Nat

• 11% of all household games have unopened titles

We recently looked at what appeared to be a revealing statistic that mentioned the average video game collection has 48 titles. Average.

It’s even more revealing that in a little over one out of ten homes some of those average 48 titles are unopened.

Before I begin, I need to disclose something. There was a time that I lived in one of those homes. Actually, I was the cause for the home. I had Prince of Persia Warrior Within for the Xbox and never opened it. I’ve never even played it. Bought it for $30 and essentially gave it to Gamestop for $7 still wrapped in its wonderful plastic cellophane.

I’m also going to make a big assumption that the way in which these unopened games were acquired was by purchasing them—not as gifts.

That brings me to our first question:

Why are they not opened?

Lets start with the one that will tick most readers off: avarice.

avarice: excessive or insatiable desire for wealth or gain

We live in a society of wants. There’s a pleasure to materialism—a pleasure in having what’s new. Everybody has something to sell and everybody has something to buy (even when not able to afford it).

For one, the marketing industry has done a great job making sure we “need” certain things. They’ve become so good at that we buy these things and we don’t even know what for.

I’ll give us that its hard to face the marketing juggernaut. However, we have the choice to turn them off—unless we’re facing ads in games.

Of course, we are still the ones with the money. We have the control—or do we? We do, but we tend to think we don’t.

Another reason is the desire to fit in. However, this may be a little weak because the game’s not being played. If as gamers we wanted to fit in, why buy it and not play it? Who would know? I still think that no matter what rationale we come up with it all comes back to the desire to want more. However, there’s more to this story.

How many times have we paid for games and played it for an hour or two and then put up back up on the shelf? Is it really a stretch from not opening it?

Our attention spans in regards to games are at an all time low, and we’ve become heavily critical and unforgiving of the games we play. (Thanks internet!)

Play. Move on. Play. Move on. A smothering new release after new release.

…and some may wonder why Portal was so popular—a breath of fresh air.

We’ll wrap this up in two days when we look at the amount of games we trade in.

Gamasutra is reporting some numbers from an NPD survey:

• The average video game collection has 48 titles
• 11% of all household games have unopened titles
• 54% trade in their titles when they no longer play them

Of all the data mentioned I find these three the most troubling. I’d like to take three separate occasions and get us to think about them, if only a little.

I did a quick survey of the console games I own, and I check in at 24. Add portable games to the number and I’ve got 35. I’m not too far from the average. Does that make me an average gamer? I spent about 30 minutes of legal pad figuring and sketching what number I may have peaked at. I reached 70+ owned at my best estimate and this would have placed me some time last year. I most attribute this to owning all three major consoles and both handhelds.

Funny, I certainly don’t feel like I’m at my peak of game playing. However, I’m close to my peak of game owning. In some ways I feel like I’ve lately cut back on buying games. Cutting my game titles in half can be easily figured if you trade games in at Gamestop. It gives a good indication of their values. It’s about two and a half games per new title—two and a half AAA games per AAA title. (Two weeks ago they offered me $65 for 10 games. I sold them all online for $210 profit. That’s for another post.)

I cannot put my finger on it, but something is wrong. Forty-eight games is the average. A lot of people own more. Here is the question that has plagued me since reading the article: How many can you play at a time?

Therefore, why do we own so many?

I honestly don’t know.

In my case, I have no local friends that play video games, I chat with two people online regularly, make three replies a week to posts on a community site, read two other blogs, and—from my best calculation—play an average of three hours a week. The last game I played online with anyone was Too Human for a total of two hours. Before that It was Burnout Paradise for three weeks. Yet, I still have—what I consider—a large library of games.

After chatting with one of those online friends, I believe the largest culprit to blame is the Internet. As gamers, we get our gaming news almost exclusively from the web. Before that, it was magazines. All the recent gaming magazines folding is a result of this. I would have never known about LittleBigPlanet if it wasn’t for the internet. If I just based my “game knowledge” outside the web, I would have known a little bit of info about Halo 3 and Mario Galaxy in the last year alone.

Next is the need to fit in. It’s a little superfluous, however. The need to fit in to what? There is really nothing tangible in online communication that goes into the real world. I actually disagree with this a little, because there are one or two individuals I’d like to meet and my family even knows of their family and vice versa because our interests have bled over into day to day conversation. However, whatever else I do online is mostly private and not shared with those locally around me.

It may also be a street cred issue. Once again, this proves to be superfluous. Street cred for who? Online acquaintances? Does GamerNerdC3P86 care if I have the latest title or not? I don’t think so. I share the latest game with people around me locally and I get looks as if I’ve not grown up.

Looking back at the social element, I probably purchase most of my games based on the recommendations of one or two individuals. It gives me something to talk about. I guess it does fit all the reasons listed above in some ways. The bottom line for this gamer is that I enjoy discussing and reading about gaming than I do playing them.

That’s a big revelation.

On Monday I’ll take a look at the second item from the data: unopened titles.