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Oh Boy, This is going to be a long one and I wont even touch on half the stuff I want to touch on. I could write a book about this right now. I’m going to briefly touch on a couple of YouTubers I am a HUGE fan off, but I will let their videos speak for themselves for the most part. I will include links to their channels at the end so please check them out. but here goes
Video game collecting is fast becoming one of the most popular past times around. Almost everyone will say they love video games, and those who don’t, well, they are either lying or haven’t really tried it. From the mind exercising puzzle action of Tetris, to the faced paced platforming of Sonic the hedgehog, From the non stop action of call of duty to the more laid back exploration of world of Warcraft, and from the epic story driven Assassins Creed, to the real world simulation of driving fast cars that is Forza, video games have something to offer literally everyone. Whether you’re into sports, board games, education, fantasy, gritty crime solving TV drama, or anything else, there’s not one or two games directed at you, there’s an entire genre of games.
So with a whole medium that crosses the same level of production as Hollywood blockbuster movies, with an active immersive experience that you just don’t get with film, its no surprise that video gaming is one hell of an industry. With developers receiving budgets to rival marvel franchise movies, some of the greatest directors, writers, artists, and musicians being highly invested in the works, and the advent of mobile gaming on our phones, you can see why I believe that video games are set to replace television and movies in much the same way that television and movies once replaced theatre as the number one entertainment medium.
The video game collectors market has blown up in recent years, with companies like Nintendo, Capcom, Square Enix, and more pushing their IP’s to new levels and refreshing them for the next generation of gamers, its not hard to see why. When Square Enix promotes its latest Final Fantasy game and gamers fall in love with it they look at the franchise, they read the reviews and hear the hype of the previous games, in this case they will read about Final Fantasy VII, often cited as not only the greatest Final Fantasy game, but the greatest JRPG of all time. If you love this game and that one is better… its a no brainer that you’re going to want to buy an original PlayStation and give it a go.
This is where the issues come in. Now if you want a copy of Final Fantasy VII, Or the original Silent Hill, Metal gear solid, Resident Evil, or whatever it is that has you drooling for the classics, its going to hit you where it hurts. Your pocket. For a decent playable boxed copy of one of these games you are going to be paying about the same amount as a brand new retail copy of a game for the current generation of systems. This wont hurt you, if you were going to spend that money on video games anyway, but this DOES hurt the game manufacturers. A copy of Final Fantasy VII for instance may have been passed around a lot since it was first bought. The Developers may have made, say £20 profit on the original sale, but if its been sold 4 or 5 times passed between collectors and people wanting to play it in the intervening 20 years, well that could mean that over £200 has exchanged hands on this one copy of the game and the developers have seen nothing from it.
No problem you may think, but really, yes. Big problem. The more people want to play a game that’s out of print, the more the price on it goes up, its the basic rules of supply and demand. For a highly revered game the interest in it will only ever increase as the gaming market expands, and new gamers find out about the old classics. Ad to that, time, decreasing the amount of limited numbers of the games available and you have an ever increasing price, often putting the games out of the price range of your average gamer. Oh you want to play Earthbound on the SNES? Good luck with that. This isn’t even a rare game, however its so amazing that everyone who hears about it wants to give it a go. And lets not forget that once you have the game you need a machine to play it on. And time isn’t kind to electronic devices. The more that break, the harder they are to find, the more expensive they become.
So here is where we see the issue. Video game collecting has now become far too expensive for the majority of people. And for no good reason. There are two kinds of collectors, Those who genuinely love a game from their childhood and would love to own a copy again, and want it for the nostalgia, for the memories and for the appreciation of the game as an entity, they love their games, and they couldn’t care less about the value currently attached to them. This is video game collecting in its purest form, For this, Take a look at YouTube, The Happy Console Gamer Johnny Millennium, Pete Dorr, and the enigmatic AlphaOmegaSin are but a few of the more popular channels of people who fit this category. Listening to them talk about their passion its hard not to feel the love they have for their games and they are bound to stir nostalgic cravings for your childhood. Johnny Millennium has a boxed copy of Earthbound sitting right behind him on the shelf and its currently worth over $1000, but he doesn’t give a shit. Its his game and he loves it and you’ve got more chance of getting AlphaOmegaSIn to stop swearing than you have of getting Johnny to part with his Earthbound.
The second kind of collectors are profit turners. They have no love for the games. They don’t care about gaming. Most of them don’t even play half the stuff they pick up. They trawl retail stores, Facebook, Flea markets, boot sales, eBay, Craigslist, Garage sales. Buying up anything and everything for the lowest price possible, and then they sit on it. They wait until it will fetch a profit and throw it up on EBay for a ridiculous sum. The biggest example of this in recent times was the release of the 20th anniversary PlayStation 4 Limited edition model. The PS4 currently sells for about £300 brand new. And people got a chance in 2014 to buy a very limited edition anniversary edition of the PS4, its no different from a regular model, it does nothing special, the only difference is that its not black, but is the classic grey colour of the original PSone. The PlayStation logo is also in full colour just like the original one. This item was sold, not for an inflated price, but for just a little over the retail value, it was a collectors edition, something for the fans who love the system. But who bought them? Guess.
Within days of these limited edition systems shipping, they began appearing on ebay and as of the moment I write this they are fetching as much as £3000. That’s right, you could buy 10 PS4 systems brand new, OR just one in a different colour. And here is the thing, there isn’t just one or two for sale, there are LOADS. In the UK alone there are currently 79 listed on ebay. And since only 12,000 were made world wide, America and Japan being by far the largest markets we can assume that only a small chunk of this went to Europe. And in Europe Germany and France would likely have the lions share. Even at conservative estimates that puts around 10% of all the PS4 Limited editions in the country currently unopened and listed on eBay for ridiculous sums of money. Those who would appreciate this console for what it is and what it represents, cant get one.
Another massive point of contention is Stadium games for the NES. A boxed copy can set you back $30,000. A loose cart can fetch $3000. And the thing is, its not even a good game. In fact its shit. And to top it off, the exact same game is available easily and cheaply on the NES as the game was recalled almost immediately and rebranded as World Class Track Meet. So you can play the quite frankly abysmal game for cheap, but have to sell a kidney to get it with a slightly different sticker.
So how can we fix this? How can we ensure that people who want access to the media they want can get it for a fair price? Well, WE cant. But There is someone who can. Nintendo can. Microsoft can. Sony can. All of these companies now have online stores and consoles with massive hard drives. If for instance Resident Evil or Final fantasy VII were released on the online market, this is pretty much ZERO outlay. They could sell the game for £5, it would sell thousands of copies. And I mean thousands. And it would all be profit in Square Enix’s pocket. This is a business model that has Kept SEGA alive and able to pump out god awful bastardised Sonic game after god awful bastardised Sonic game. Since they dropped out of the console market nearly 15 years ago there hasn’t really been a console released that hasn’t seen a compilation of their old games from back when they didn’t suck. Hell even the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube got a Megadrive games compilation and those were consoles that were actually competing with the Dreamcast.
Did you know that EVERY SINGLE Sega Megadrive game ever released fits on to a 2GB SD card? That EVERY SINGLE Super Nintendo game fits on to a 2GB SD card? That every single Gameboy, NES, Master Sytem and Game Gear game combined, fits onto a 2GB SD card?
And that Emulators exist?
And that these companies already have access to ALL of this. And it would take almost NO work to get this up and running?
Now many people will point to the Resident Evil 2 and Final Fantasy VII remakes coming out and say “Well why would they do this when it could hurt sales on these titles?” well the answer is, because it wont. The new generation of consoles launched were almost immediately swamped with Remastered HD versions of games that had been out for a while and were still on store shelves. The Last of us and Tomb Raider being the most notable titles, but this didn’t hurt sales at all. Likely a release of Resident Evil 2 or Final Fantasy VII on Xbox Live and PSN would just boost popularity and excitement for the upcoming remake while lining the pockets of the developers so they have more to invest in future games.
Making things like this easily available for people who want to try these old games, means companies can continue to make money from their old franchises and continue to have income from them to put towards new and better games. It would also be a great way for them to judge what franchises people are still interested in. Its been 25 years since Konami released Sunset Riders. However amazing that game was how does Konami know whether its something people would be interested in seeing more of today? And more to the point, maybe if all of Konami’s amazing classics were available this way it would generate enough money for Konami to show interest in its gaming division again and stop pissing their IP’s up the wall.
So that’s what I would like to see. Bulk additions to the online stores allowing anyone anywhere access to all of these great games. It benefits everyone from developers to consumer alike. And more importantly will cause serious damage to the second hand value of classic games allowing those who collect them for the love of owning the physical games they grew up with and have a strong emotional attachment to, to get hold of their games without having to auction off their children to afford.
If you got this far I urge you to go check out these guys, this is what Video game collecting should be about. not about financial gain but about love for the whole lifestyle of being a gamer.
Johnny Millennium and Rob Man (The Happy Console Gamer Show)
https://www.youtube.com/user/HappyConsoleGamer
AlphaOmegaSin (Warning, do not watch his videos if you are offended by hilarious swearing rants so skilfully verbalised that make the south park characters envious)
https://www.youtube.com/user/AlphaOmegaSin
And Mr nice guy Pete Dorr
https://www.youtube.com/user/PeteDorr
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