the future of game collecting

[LOL]

do you think, perhaps, that since games are now so many in number and the manufacturers are so prolific, we'll see an eventual decrease in the inherent value of rare games? with so many new titles being released all the time now, i wonder if the eventual quantity of "rare" or relatively obscure games will become disproportionate to what can actually be considered collectable or retain a popular interest. like, say there eventually exist so many of a certain type of game- will collectors suddenly realise that obtaining those titles won't mean as much because there will always be fewer people who share an interest in any particular one?

how you guys doing.

[PingvinBlueJeans]

do you think, perhaps, that since games are now so many in number and the manufacturers are so prolific, we'll see an eventual decrease in the inherent value of rare games?

Probably, but this happens in all hobbies and is to be expected. You also have to take into account the fact that this hobby is not as young as it once was, and we're at the point nowadays where people collect everything game-related, so there's fewer genuinely "rare" pieces overall due to stuff being saved by collectors. A sizeable portion of the Atari 2600 games that were manufactured ended up in the landfill...whereas that's not the case with PSX games, etc. So I think these people 'investing' in future rarities for modern systems are going to end up disappointed...I don't think any of that junk is going to be worth much as time goes on.

how you guys doing.

Not bad...you?

[Magnum]

don't CDs start to breakdown after 15 years

[digitalpress]

don't CDs start to breakdown after 15 years

Oh please tell me you're not referring to the old "CD bit rot" myth. Welcome to 1997.

As for collecting, I don't see how virtual gaming affects it. There are the same number of physical copies out there as there always were. The people who buy old games because they want to play them (not collectors) remains a fixed number as well. And of those people, the ones who would pay any significant amount for any "rare" title is a very tiny percentage, which again doesn't affect the overall collector base, number of available copies out there, or the tantamount value of said games.

I see rare game values continuing to go up as true collectors continue to hunt them down and their availability dissipates into those collections. Everything "presumed rare", like the Final Fantasy VII's and Chrono Triggers of the world will settle down some as the system's target generation grows older. Other games that are common will permanently flat-line at a low value over time. Just look at 90 percent of the Atari 2600 library as an example.

Take this to the bank.

[Mayhem]

Something must happen to some CDs... I've got a couple of music CDs from the early 1990s that I've only used a few times (without fault) and when I came to rip them to MP3 recently they were all messed up on the outer tracks. The inner tracks ripped fine. And these are stored in dark, room temperature conditions. Ah well...

As for collecting, the systems and targets of the people will change, but I think there will always be games collectors. I'm not sure though what will happen to the systems that pass out of the light, after all at some point the 2600 set will dwindle down to pretty much nothing as everyone gets quite older. We've not reached the point yet for any system to say what will happen.

[digitalpress]

Something must happen to some CDs... I've got a couple of music CDs from the early 1990s that I've only used a few times (without fault) and when I came to rip them to MP3 recently they were all messed up on the outer tracks. The inner tracks ripped fine. And these are stored in dark, room temperature conditions. Ah well...

CD's manufactured at the dawn of CD manufacturing perhaps. Poorly manufactured CD's perhaps. These should not apply to videogames. I always keep this little article handy because this subject comes up a lot at the store.

The Disc Rot Myth
Media obsolescence isn't the only thing people fear after committing a personal library's worth of data to CDs and DVDs. But some worries--namely, fear of disc rot--are not fully warranted.

Like a bad seed, the myth of disc rot self-perpetuates, cropping up every now and again as a sudden and mortal threat to your copious collection of prerecorded and self-created discs.

The myth was once rooted in fact. It is true that back in the 1980s, with the first generation of prerecorded audio CDs, the edges of the discs were not always sealed properly, which allowed moisture to get into the disc. Replicated, prerecorded discs use aluminum for the reflective layer; when moisture came into contact with the aluminum on prerecorded discs, explains Byers, it in turn oxidized, causing the aluminum to become dull. "That's where the term 'rot' started," he says.

But that problem was quickly identified and overcome. "The manufacturers learned what was going on, so now the edges of discs are sealed with a lacquer," according to Byers. Though the problem is typically associated with CDs, Byers notes that the potential for interaction with oxygen is the same with both CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs.

The so-called rot issue does not apply to recordable discs. For one thing, recordable optical media do not use aluminum; instead, they use silver, and very rarely gold, or a silver-gold alloy, for the reflective layer. "If the silver comes into contact with sulfates [i.e., pollution, or high humidity], it could affect the silver, but the likelihood of that is less than the likelihood of moisture coming into contact with the aluminum on prerecorded discs," says Byers.

Full article:
http://pcworld.about.com/news/Jun152004id116473.htm

[Mayhem]

Yeah... both CDs are from 1993. Actually I have read the above report before at some point. I can only assume they weren't manufactured all that well, as I do have CDs from earlier than that which are still fine. Just meant I had to annoyingly get the CDs to MP3 by "other means"...

[smork]

There's going to be fewer actually rare games in the future (other than protos, LEs, demos, prizes, etc) since manufacturers are enforcing mandatory print runs. But for recent and current gen stuff the number of people who will be nostalgic and want to collect the games of their youth will be noticeably higher as well as more people are into gaming now than ever before.

[cyberfluxor]

Does anyone know if LaserDiscs have a chance of BitRot? Everyone is always concerned with CDs, what about LDs.

[98PaceCar]

Does anyone know if LaserDiscs have a chance of BitRot? Everyone is always concerned with CDs, what about LDs.

From my experience, it's a bigger problem on LD than any other form of optical media. I have several games and a stack of movies that have issues ranging from sparklies or noise to flat out not playing anymore.

[cyberfluxor]

Thanks for the heads up though. Looks like I'll need to watch a couple of my LDs ASAP, just in case because there are a few oldies in the bunch I haven't touched since they were bought. At least it's a generally cheap media, they sell with the $1 records at most thrift stores.

[mnbren05]

As others have said gaming rarity will slowly decline among games as more copies are made and it becomes easier to keep completes (Namely after the departure of cardboard boxes). Games seem to be more widely used today and that will probably lead to surplus and lower prices on games in the future. Although, a few games from each generation will command higher prices for whatever reason (rarity/popularity/etc).

As for bit rot that is in fact a myth. Early CD's did have issues with seals and premature aging. CD's have a very long lifespan and are reliable. However, CD's that have been bent,cracked, or abused can become corrupted and give the impression that they have aged poorly. Recently though I have noticed with some of the off brand CD-DVD(R)(RW)'s I have purchased have been very poor in quality. The seals overlap in some cases and some have bubbles in between the layers. This may be a cause for concern and feed the myth of bit-rot.

As for Laserdisc. The only thing I know about the laser disc stems from the usage. After so long laser discs become victims of warping from normal wear and tear. I do not know if this causes corruption of data, but it certianly can render the disc unplayable.

[Wolf]

It's hard to say, nobody really knows for sure where VG collecting will go years from now, I have my own ideas on what will happen...

1- A good portion of modern games ( let's say anything from psx and up ) are not incredibly rare, most of the time the stuff is just in demand but that does not people are not willing to pay premium prices, these prices go up more on the condition of these demand items.

Considering a large portion of NA gamers have a track record of treating their games like dog feces and losing parts to them that also affects things too. There may very well be an obscene number of FF games out there but if even half of them are in shite shape then that will change the situation a bit don't you think ?

2- I think for newer gamers, psx, ps2 and gamecube will take over the nes, snes and genesis collecting of yesteryear. Obviously some will branch into what will be considered real classic or retro gaming but I don't see it overiding the nostalgia they want to focus on, which will be games from the last 10 or so years. As we speak PS2 games are entering that phase that psx did when the holier than thou rpg hunting was going on, expect the next few years to see price hikes on demand ps2 stuff.

3- Unless ebay goes bankrupt ( and someone else would just take over that area ) online game prices seems to be the dictating price, just look at eb and other places, they all use online prices when selling so called used in demand games, whats even worse is there monkeys charge ebay prices regardless of the shape they are in! As people hoard their games they will have less chances to find what they want so they will continue to turn to ebay and have bidding wars, this will just keep the prices high unless really stupid people come along and say "dur hur I feel like a nice guy lets mark down this nm VP1 to $20!!!!"

We may see the odd drop in prices but I highly doubt a cd reprint of chrono trigger is going to drop the value of the original snes version. The only way I can see a serious drop in prices is if we have a recession, but then I will just feed of the greedy missery of others and buy up those hoarded games for cheap so it would be a win win situation for some of us.

[Bojay1997]

Does anyone know if LaserDiscs have a chance of BitRot? Everyone is always concerned with CDs, what about LDs.

Actually, laserdiscs have the worst problems with this and the problems persisted even into the early 90s, long after the problems were allegedly corrected by the major replication plants. The weird thing about it is that you can get a disc from a particular batch and never have a problem and another disc from the same batch that has the problem. I've been very lucky that none of the videogame laserdiscs I own have the problem, but there are tons of copies of Dragon's Lair and Thayer's Quest that do.

[cyberfluxor]

Well, I inspect LDs before I purchase but I'd doubt it's easy to detect these issues without playing through. It's a shame that there are some wonderful forms of entertainment on older storage mediums that'll eventually fade out of existance.

[Dreamc@sting]

I think there will definitely be fewer rarities in the future but I it seems like over the years what is rare and what isnt rare has be skewed a little bit. For instance - finding a sealed copy of Chrono Trigger compared to a NON GH version of FFVII. You figure in the future collecting Psone games will be the in thing among the generation who had there start there, same with those who were weened on the PS2/xbox/GC.

Once the PS2/xbox/GC era hit - the rarity scale I think tipped a bit because of the share mass amount of copies of a single game. There were probably more copies of Devil May Cry released than those of Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy II, and Earthbound combined 10x over. I think that will effect the cost of rarities and what "rarities" really mean to collectors.

[emceelokey]

I think in the future there will be less rarities that go for excessive pofit compared to it's original price mainly because people are in the know of what's worth what in real time instead of finding out that a game 10 years ago is now worth 10 times as much as it originally was. Also a lot of the virtual console type of stuff will be able ot bring biggers games to a larger audience that wasn't able to get a hard copy of a game. I just think of it like comics were in the early 90's. There was really no collecting other than the really big fans before that time but around the early 90's comics became something to collect even for those that initally had no interest in the medium. I don't know if viedo games hit that point yet but if it does it will die within a few years and then it will just be back to the original community of gamers.