Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Tag: collecting

Where to go next with this hobby of collecting retro games?

Posted on by Viljami

I have been collecting retro games for what…like 8 years or so. I do have been playing video games for much longer, but in 2017 I remmeber starting to plan about a television setup that would include at least 8 consoles and our 32 inch Full HD television. We moved in 2018 and that was when I actualized this plan.

It all started with collecting retro games when I decided to get my Sega Mega Drive back from my parents apartment. I also at same time got an old PlayStation 2 from my wife’s parents. I also bought an original Xbox, PlayStation 1 and also Xbox 360. This was the beginning of my retro gaming hobby.

I have been buying physical games like Super Mario Bros 3 for NES and many others like this that I do remember from the past years. This makes me to have these nostalgic feelings and also makes me to remember better where we actually came from when it comes to playing video games.

My setup has changed a bit over time. I have now a 55 inch 4K television. Also I have had to move some consoles to storage because they broke down. I have also bought more consoles. The latest device I bought was Raspberry Pi 5. So, I do play nowadays also emulated video games. But I think there is something special about old physical games and consoles. They just have this unique feel. And they can be valuable in many ways in the future.

I am moving today more towards emulation. I have spent a lot of money in video games all in all. It was a bit of a disappointment for me that my PS2, original Xbox and also my Xbox 360 all broke down and since I am not so good at electronical repairing I cannot myself repair them. This is the matter that matters the most when we are talking about this move towards emulation.

Now, copying games isn’t currently legal. At the same time we are not getting to play all retro games, these old games, that nobody seems to think that they would have value. This is something that I would like for every hobbyist and also professional in the field to think about.

I do have my newer consoles: Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch and also PS4. I am excited at this moment about new releases and some remakes. I am waiting for Switch 2 and I think we are getting some more information about it in the beginning of April this year (2025). I didn’t buy a Steam Deck. At least I didn’t do so yet. I am going to buy a new desktop PC because my current PC is old and isn’t going to be compatible with Windows 11. I have considered moving to Linux but I think I am not going to actually move on to it.

Maybe There Really Is a Reason?

Posted on by Viljami

Have you ever wondered what could be a reason for collecting games? Sometimes it feels like you find yourself spending too much money for retro video games. You are getting every legendary game and also every game that gives you nostalgia. You really wish that you can come back to these games that really defined your childhood or youth. You are basically trying to save those moments and hope that you can always come back to those memories.

I  have myself found out that I don’t have so much time for playing video games today. There seems to be so many responsibilities. I want to sleep my nights as well as I can. So there’s less time for diving into a good retro game.

There seems to be a limitless count of good games. There are old games and new games. There are games for all ages and games for only grown ups. There are games for young people and games that even old people can play. How can you define what is worth keeping in your collections? How could also those people that don’t know a lot about video games learn something about them.

I am thinking about this. Maybe we should keep our history of playing video games with us. There should be museums for games. There should be books written about this subject. Because if we continue this way all these games are becoming harder and harder to find and get back into.

So, I think, there is definitely a reason for all this. With this I mean collecting video games. There are already lists of games that have been released for a gaming console. It is very valuable if someone knows also something about a game or about some games. I think literature is very valuable. And in a way we hobbyists have a very important mission that I think we have already begun to execute.

There is a reason. You have been learning to play video games. How long have you spent playing? This was a question that came to my mind as I was younger. I thought that maybe this was all a some sort of waste of time. But, actually, it never and rarely is like that. Everything you do, even ifd you are making a mistake, keeps adding up to your experience. You can think of this as you would in a roleplaying game. Everything you do keeps advancing you in some way.

Some good books come to my mind. For example the book about GameCube that I got some months ago. It’s a defnite proof of how it is possible to gather information about a game console that isn’t the newest one anymore and is getting a bit rare to find already. What were all these games about and what were the technical details of this console? I personally find this kind of information very interesting.

There are already some museums that present the history of gaming here in Finland. I think there are many museums like this all over the world. There is a website that holds every Commodore 64 game that you can think of and that does exist.

Just think about how much work it can be when you develop a video game. There are countless individuals that have been involved in all these years in game development. There are some technologies that were used. There are many game engines that were used and also many programming languages. I think every game is a valuable one. So, there really is a reason to also collecting games and keeping them in order just to show and present our valuable history. Also, I think that history in playing video games can definitely give you an edge if you are working as a game developer. So, this was something if you are looking for a reason to this all.

How Does The Business of Selling Used Video Games Work?

Posted on by Viljami

If you have been involved in gaming or playing or collecting video games for several years you might have faced the issue of not getting your money back from a game that you bought just some months ago. You are trying to trade the game and get a good price, right? Obviously this doesn’t work this way. Because the game shop you are dealing with has to make a living. You can get maybe 20 percentage of the money you paid for the game…if you buy a new game…with that money. Does this seem complicated or unfair? Let me explain this to you so we all can understand this issue better.

Of course if you are willing to sell the game yourself and directly to another collector or player you can get a decent amount of money out of the game. Game shops are facing the fact that they have to be profitable. There are lots of expenses. Shipping of products that are coming into the store, rent of the premise and or web services for a web shop and of course the subsistence of all of the workers. Now this is a business right here. You can make a living out of this. Easy it isn’t but possible it is (did that sound like Yoda from Star Wars?).

There are several companies here in my home land, Finland, that operate this type of business that I have described right here. They might have a shop, maybe even two or three shops, and of course a web shop. There are also many smaller shops that sell games here. You can also find some people that are interested in selling some of their game collections and we have platforms like Huuto dot net and Tori dot fi for someone who wants to sell any used stuff. And I must mention also re-use centers and flee markets whose prices are usually lower since they get the stuff they sell mainly for free. And this is where we get to people that take advantage of this and…it isn’t very nice as you can figure.

Where do you get games for a low price that you can sell to some collector? I know some people that have received an estate that has contained games. Usually there is a huge collection to be sold. And if you buy the whole stack you get it in a fair price, right? Now we are starting to figure this out. You can sell these games piece by piece. A game collector is someone that needs maybe one game or two or three games that he or she is missing from his/her collection. So you can sell a few game for a decent price and make a profit a bit by bit. This is the magic of selling used games. You buy a large batch and check the unique games prices and you will get a profit out of this.

What makes the used game’s price high or low? One important thing is the condition of the game. It can be a sealed copy. It can have a manual and all of the covers. Or maybe its a loose game with generic cover or no packaging at all. PC games can be packaged in so called “big boxes” that make them more valuable. And the condition of the box matters. It matters also how the labels look like and does the CD/DVD disc have scratches on it. Sometimes the condition of the game can be enhanced quite easily. I am not going into that so deeply.

Some games can also be rare ones. They might be so good that no one just wants to sell them. They can be rare in a way that they weren’t even so popular when they first got released. These types of games are just uncommon. Some games gained popularity and valuation only when some retro hobbyists noticed their true value. Some games are so amazing that they seem to define a whole gaming system. These types of games can be something like Super Mario for NES or Sonic for Mega Drive or something similar.

Should you sell your old games? This is a tough question. I regret selling my old PS1 back in the beginning of the 2000s. The system and all the games I had for it would have been so much more valuable for me today compared to the price that I got from them then. Like, I sold all of them for under 200 euros. If you consider only the money this is clearly a financial loss for me. And I would have liked to play these games still. I just didn’t seem to have such an interest for retro games back then. You have to consider how I got back into playing video games in 2006 when I got my original Xbox. And…it was 2017 when I started my plans for starting to collect older and retro gaming systems again.

For some years already I have been writing to this blog. It is very interesting. However this is only a way for me to express my thoughts. I am not currently getting anything financially from this. And so is the way also that game collectors necessarily don’t get anything from collecting games when it comes to money. Game shops do make profit. That is a good thing. Without them we wouldn’t have a place to trade and buy games.

What is it like to work in a game shop? Sometimes it is busy and sometimes there’s only a few customers. It can be a place to build your dreams and fantasies. It is definitely a technical job. I also got to write, of course, blog posts for the game shop that I worked in for six months. The biggest parts of my job were handling and shipping orders, responding to customer feedback and being a customers servant face-to-face and also in some other ways. It was a fun job. It was a busy job. And ultimately…it was barely profitable.

 

Things to Explore in Gaming

Posted on by Viljami

Video games have already been here to entertain us for some time now. I haven’t had the opportunity to play every game of every era. You could say that I have been active from 1980 to this day. I haven’t seen everything in gaming. I hope to still see lots of more cool stuff be it old or new. If we think that first games were made back in the 60s there seems to be a lot to explore. But what are the most interesting games and platforms? What is important to know and what you can safely skip?

Lets think beyond home consoles. Things we had before Nintendo or even Atari 2600. Personal computers were also around in this moment and I will get to them later in this blog post. But the thing I want to write about here are games that we played in an arcade. Today there are things like MAME that enable us to play historically important video games we had in arcades some time ago. There’s lot to explore here and you start with your own PC just by getting an emulator. So, that’s one area to explore.

There are home console systems that I haven’t had a chance to own or even play on an emulator. Considering retro games there’s a certain way to get into these games that fascinates my mind. I have been thinking about buying a powerful and small in a physical size computer and installing an operating system to it that is dedicated to retro gaming. We already have Linux based operating systems like Lakka, Recalbox or Retropie. In this way I could explore systems like Neo Geo, Dreamcast, Atari Jaguar and Saturn and even more. There are some bad gaming systems also. Some of them are actually so bad that they are interesting. I recommend that you try them out first before buying a console like this.

What about some handheld consoles? For a long period of time I thought I could really play any handheld on my mobile phone. This is actually only part of the truth. I have found playing Gameboy games on SNES device with an adapter very satisfying. There are also adapter for GameCube that enables this same functionality. It is an expensive option. Nintendo has released many interesting handheld devices. I personally find Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS very interesting indeed. I could also get my hands on PSP or Vita that are Sony’s handheöd consoles.

There are also devices like Steam Deck that can bring you a solid gaming experience. I have read about new Asus device coming soon. It is called Asus ROG Ally and it costs 800 euros. IT is basically a computer that runs Windows 11. So, you can do also many other things with it. The thing I’m a bit concerned about is that the device provides only 2 hours of battery life. This means that you can only play games with it in runs of two hours. This, of course, isn’t an issue when you are playing this in your home. You can also hook it up to a television and use a Xbox Series S/X controller if you wish to do so.

There are also many new games and systems that I am interested about. You might have noticed already that we aren’t getting as many games ass we used to back in the days. There are however many good quality games that you can enjoy. This means that you have to follow the media a bit and keep yourself well informed. I can mention one game that is currently cvery promising. That game is Alan Wake 2. This will be released later this year.

I am also very interested in almost everything concerning Sega. I have already gathered a small collection of Master System games. My love for Sega begun in 1993 when I owned a Mega Drive. I find Sega CD, 32X and , well, actually every Sega console that was released after Master System, very interesting. I also have a good book about Sega that I enjoyed very much. I am always looking some more books to read about games.

There seems to still be a lot to explore. I have collected games now in some sort of meaningful way for about five or six years. I have played games longer than that but in 2017 I started to rally get this hobby going. I have my setup of nine game consoles and I have also some other devices that I can play video games on. I am trying to keep up with what’s going on in gaming globally.  I have written posts for this blog since 2020. It is a really nice hobby and I think this blog has been a success at least in a way that it has attracted so many people here as visitors. Maybe I find some day some way to get also some income also from this website. That’s it. Thanks for reading!

Types of Games I Am Interested in Right Now

Posted on by Viljami

So, I am writing this next blog post about types of games, new and retro, and also gaming systems that I am right now interested in. I will also tell you my view on what are some popular devices right now. I am also trying to give you an idea of what games and gaming consoles are popular and also yet to be released. I am trying to give you an idea of what I am looking forward to inside gaming.

This posts featured image gives you a clear picture of some of games I have recently acquired. It’s all Xbox. I have here two games for Xbox 360, four for original Xbox and one also for Xbox Series X. I have ordered also some other types of games. I ordered recently two survival horror games for PS2. Those were Forbidden Siren and Resident Evil – Code Veronica X. I also bought NBA 2K23 for Series X.

Also I have to mention that I got a game for PS2 titled Ecco The Dolphin – Defender of The Future. I also got Luigi’s Mansion for Nintendo Switch. I have to mention also Final Fantasy VI for PS1. I actually play this now on my silver PS2 console. And I have one more game that I have purchased recently. That game is Metroid Prime Remastered and it is for Switch.

So these are games that I have bought recently. There’s quite a lot of them. I almost forgot that I got also some Sega Master System games. These are very cool games. They can bring you lots of nostalgia. They represent the 8-bit era of gaming and they were released in 1980s. These titles were Psycho Fox, Wonder Boy and Super Space Invaders. I play these games with my Retro Trio console that can play Sega Mega Drive games but also Master System games because I have an adapter for that.

If we talk about retro for a while I can say that I have plenty of games in that category. I have that Retro Trio console that can play NES, SNES and Mega Drive games. I have two adapters –  Master System adapter and a SNES adapter for Game Boy games. I also have a mini console that I can play Mega Drive games on. It is the first release of Mega Drive Mini. I haven’t had a chance to get into Mega Drive mini’s sequel.

I also play PlayStation 1 and 2 games. I have also my eyes on Nintendo GameCube games. They are a bit rare right now and most games are a bit expensive. I would like to get more consoles. I have been interested in Saturn and DreamCast. I have also Game Boy Color that represents my handheld part of my game collection. I don’t have a single game on Game Boy Color. I would like to get a Pokemon game some day. For NES I have plenty of games and the same goes to SNES. For Mega Drive I have several games mostly because I owned these already back in the day when it was the most popular consolle.

That’s it about what do I currently have and also things I have recently got. What are the things inside gaming that I would like to have? We can start from two new games that haven’t been released yet. These are Diablo IV and Forza Motorsport. I do know that there are many other interesting games coming at us this year. One game that I am a bit interested in is Final Fantasy XVI. That might be interesting.

For SNES and NES I mainly keep my focus on loose cartridges.The same goes with Game Boy games. They are a bit cheaper. I am not a person that looks for cardboards for these types of games. I do like PC big box games and that’s one more category I am collecting for. There are somne legendary titles mainly for NES that I would like to add to my collection. There are lots of nice shoot-em-ups for SNES and Mega Drive. I find those also interesting.

I am also looking for original Xbox titles. I currently don’t have original Xbox in my setup. I do have Xbox 360 and it can play original Xbox games. It doesn’t play all of them, however. I like to pick games that you can play with my X360. I have an intention also to get some a bit rare and kind of hidden gems for PS2. I am aiming for games that aren’t so expensive.

Which games are expensive today? Which games you can right now get some good money from? I would say that GameCube is popular. I have seen many games and consoles for sale lately. Eternal Darkness is popular. Also Silent Hill and especially the first three games are popular. System Shock 2 as a big box is popular. In overall I have observed that these prices have gone up in just five years.

I suggest that you keep your games to yourself. If you do need some money you can sell a game or two. If you aren’t palying them and if you aren’t even displaying them it might be a good idea to sell them. You can turn to your local game store or sell them for some person. In Finland we have at least two channels for selling your games (Huuto dot net and Tori dot fi). You can get a better price by selling your used games to some person instead of a gaming store (which is very understandable).

My Current Tiny Collection of NES Games

Posted on by Viljami

I didn’t have a Nintendo Entertainment System when I was a child. It didn’t prevent me from getting my hands to this console. I remember that at least two of my friends from school had this gaming system. We played Super Mario and Mega Man just to name a few of my favorites. This nostalgic feeling is the reason I started collecting NES games.

I have a retro gaming console that can handle NES, SNES, Mega Drive, Game Boy and Master System game cartridges. That’s right. I play my 80s and 90s retro games from real physichal cartridges. I have used also emulators on different computers, including Raspberry Pi, but I find it satisfying to play my retro games the way that I do.

I have also an original NES controller that I use while I play NES games. Let’s get to my collection. I have 12 NES games. I have been collecting games of this game console for about three years. That’s when I got the first game of this system.

The first game in this collection was Super Mario Bros. 3. It is in my opinion maybe the best game and definitely the best platformer game for this legendary gaming system. If you look carefully to this image we have here you can find that I have Double Dragon 1 and 2, Big Foot, Gremlins 2, Kid Ikarus, Gradius, The Adventure of Link, Tetris, Total Recall, Ice Climber and Gauntlet 2.

There are still some games I would like to buy and add to my collection. Some of these games are Mega Man, Metal Gear Solid, Super Mario 1 and 2, Punch Out, Probotector and some others that just don’t come to mind right now. There are also many great games that I don’t even yet know about. I have imagined that I would some day get a CRT television that would enable me to play shooter games like Duck Hunt. There are also some very good shooters for PlayStation 1.

How much have I paid for these games. I think the most expensive from these games is the Zelda game. It cost me 80 euros. I just had to buy it. This game is a bit rare so I was lucky to even have an opportunity to buy it. I buy my NES games usually from different game shops. Sometimes I find a game from flee market. Because of corona I haven’t been to flee markets a lot lately but this I know is going to change. The cheapest games in this collection are somewhere around 15 euros.

So for this small collection you can probably spend something from 300 euros to 500 euros. I suggest that if you are going to play your NES games also and not just collect them just buy them like two or three games at a time. This way you can enjoy playing them. I think one of the most important ways to enjoy games that bring you nostalgia is to just give them enough time. You can definitely spend two to three hours for one game. You can also try to complete them. To this day I haven’t been able to beat Super Mario Bros 3. I have spent lot of time in trying to do so.

I think you have already some good ideas for starting to collect NES cartridges to your own collection. Buying retro games can also be a way to invest your money in case you become financially challenged some day. There are lots of collectors out there. I almost forgot one good title and that is the first Final Fantasy. This is a one rare game. Also some NES games are very expensive today. You can see a game that costs several hundreds of euros or even more than that.

Collecting, Buying but not Playing

Posted on by Viljami

I am happy that I am currently employed. I work and I also have some freetime. Although I don’t have the amount of time I had as a teenager. I propably wouldn’t even want it to be that way anymore. I guess I have less time for playing today.

As I have less time for gaming I do have more income. That gets me to buy more collectable items, games, that I couldn’t afford some time ago. I am finding myself buying interesting, nostalgic and exciting games. Some of them, the retro ones, I have owned or played during my childhood. Some games just are plain intersting. I think I cannot fully explain this.

There seems be a lot of items for me to get to my hands. I might buy an interesting game and just leave it for a month or two and then get into playing it. I can picture myself buying even things like CRT television, light gun or another retro game console. Those are very interesting things inside my mind.

There are of course limitations. I don’t have so much room in my house. So, what’s next? Moving to a bigger house to collect more games, systems, televisions and what more? There gots to be a limit somewhere.

Instead of just spending all my time playing every retro title I have for two to three hours a day I am actually also finding myself in improving my personal skills. This is somewhat the fact even when I am playing something but I also am spending my free time for learning something new in programming, technology, making my own games and writing texts and making music. So there are lots of things going on and this is just one way that reflects me as an individual.

Everything depends on everything. As I keep spending more time alone or with my wife I find myself quite content in my current situation. I am a developing individual but of course I am not a software developer…at least not at this moment. But who knows what future just might bring!

What to Play Next?

Posted on by Viljami

I have to face it – I have a huge amount of games in my backlog. I have both physical and digital copies of many games that I haven’t had an opportunity to get into and to play. This is something to discuss about because there are some clearances in some of those game shops right now. I have to bring up Steam. There was recently a query in Pelaaja (a Finnish gaming magazine) about are people actually excited about ongoing clearances. The results were a bit mixed. A lot of people though their backlog is already huge and that they wouldn’t have a chance to play any of these new games that were on sale.

This is somewhat a problem. There are currently so many games that you have to really give a thought about what game you are going to buy next and what game would you play next. At the same time game buyers are looking more and more how games are rated. There is a lot of money involved. This brings it harder and harder to actually spontaneously pick a game that would suit your taste as good as possible.

It’s not that we wouldn’t have any good new games. This year there has already been many hit games released. We have seen titles like Gran Turismo 7 and Elden Ring already this year. I have to also include one thought to this monologue. There are too many games trying to be everything a game can be. I mean that these games are trying to be more than good in just one genre. This turns games into mega games that have everything. I don’t know if this is healthy for gaming scene. At the same time we are seeing more attempts to bring these mega hit games to the audience. Every big player in the game is trying to make the next big hit. Maybe they should try to accomplish something more simpler and not to try to take such a huge bite.

I greatly enjoyed Gran Turismo 7 some months ago. I played it over 30 hours. Other games that I have recently played a lot are NBA 2K22 and Diablo II Resurrected. How many games like this does a regular gamer need yearly? I am good with two to three titles that take a lot of time to complete. So I’m satisfied with 2-3 games yearly that take up something like 30 or 40 hours to complete. I am not able to play every game, and not even every good game, that gets released. As games try to provide everything for everybody this is very problematic. Actually I am satisfied in a good driving game or two, a good sports game, like FIFA or NBA, and maybe an adventure game or some other game that has also some action game features and maybe a goof first person shooter and all this in about a year. That would make my gaming needs for new games satisfied.

What about retro games? I am talking about older games. For these I prefer to pick some interesting titles as new games that I haven’t yet played. Sometimes these games are legendary and sometimes they are just rare and good. Price of retro games has gone up in recent years. But it is good to read reviews and recommendations from YouTube and also from some good news feeds and blogs. I think there is no reason to buy a lot of old games. It’s better to pick the good ones that you really want in your collection. Some games I pick because they give me nostalgia and I have something in my memory about them.

It’s nice to have kind of an network of influential persons, like bloggers, that can share something, be it a picture or a review or just a comment, about games that they like. I personally like reading reviews the most. I don’t like to always look just for the score that game receives. I like to really get an idea of what kind of a game it would be and what kind of an experience it brings. I enjoy also watching videos from YouTube about hunting games from flea markets. There are people that make their living like this. They buy some games cheap and sell them for a bit higher price.

All in all collecting games is a great hobby. I am a bit worried about gathering too many games to my backlog and that I am not able to play all of them. So I have to make compromises all the time. But I can’t help it. There just are too many games out there. I hope I have time to get into at least some of them.

More Games for Nintendo GameCube?

Posted on by Viljami

Earlier this year I bought a gaming console. It was a retro console. Actually it was Nintendo Wii. I was well aware that it was capable to run also GameCube games. I had to buy also a memory card and a controller. This was nice.

Now, about ten months later, I haven’t played Wii so much. I currently have three games for it. I only have one GameCube game. You can see all my Wii and GameCube games in that featured image I took. So I don’t have so many Nintendo games. I do have Switch Lite. At some point I was considering getting the regular Switch but I decided not to buy it. At least not yet. This is also because I’m running out of space. I am also considering to selling or giving my Xbox Series S to a some of my connections if I get my hands on a Series X.

As I wrote early this year I was then hoping to get to know more about some Nintendo games. I have purchased some NES cartridges, some SNES cartridges and games for Switch Lite. This is a nice beginning to my journey. I have always been around Sega, PlayStation and Xbox. I don’t so much about Nintendo. I would like to get to know this topic a bit better.

You cannot mention Nintendo without mentioning Nintendo 64. It would be cool if there would be a mini console of it made available. I have read so much about Zelda – Ocarina of Time. I don’t actually have room for N64 in my small, or not-so-small, gaming corner I have in my living room currently. N64s controller can definitely raise some eye brows.

But to the point, again, I don’t have so many games for GameCube. They can be a bit pricey. I have heard about Eternal Darkness and there is, I think, some good Mario games also released for it and available for me to purchase. So, the game I do have is Resident Evil. It is a remake of the survival horror game that was originally released for PS1 in 1996.

Actually, any advice on this would be appreciated. I don’t know if you want to recommend a game for me or is this the right channel for it. But it was nice to give you something to read again. I am going to write some more stuff here soon. I just yesterday purchased CoD Vanguard and I am spending some time with it. I also might have something to say shortly about how it felt to play Crysis 2 and maybe even how it is as FPS compared to any Call of Duty game and what are the biggest differences.

What Makes Gaming So Appealling?

Posted on by Viljami

Why do you play? How long did you play that game this time? You should get a better hobby! These are some comments made by people that are not so much into gaming. I get this sometimes. This blog post is trying to explain what it is in gaming that keeps drawing our attention and some reasons why it is an enjoyable activity and why do we spend so much time playing games.

Playing video games has been popular since the first known video game. I am talking about a certain game here. It was called “Tennis for Two”. It was introduced in 1958. Here’s the link to Wikipedia if you want to go read some more facts about this game. As a game it was as simple and basic as can be. Let’s think about this for a while. In 1958 video games were something new. There must have been something very interesting here for a human being. What games have that draw our attention? What makes us want to play more and more and until we are exhausted and tired?

One thing is our natural rewarding system. When something positive happens on the screen or when we accomplish something very meaningful our nerve system gives us a small dose of dopamine. This dose becomes larger when a person uses some sort of drug. This leads to a kind of a malfunction with this system and makes us depressed for a short period of time. This is how this natural system that has been built to our brains functions. So achieving our goal in a game gives us a reward.

I have also one point about collecting games. Why do we want more and more all the time. You know how this is. You get many great games. You are satisfied for some time but eventually you want more. You buy more games. And this, let’s give it a name that is somewhat related to programming, “loop”, keeps repeating. This has something to do with our human beings natural behavior. We are collectors by nature. That’s how human beings started their path. They were hunters and they also collected things they found from their surroundings.

These points can be true. They might be true and they might explain something. This however doesn’t take away all the things that make you or me enjoy playing video games. I have my reasons why I keep playing. It gives something for me. For me it is a way to get loose from the stress I get from studying or working. Is gaming expensive? I would say no because it isn’t as expensive as some common hobbies like ice hockey for example is. It isn’t as healthy if you think about the matter. Is it childish? I think today gaming is becoming more and more a hobby for a person of any age. There are already some very old people that play video games. I think today games have a very diverse content and they make people more active and this makes our entertainment more challenging for the growing audience.

So there are things that can explain this phenomenon. It still doesn’t take away things a player has learned while playing. I for example gained lots of skills in a foreign language that was actually English. Gaming is lots of fun. Collecting games can draw you away from using drugs or alcohol. We have our reasons to behaving how we do. Gaming is a hobby for lots of people. They have a reason to play. And I think we can learn a lot about human nature also by playing the games that inspire us and keep uplifting our minds. So, let’s keep on playing!

 

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