Archiving

jjstraka34

In the early days of Diablo 3's development, Blizzard announced a class that turned out to be one of their annual April Fool's jokes....The Archivist. The reason I bring this up is because lately I've been thinking about how I spend alot of my time in regards to games, and CRPGs in general. I love playing them, but I wonder if I'm not more obsessed with obtaining, ordering, and having easy access to the vast history of the genre.

My Steam overlay is filled with all the non-DOS era games. Games that require DOSbox have their own folder on my desktop. I have copies of every manual, map, cluebook and reference card for each that I have been able to track down. Every file is nearly named, categorized, and easily accessible. I don't have the time to read all this information, much less the time to ever play all these games. But I like collecting them, I like having information about them. More than anything, I like KNOWING that I can dive into any of these games and be as completely prepared for them as possible.

Point being, sometimes, I feel less like a gamer, and more like an Archivist. Anyone else have this mad obsession wherein obtaining information and knowledge about something is often just as important to you as the actual tangible product (be it games, movies, music, books)??

jackjack

I do my best to avoid this, but who am I kidding? One sale is all it takes to bring out the rabid, foam-covered maniac obsessed with archiving that dwells within me.
*shakes fist at the heavens*

JuliusBorisov

I learned it the hard way that working deals with hoarding games:)

Metalloman

I'm with you, @jjstraka34!

I also backup my hard drives because I'm pretty sure that if my archive would be lost I'll never find certain old and niche games again... T^T

DJKajuru

Archiving lore is quite fun, in fact , if DnD books had more information and less emphasis on rulesets and charts, I would be a lot happier with those.

jackjack

Gotta love Volo's guides for "lore"