Moving Swiftly On

One of the things I like about gaming is building up a collection of games. I’ve just had a quick count and I have over one hundred and ten boxed games in my lounge – and that doesn’t include any review copies Ready Up has furnished me with, or the many many downloadable games I’ve purchased on either the PS3 or Xbox 360.

A nice side-effect of this, or so I’ve always thought, is that this means I always have all the older games to play online with people. Fancy a game of the original Crackdown? I still have it.

Unfortunately, these days, this rarely works as I hope. The combination of the high cost of games combined with a huge second hand games market means that many people rush through games as fast as they can, so that they can trade them in as quickly (and therefore as profitably) as possible. Not so long ago, my two ‘A’ games were Blur and Red Dead Redemption. I was playing Blur online a lot with people, until I got a bit caught up in Red Dead’s epic storyline and didn’t play Blur for about two weeks. With Red Dead finished – wow, what an ending – I fired up Blur and tried to set up an online game with friends.

Hardly anyone still had it. The briefest of lulls in the non-stop action, and everyone had rushed down to their local games shop to trade it in for something newer and shinier.

Of course, I understand there are many reasons to trade in. Number one on the list has to be money – not everyone has £40 spare in their wallet every couple of weeks, and in busy periods it can be one game a week, which is a lot of cash by anyone’s standards. Space is an issue too – my gaming collection is spilling out of the space allocated to it, and I’m wondering where to put more. I even know people who trade in every so often to accrue credit in order to buy a replacement Xbox 360, when the inevitable Red Ring of Death hits their current machine.

It’s not for me, though. I’ll stick right here with my fuddy duddy way of actually collecting games, just like old people used to collect LPs. I foresee that one day I may be found, when the council break into my house, buried underneath a massive pile of olde worlde DVDs and Blu-Rays – with a big smile on my face.

At the moment I’m riding high on a wave of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which you’ll find me playing online almost all the time in recent days. I’m even hosting Ready Up’s Thursday night game night on it this very evening. (Feel free to join in). I’m really, really enjoying charging around the battlefield, mining luckless enemy tanks and resuscitating copious numbers of fallen squad mates, every chance I get. Behind it all, though, am I really just cramming it in to make the most of it before everyone trades it in for the latest and greatest?