The Game Collectors

The videogames business has gone through a truly explosive expansion over the years - the number of players has multiplied, the turnover of the entities involved and also how the environment is perceived by society has changed radically. Anyone who has had the last contact with the industry for 20 or 25 years ago would be unable to recognize our current reality. One of the manifestations of this extraordinary growth was the development of different player profiles. All players are different - the only point in common is their love for games - but as in all the industries dependent on consumption, it was necessary to create categories to more easily identify consumers / players to develop and distribute games and consoles with a clearer goal in mind, this is a basic principle of market economy and gives those who work in the middle of a clearer sense of how they should develop their products.

 

 

If we consider the phenom that exist in other artistic media, we found a vibrant market where paintings, sculptures, prints, coins, artefacts and machines are traded by astronomical amounts. However, all these objects are unique - these are all individual pieces or rely on any particular element, a personal touch of its maker, his own brand of a former owner or any other details that bring the buyer to develop a particular affection for him. These deals take place outside the commercial circuit and are frequented by individuals who know the way - by analogy, the majority of sales involving game collectors takes place outside the commercial circuit, but often the use of auctions on the Internet. Obviously, and this is how the market works, where an object is held by a large number of people and we are talking about an auction, the item in question turns out to be sold for a value well above the initially expected.

 

In the case of games, it is impossible to put them in the same category as an auction of a painting or an artifact. Unlike many of the disputed objects by collectors, the games have always been mass produced and placed in commercial distribution - the act of collecting video games is little more than getting a copy of an object on grounds that the market knows, gone out of business. We often point to the rarity of a game as a reason for achieving high prices, either by the person who sells, or by the person who buys it - but the numbers show that often the most games played by collectors and those who reach exorbitant prices were distributed in quantities, but do not guarantee its presence in all areas, can hardly be regarded as examples of rarity.

 

 

We often point to the rarity of a game as a reason for achieving high prices, either by the person who sells, or by the person who buys it - but the numbers show that often the most games played by collectors and those who reach exorbitant were distributed in quantities, but do not guarantee its presence in all areas, can hardly be regarded as examples of rarity. In parallel, this is a situation that also is not the case in other entertainment industries - can we imagine a movie buff to pay a very large amount of money for one of the first copies of Casablanca in 1942? Or a music lover has made something similar for a model of Chuck Berry recorded in 1955, but they are objects, and they are presented in a huge importance in terms of cultural heritage, they have unique elements that differentiate it from a DVD or a CD produced for the market.

 

As for the games, the overwhelming majority of businesses in question involves securities and represent little or nothing for the environment: what is the meaning of Darxide [Sega 32X] in the context of the evolution of video games? This can be a quality game, but that does not justify the hundreds of euros  that are given for the game - and what about Air Raid, an obscure game for the Atari 2600 which often amounts of hundreds of dollars? Who sells these games, this is a huge profit, especially if the vendor in question has acquired the original selling price to the public and admit, having spent the equivalent of € 50 or € 60 for fifteen or twenty years ago to sell today the object with a value three or four times, represents a good profit. However, those who consider these purchases as an investment, how many come or are coming to a next step where they sell the game said rare for an amount much higher than they paid for it? A person in 2009 to pay € 500 for a new copy of Chrono Trigger for the SNES (a game that has now been re-released for the DS) will sell it in 2015 for € 5000? And those who practice these businesses will not be incurred prior to a practice known as speculation, something that can harm, and much, any market that is affected by it?

 

 

One can hardly find something unique in a cartridge, CD or DVD which sold thousands of copies, even though most of the public has not been realized. In its rawest essence, a game is a lot of code recorded in a physical support and when people have reached a stage where they spend thousands of euros in a game, regardless of quality or on behalf of a purported rarity (may be one number but a game which were made 5,000 or 10,000 copies remains a product of the masses, not surprising in itself), which leads to increased pressure on its price after it has exited the market, this is a parallel phenomenon leads us to ask, a collector is someone who just lost track of what is important?