant to be played. Yes, I knew this since I was 7-8. Not exactly rocket science..

However, did you know that games have other purpose too?
- game box - 3D art display
- manuals and pamphlets - can act as books, and can be read! Some pretty pictures too on some of them!
- carts can be used for a game of baseball (Superman 64, this was your main purpose was it not?)

As games become genuinely rare (actual limited numbers bordering extinction):
- games should be preserved, put in museum, get out of reach of dirty hands of gamers
- they become relics and holy/hyper-grails, and should no longer be seen as a game; they are the artefacts to collectors, what is treasure to Indiana Jones.

I don't collect comics but I would like to know do topics like this come up all the time? Like are they having the comics are to be read debate?

Game owners have the right to do what they want with their stuff. BUT, at the same time, it always warms my heart to hear about someone hooking up a rare or interesting system or game to let random people or small children play, thus increasing the fan base for vintage gaming.

I believe shared experiences have more value than alone experiences. As much as I enjoy playing games myself, I prefer to play games with my family and friends. To see the light in their eyes as they experience the cutscenes in Final Fantasy 7, figure out combos in Street Fighter, or to finally see the ending to Super Mario World for the first time, is definitely worth a few scratches on my games.

Well I can undesrtand people won't play all of their games because those games are crap or you don't have enough time I don't quite understand collectors (especially loose cart collectors) who don't play anything at all.
Still if that's what they want I'm ok with it.

Sometimes when my girlfriend bothers me about spending money on video games, I think to myself that some video games are pieces of artwork that someone spent hundreds or thousands of hours to create. Many of my games represent the best form of technological entertainment that were able to be created at a point in time. Many of these games were able to create jobs, build businesses, and make hundreds of millions of dollars. Some games are quarky, some are serious, and when I am in the mood to play a video gane I pick one out of my collection like someone may pick a wine to enjoy themselves.

Now although video games are pieces of artwork, you cannot completely appreciate what a video game is if you don't play it. If I didn't play the lone ranger I wouldn't be able to appreciate the progressively harder game play, that konami used techniques it learned from creating other video games, and that the game has a flow to it's game play and story that is hard to put into words.

So for me collecting video games and not playing them is alright, but you just can't feel it down to your bones the way a gamer can. On a different note, needing to have complete collections sounds like a compulsion, I'm not sure why but it reminds of people being conquered, and greed. People that want more than they need. Excess.

I mainly cringe at people going for a full collection or sealed collecting. The former because what's the point of owning NFL 96 or Barkley's Shut Up and Jam!, or Barbie? The latter because collecting a sealed item is literally collecting a box wrapped in plastic, which you can never show off the inserts, play the game, etc.

I completely feel this way but the history/preservationist side of me also realize that time is against us.  I really mean it when I feel that who are about 30+ were fortunate to be the target audience of this new form of interactive artwork.  Games have, and will continue to progress.  Even though I'm not really a fan of playing 2600 games or even the very crude, early arcade games like Pong, I have mad respect how these items broke such tremendous ground.  The medium broke out of novelty and eventually became a mainstay of our lives.

These "games" have progressed beyond toys for kids.  Sure, theirs an entire gamout of experience but now we have serious titles, titles that make you cry or some times even evaluate your perspective on life, while others are simply breathtaking to behold and are simply "fun!"  In the future, experiencing this early (and we're still in the "early" stage looking 100s of years into the future) will come in two forms-- those who have preserved pristine copies of original games, ephemora and hardware.  They will sit in museums and people will hopefully be able to look at pristine copies of our boxes and carts that have been stabilized, some how, for even further future generations.

The other form they will experience is emulated hardware and roms.  This stuff is already pervasive on the internet, but no form of media to day, carts or CD discs, will last 100+ years and if by some perfect miracle a few do, it'd be dumb to boot them up and try to use them.  Instead, museums may have dedicated emulation units that very-faithfully recreate the original experience.  Maybe lag time can be reduced and even light-gun tech can be recreated.   I'm hopeful but if some of us don't keep the "shelf candy" around, this stuff for distant future generations will be near impossible to find.

I'm not trying to be on a soapbox, but for the few items I do intend to keep, but never play, my perspective is that I get to enjoy looking over my shoulder and seeing that rare piece on myshelf, and the looooong term payoff is that maybe when I pass this stuff down to my kids, they will have the wear-with-all to take care of it and eventually donate it to gaming museums.

I'm not saying everyone should think or feel the way I do.  But I do feel that some of us should.
 

Sealed collecting is definitely a curious phenomenon.

I understand why people do it, because it is trying to find the best preserved specimens of the hobby as close to their shipped condition as possible.

And I get that this sort of thing takes its roots from toy collecting.

But in the case of toy collecting, you generally can see the contents and admire the toy itself rather than just the box alone.


I also think it creates a fascinating Schrodinger's Cat situation, where nobody TRULY knows the contents of their sealed items or their condition.

Maybe that is half the fun.    

I like to compare sealed collecting to condoms.

When they're new it's ready for use whenever I want it. Used on the other hand...

I'm not talking about buying Gun Nac because you're afraid its going to go up $50.

I'm talking about even wanting NWC or SE or whatever in the first place.