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Collecting - The Disease
An anonymous reader writes "Gamers With Jobs has an interesting piece this morning on the nature of collectibility in games. While primarily a personal account of one man's journey into the hell that is Magic: the Gathering, it raises interesting questions about the difference between real-world and virtual-world collecting, and the economic motivations behind both." From the article: "I sit down. I play. I get schooled by a 12-year-old for two hours as he teaches me the ropes with a condescension reserved for teenagers with grownups by the throat. Each game is a bet — loser gives the winner the top card off his deck: Ante. I leave a dozen cards short. I had discovered a great game, and people to play it against. But that's not why the night sits burned into my brain with razor sharp clarity. No, it's because that Tuesday night in San Francisco, I became a collector."
I just love playing games with stakes other than just for the fun of it. I must admit to playing Magic in the distant past. We used to cut the Deck for the ante cards prior to playing. You certainly don't give up as easily if a valuable card is drawn for your ante.
If any gamers are going to choose to get into Magic: The Crack Addiction, they may as well be "gamers with jobs."
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Thurgood Marshall is in a group for people who are addicted and need help.
Thurgood: Hi, I'm Thurgood.
Entire Group: Hi, Thurgood.
Thurgood: and I am addicted to marijuana.
Entire Group groans
Addict: You in here for some marijuana?!? Marijuana!?!? Man, this is some BULLSHIT!
Bob Saget: Marijuana is not a drug! I used to suck dick for Magic: The Gathering cards!
Addict: I seen him!
Bob Saget: Now that's an addiction man! You ever suck some dick for Marijuana?!
Addict: HUH?!
Thurgood: No, I can't say I have.
Bob Saget: Yeah I didn't think so...
Addict: Boo this man! BOO!!!
Everyone "boos" him and throws bottles and trash at him
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
once you realize that the value of your collection doesn't lay in it's internal value (they're just cards or china or whatever) or your enjoyment using the collection (most collections are sealed away. Even if you do use them, how could you possibly get real use out of 100 cars or 1000 beanie babies?), then the only thing you have left is monetary value and bragging rights. And you only have monetary value and bragging rights, really, with other collectors. Did you tell your aunt polly about your Star Wars figure collection? What did she say? "Bad-ass"? Sure she did.
I have been caught up in the collecting bug in the past and as soon as I'm done, I just wonder where all my time/money/space/soul has gone.
Where are you Pogs now?
TW
When we'd get a pack, my friends and I would sniff the wrappers, always commenting "they lace it with just enough crack to get you to buy just one more pack..."
So many wasted college nights...
I've been through the 'collecting' addiction many times. It started with MP3s. I downloaded and downloaded and downloaded. I ended up with more music than I could ever listen to. Next was console roms, then Dreamcast games, then X-Box games. I bought both my Dreamcast and my X-Box specifically because you could pirate games. I had hundreds of games with a good percentage of them never having even been placed in the consoles.
I may lose a few, but I build my decks myself, from cards I get either from lots, pre-built decks from WotC (which I buy to get used to new mechanics, and usually rip apart after a few games) or booster packs. When I beat someone, it's with a deck I built, not one I copied from someone else.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
There are good reasons to stick to card games like Poker, i can think of at least 11 million great reasons to give Poker a chance. If Magic had that kinda money in it, I think a lot more people would be trading those "killer" decks, and there would be some really interesting big hands.
stuff |
Hmm... I may be just a little bit of a collector of data. Not specific data, just... data. Any information with value. I just burnt DVD number 0x171 - together with the RAID array, the three 160G drives, the stacks of CDs... I probably have around 2TB total.
For adults, the fun of Magic is in learning why that deck is killer, how the mix of lands, creatures, spells, etc. was optimized.
It's a good test of whether or not you have an addictive personality. I've actually been dusting off my collection lately, playing for fun with my son. I deliberately didn't kill him, just to show a point.
Back in the day, I used to play cutthroat for cards, but these days I get much more enjoyment from making theme decks and killing people in interesting ways. I also haven't bought a card in close to a decade. It's a waste of time.
I did end up making a Neverwinter Nights modification called Demon Cards. It has a pool of 100 cards, you can play against NPCs or other players, and there's no cost beyond the basic NWN game. It's not identical to Magic, but has some of that same deck-building fun.
Magic world championship
It looks likes it's only 50,000 - but that's understandable given the somewhat smaller player base/television exposure/connections to real-money-gambling/etc...
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
And, what did I get out of it in the end?
The friends I made playing casually weren't interested in much else, and subsequently, I found that I wasn't much interested in them. Tournaments and pre-releases are filled with trash-talking, cheating, and rules-lawyering, making them decidedly unfun. And the money I spent on cards could have been better spent on something that's more fun, more social, and just as fitting to my geeky lifestyle (like, say, video games.)
In other words, I got nothing beneficial from it, aside from the occasional interesting friend, triumphant tourney moment, or excellent deal on old cards. Consequently, this summer I made the decision to sell my entire $2500 collection via CardShark. Now, I'm raking in a load of cash, which I'll probably re-invest in music or games (i.e. things that are actually fun), all for a bunch of pieces of cardboard.
And that's not even getting into my whole rant about how Wizards hasn't given a damn about the gamers since the Ice Age block. But that would be getting off-topic.
So, if you take one thing from this post, let it be that, if you're on the fence about quitting and selling your collection, do it. Your life and your pocketbook will be all the better for it.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
Thank You.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
You see, I once used to collect innocent things...Star Trek figures, Star Wars figures...I even had a few CCGs...Star Wars, Overpower and M:tG come to mind. None of these really broke my bank. I worked a steady job in high school and since I was really only paying for gas and insurance, I had loads of money to spend. I actually had somewhere near $2000 saved up before college, so I didn't have to work in order to eat out and have fun doing things my parents weren't paying for (which was just school and books, and that nasty meal plan).
Well, now my new "toys" are computers and electronics. When I spend money, it is a lot less frequent, but the items I am buying are much more expensive. I guess it comes with my more grown up interests. I have tons of DVDs and buy many used CDs now. The real disaster comes from my electronics though. I am about to purchase another computer. (Well, build it myself, but you know...) I own a Dell Inspiron 8600 and recently got a G3 iBook (nice and white, 800MHz, DVD/CD-RW, etc.) on ebay for $300. I also have a lot of electronics, HDTV, media player, and audio-phile 5.1 system.
My other interest include guns, which are not cheap by any definition of the word either. I have managed to curb some of my PC/console gaming, though I really think I am just stashing up until it comes time for the Wii. Actually the new PC is mostly for Oblivion and maybe the next UT. The fact is, even these are typically 10x or more expensive then my old habits and I am not really making 10x as much as in high school. Well actually I am, but I now have real bills...like electricity, water, gas...oh and that pesky rent...
The point is, any hobby or habit can get really expensive. I guess it just eventually comes down to what kind of money you are willing to spend and what you find interesting.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I thought this article was a bit... light. It gives you a good sort of back-of-the-cereal box review of collecting, but it doesn't go any deeper. I won't be expanding on the article, but I had a few thoughts relationg to the topic.
Collecting is here to stay. It will never go away. That's pretty much a given; it is important, however, to differentiate between two types. First, monetary collecting: your Magic cards, Warhammer figures, etc. Second, non-monetary collecting: "earned" items in MMOs, unlockable costumes/endings/characters, etc.
The good news with monetary collecting is that the internet helped implode a lot of markets. With Magic: the Gathering, I remember in the late 90's one card, a Juzam Djinn, carried a pretty hefty price, upwards of $150 if I recall correctly. It should be $175 or $200 now, if we're to believe increasing returns on collectibles and inflation (or eBay sellers with 0 bids). But quick look on eBay shows prices in the $100 area, per card. The most expensive card, the Black Lotus, also goes for about half of its previous price ($1000+).
(Now, some Magic player is going to rebut about how the changing of tournament rules is affecting cards. That might be true to a point. But in the past ten years we've seen the same thing happen with sports collectibles, comic books, term life insurance, and countless other markets; opening a market will have the effect of reducing prices since it reduces scarcity).
Now, monetary collecting in gaming is pretty bad in my eyes, especially for games kids play, since it puts kids without well-off parents at a distinct disadvantage over equaly skilled kids whose parents give them huge allowances or equally skilled working professionals with large discretionary budgets.
Thankfully, in non-monetary collecting, time and skill are the real investment. Most "collectibles" in these games require no money: unique armor for your MMO character, unlockable costumes for your fighters/adventurers, or hats for your Nintendogs, etc. Still, there's some inequality, as people with time but not money constraints pay for training, gold, etc.
Collecting, be it virtual or real, is intrinsic to gaming, video and otherwise. What's a sports player always work for? A Super Bowl ring. Or the Stanley Cup. Or a gold medal. Or any number of physical objects that represent victory. There's a reason there are physical things attached to these victories. It's not that the jewelry is more important than the championship, it's just that it's an object. In MMOs where items serve (usually) a useful purpose it's nice to get a trinket to show you defeated some boss. But it's nicer to get Ashkandi, Greatsword of the Brotherhood.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
... then eBay is the cure ;)
I love the card game Magic, and most of my expenditures on it are quite reasonable. Paying $13 to draft is about 3 hours of entertainment and you get to keep the cards for later, and that's if you don't win anything. I've made some great friends because of it, and I still play it when I can.
I used to play Magic: The Gathering back in the old days. It was pretty fun, though I spent more money than I should have. This was before the days it was on ESPN2, etc., so it was very much a geeks only thing back in the day. Actually, the basic mechanics of the game could be seen as fairly developmental in ways. What really killed the game for me was when Wizards of the Coast began to split tournaments into Type I and Type II. Type II became the preferred format for tournaments. (I don't know if things have changed, but Type II basically restricted the game to the most recent revision of the "basic" set and a few of the most "expansion" sets.)
Here I was sitting on a lot of great cards that I had spent time and money collecting, and the vast majority of them basically became illegal in tournaments. A lot of players in my area played in those, and if you pulled a Type I card out and they all had Type II decks, they'd complain that you're using an "illegal" card. So I ended up selling most of my collection, though I still have one of my play decks.
After Magic, I played Legends of the Five Rings. One of their original selling points was that your could "play with your cards." I came to like the game more than Magic for not only that reason, but I enjoyed the flavor of the game. Unfortunately, Wizards of the Coast eventually bought out the maker of L5R (sometime after buying TSR) and started trying to do the same thing they did with Type II and magic to that game as well.
I fell back solely on RPGs after all of that, sadly.
Why MTG sucks?
Because the one with most money wins.
You can build an uber deck and pwn everyone with a common deck. You can build unbeatable machines. Some rules have been adjusted to prevent heavy abuse but... I got a taste of this playing the computer version of MTG with older ruleset. A deck consisting of LOTS of black lotuses (now forbidden), +3 mana), some gravedigging cards costing less mana to restore used cards than the black lotuses produce (so you have a perpeetum mobile, produce mana over and over), then more cards for pulling cards from library to hand (never run out of them) and finally a few that deal immediate damage to the enemy proportional to mana used.
Such deck would cost some $2000 or so.
So the gameplay looks like this: I use up all the black lotuses producing lots of mana. Dig more cards from library, some more from graveyard, then keep producing mana. Then in one or two blasts (two in case the enemy drew some "reflect" instant, one if I know he doesn't have any) I kill the enemy. In one round. Sometimes just for fun hitting for 60 damage. They don't get to use anything other than an interrupt if any.
Now if someone designs similar InstaGib deck, what fun is playing it?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
With balanced mechanics and a fixed, fairly small number of cards freely available to all. The cards don't look as nice (they're just on paper, in fact, so they don't shuffle as well either), but it was free and the gameplay was just as good. Why didn't everyone do that? It took me an afternoon and I saved a hundred(?) dollars.
...the fun was in trading, not in collecting. There was an art in crafting trades which everyone was happy with, but I knew would help me grow the value of my collection. The game was somewhat fun, but it was governed by rules that were far too simplistic. Trading was its own sort of game, but one with rules that were far more subtle than the rules of the card game. Card values were constantly changing and their values differed immensly depending on where you were (in the test areas where WotC had released alpha/beta/limited, those cards were not as valuable as they were in places that were not part of the initial releases). I realize now that I grew my collection (from a $100 initial investment to about $15k when I sold everything off) primarily by exploiting the artificial scarcity of those initial releases, but at the time I had never taken any econ courses. I was just proud to have built up such a collection without anyone ever feeling I had ripped them off (people said that they enjoyed trading with me because I was one of the few people who ever said things like, "no...I need to give you more in order for this to be fair.")
Sure, I made decks and played with people, but that eventually became pretty mindless once you learned the mechanics of it. That part of the hobby was primarily about building a rapport with the other player so that they would be open to trading with me.
In the end, I feel lucky that the timing of my addiction was pretty much perfect. For one, I got into the game early, when the value of the cards I initially bought increased drastically because of their artificial scarcity. I was also lucky enough to live in a university town that gave shell accounts to people taking CS courses through their extension program. That allowed me to get on rec.games.trading-cards.magic (or whatever it was) to enable trading with people outside of my area. I did took a full-point hit to my GPA 2nd semester of my senior year, but that didn't hurt me since I had already been accepted to college. I was able to realize that I was addicted in time to save my college education and also used the proceeds from selling off my collection to avoid having to get a work study job in college. I also built up a network of friends, many of whom were college students a few years ahead of me, that I could draw on for help with a) school or b) obtaining various substances I wasn't allowed to buy directly. That, in turn, helped me build up a large network of friends during freshmen year which made college a lot easier.
Were the timing of my addiction off a bit, I might be looking back at my time playing the game a lot more negatively. But as it is, I think it made my life now a lot better than it would have been otherwise.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
I thought he was talking about collecting real games! I've got well over 2000 cartridge/disc games for various console game systems, some that most slashdotters haven't even heard of. (Arcadia 2001, anyone?)
Yeah, sure, I got some of those stupid cardboard things, but I get stacks of 'em at a nearby thrift salvage store. If I find a card I don't have, cool. When I'm tired of it, I'll sell 'em.
What's the difference? Those cardboard things were made to be collected, with intentional artifical rarities. The video games weren't. A rare card is often highly desirable when playing a CCG; a rare video game is usually rare because it's a total stinker.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Alright, I'll admit it; I am an avid player of M:tG.
At one point I was spending about 20 dollars a week on the game though (but I havent spent any in the past few months). True, I once did play for...24 hours straight or so (went to a tournament at 5, got back to dorm around 1 in the morning and played with friends til 5 the next day), but in generaly I think I have it under control (of course, all addicts think that). Even so, twenty bucks a month was about the maximum I EVER spent on the game, and for the most part it was 10 dollars a so every two weeks for a booster draft tournament (8 guys get 3 booster packs each, draft their cards, play 3 rounds, and get to keep the cards they draft).
Some people think that M:tG is prohibitively expensive to play; and in a way, it is. If you build EVERY deck ever, then of course it's going to cost you; if you play the most powerful cards of course it will cost you. In reality though, you don't always build every deck. What I do is every once in a while, when I feel like playing standard (the most popular format, that rotates every 2 sets) I research all the decks, find one that isn't ridiculously priced, has cards which I might use for random purposes outside of this deck, and is competitive (can actually win tournaments). After I get tired of playing the deck, or the format rotates, I sell the cards I no longer use, and save the cash until the next time I feel like playing. This way, I can play standard and not break the bank, and I can use the powerful enough cards for my one other deck (for "extended",a format that doesn't rotate as much).
Another way I manage to save money is by drafting. Instead of buying boosters and hoping to pull what I want, through drafting I get to play in tourneys and collect the staple cards for my decks. Furthermore, I can usually trade/sell my winnings and the cards I draft to reduce the cost of playing, or even make some cash. Being able to use cards I drafted to build my deck also defrays the cost.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that Magic: The Gathering isn't all about collecting and who has the best and most expensive cards; you can still have fun without spending a lot of money. Whether it's through playing budget decks with your friends, drafting, or simply being economical, It's possible to not spend that much and still have fun) It's just that many new players and observers seem to think that expensive "god cards" will always win, and that buying individual booster packs is the best way to build a collection and get good cards (It's not; in fact, its rather ineconomical).
It's no real suprise him saying that the companies use 'collecting' in order to retain their customers and keep their sales up, the video game industry also cracked onto this a long time ago (level ups in MMORPGs to keep rebills high) so that you have a feeling of progression and growing with the game. Companies know that is an easy way to extend the life of their games, and on the really good side it can be used to lock users into a product and off other games (which henceforth are produced by other companies and do not make any money for them), for example: WoW and Everquest.
I definitely think that with the hype surrounding online gaming due to the possibilities of broadband nowdays that a lot of game companies are licking their lips at the huge amount of profit to be made by giving their games a lot more longetivity and therefore increasing their userbase. One of the most successful examples I can think of with this is Half Life and the way Counter-Strike/Day of Defeat were handled in order to keep interest in the game until the sequel came out (which also saved on marketing costs). Either way, it's a win-win situation for the companies producing the games.
Business Voyeur
I used to play MTG back in the days of 5th Edition up to the 7th Edition days. We would all get together in the library at lunch time and duke it out with our killar deckz and leet skittles.
God I had a wasted childhood.
Anyway despite the social ramifications those were fun times. We never really played with an ante but a lot of trading took place. I'd always take along a deck or two and my big folder with all my rare's in it. However most of us were just there to play. We only really traded cards that we needed for our decks. I guess with MTG you get two different crowds: those that are there to play and those that are there to collect.
I still have all my cards still in my folder in my cupboard.
Magic is really big at my high school (well, I just graduated, but still). There's a regular club that meets every Thursday, and there's easily over 70 members who play. However, the club is divided into two (not disjoint) groups: those who play with real decks, and those who play with proxies. Basically, the half of us who enjoy the game, but aren't willing to pay hundreds of dollars (we're in high school) for the latest and greatest cards, simply design our decks on paper, go on the internet, print out the neccesary card faces, and glue them onto basic land cards. It's no secret, we're not trying to cheat -- you just announce that it's for a proxy deck, and as long as the opponent doesn't have a problem with that (within our school, almost nobody does), you're good to go. You get all of the fun, without the cost. And since it's easy to print off a new deck, there's lots of interesting deck designs since there's no financial commitement involved in trying out a new idea. You would think that this would lead to a whole room full of people playing uber-decks of outrageous cards that they found deck lists for on the internet. But in practice, none of us are dicks, and we all end up having a lot of fun. Of course, we can't enter any tournaments like this, but there's so many of us in the school alone that we can sustain our hobby just fine.
I am a natural born collector. I don't see it as a disease, it's merely a personality trait.
I collect CCGs, RPG books, video games, legos, dolls, stuffed animals, artwork, books, DVDs, anime, comic books and manga.
I surround myself with the things I enjoy. I collect them, but not obsessively so. I don't spend hundreds of dollars on one rare card, but I'll easily drop $200 at once to get an entire run of a CCG I find interesting. I'll buy every book by a particular author and read all of them. I like stuff, I always have. I started out collecting coins and stamps, but that was started with my dad. There is nothing about coins or stamps that mean anything to me. Everything in the list above brings me enjoyment, so I collect it. I never get rid of anything because I often go back and read books I haven't read in a while, watch DVDs I haven't watched in a while, play games I remember from years ago, build a new deck with a new idea I never thought of before, or see something new in a piece of artwork I missed. If I got rid of those things, I'd miss out on what more they have to offer me as I age and my perspective changes.
That is the purpose behind being a collector. Anyone who spends money endlessly on an obsession is not a collector, they are an addictive personality, which is an entirely separate mental disorder.
just some guy
Collecting is pretty much dead and pointless. It died a long time ago. As soon as collecting becomes well known and high profile it becomes useless. The bragging rights of collecting something is being one of a few who have that item, or a complete set, etc. Being one in a million, or ten million who have it devalues your accomplishment.
I got in to magic just before it exploded into the big collection phenom it is now. I got out shortly after that happened. The person who said the Black Lotus was valued at $1000 I'm not sure when that happened but back in the late 90s it wasn't worth that much. It was $400 or $500. Moxs were around $125.
Some of the early cards may be worth something, I have a couple early sets (The Dark) but anything after that is only worth a fraction of what those are worth, both in prestige and money. I have no idea what current prices are like I haven't really dabbled in them in years, but its the same with everything.
My dad has comics from when he was a kid. Not only does he have Spiderman #1, in pretty good condition, he's got the original comic he appeared in (I'd have to check I didn't study them that thoroughly). He didn't seal them up like a collector so very few are mint, but he did take reasonable care of them and very few are ruined like you can sometimes find in old boxes. I think he had 2 boxes for a total of a hundred comics, maybe 150. Even taking out the Spiderman #1 the value and prestige of having those comics far outways 10 times that amount of modern comics. Because everyone and their dog is buying them. A lot of these people who are buying them as an investment don't realize that those days are long gone. In 40 years, there will be way too many people who did the same thing you did for it to really amount to much. A smart man in the 50s and 60s who saved those comics in good shape could probably have retired off them or at least done real well. Now its a crap shoot. You're basically hoping that maybe enough people don't collect the same thing you are or don't take care of them and that interest peaks up in that item again.
The only thing remotely collectable are things they make collectable (i.e. very limited releases of things) but those are items that have been artificially introduced as a collectable. Its just not the same kind of thing.
Dr. Phil would say "grow up and give the crap away." The problem is that collectors are often with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). That's a treatable problem that has nothing to do with "growing up." The article also touches on the elements of gambling addiction. If you have a problem collecting too many things, a therapist can easily determine if you're OCD and to what degree.
If you just want to have fun, instead of going to the big, state-wide tournaments, go down to your local comic and games shop and play in one of their weekly booster drafts. I can guarantee you 50% less rules lawyering and a lot more simple fun. After all the "net decks" that I use to read about and all the cutthroat competition on Apprentice in hidden IRC rooms, it still warms my heart to see the nerds around here at work pull out decks containing cards from sets from over a decade ago combined with cards from the latest set, decks that should technically never win, and just play each other for the hell of it. Contrary to what you see on the wizards.com forums, casual play is still alive and well.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.