I think for me it’s retro games, specifically. I used to have been in the used video games market for 5 years from 2008 to 2012. My goal was to construct a personal video game collection, physical copies of games I personally enjoyed growing up.
I was registered on a game trading site which served as the base of my business, I’ve made rounds of thrift store hopping and any used games market I could find locally. I’ve struck amazingly good deals and I might’ve had luck on my side a few times (for example, a guy on that game trading site gave me a free copy of Super Metroid that I got to choose for a minor mistake he felt he needed to honor.)
And I felt like I was incredibly close to completing my personal collection until 2012, I ran into some dumb drama with my sister and ex girlfriend back then. They racked up the cable bill in my name that I was trying to cancel and they wouldn’t let me cancel it until I turned in all equipment. And I was jobless at the time too, having lost my job. So I needed to sell some things and sure enough, had to sacrifice my entire collection at the time that I spent 5 long years building.
I never recovered since and this was during the golden period where it was still fairly fun to collect and everybody wasn’t pretending to be a pawn shop.
I would try continuing what collection of games I’ve tried to build, through Steam but it wasn’t the same. Nowadays, the used video games market has turned into just a platform full of resellers, pawn brokers and stingy greedy collectors.
I find it very cheapening that people treat games like they’re just tools of trade. They mean nothing and they’re treated like nothing except to make a quick buck, however possible.
It’s only worsened thanks to Goodwill and similar thrift stores, getting in on it where everyone pays too much attention as to what the prices go for on EBay and VGPC.
And we have WATA involved that hasn’t made things better. Thanks for shitting on an honest hobby, assholes.
No. When I take up a hobby, it’s because I like the thing, not because it’s cool, or different, or whatever.
I like guns, I like shooting, I enjoy going to competitions–even if I’m not very good–and I’d love it if I could get more people into it, even if they’re ‘gaming’ competitions. (And make no mistake, there are a lot of people that do everything they can to game a competition stage, just to shave .2s off their time, or increase their hit factor by .1.) Yeah, it’s expensive–I think I burned about $200 in ammunition I’d reloaded last weekend–and ‘cheapening’ it would make it much easier to practice more.
I used to go to a place that would regularly host its own competitions, and would handily break down stage scores for you on their website afterward. It was rewarding to compete against your past self for time.
I think that all my scores are up on Practiscore; I don’t usually bother checking, since I have a pretty good idea of how well I’m doing when I’m there.
For me, it was a totally independently run match where they posted the scores to their own website. Same idea. Getting a feel is great, but I always like having a dispassionate score to give me a head check.