The collecting
culture is something that fascinates me, if to a relatively small
extent. I find myself struck - almost paralyzed - with awe witnessing
people’s collections. Some collect video games, some collect
movies, some collect music CDs, some collect fucking bottle caps. But
to me, it doesn’t matter what people collect, as long as their
collections are awe-inspiringly huge in size.
I am, in fact, kind of a collector myself, but not to a very great extent. I like to think of myself as a “selective” collector: I only hunt around for items I actually find that I absolutely want, and I always try to find the cheapest price possible. I don’t collect crazy amounts of items, and to be fair, my financial situation doesn’t allow that anyway. That’s why my collections are fairly small.
The three main things I collect are video games, music and DOOM-related stuff. I shouldn’t need to explain why I collect those three specific things at this point. In any case, all of those “categories” I collect both physical and digital copies of.
On a quick estimate, my largest collection of physical items would be my CD collection with 100+ items. My largest digital collection, on the other hand, is by far my Steam game library with 400+ games.
Due to my financial situation, I strive to purchase things for the most affordable prices I can find. That’s how I’ve managed to accumulate so many video games on Steam, for instance. Not only does Steam have regular sales going on, but there are a myriad of sites that pack select games into bundles and sell said bundles for incredibly cheap prices, one of the best of those sites being Humble Bundle. 5 games for a measly dollar? Too good a deal to pass up.
Since I’ve already touched upon how much I love the DOOM franchise, I won’t go into pointlessly deep detail about that. However, I do love the franchise so much that I have essentially two different DOOM collections: a digital and a physical one. I have all of the PC DOOM games digitally on Steam, as well as physical versions of them. I also own a CD of DOOM’s shareware episode for the PC, as well as two additional DOOM games for consoles. And four different DOOM novels. And a DOOM T-shirt. Indeed, so great is my love for that franchise that I collect all the merchandise I can. Or at least the merchandise I figure I need in order to keep the collection equal to the size of my love for the franchise.
I’m gushing again, aren’t I?
In all honesty, though, can you blame me? Yes, I might be crazy for DOOM, but I’m also damn proud to be so. Not many other franchises - not a single franchise, in fact - have managed to get me into collecting in the same way DOOM has. And the answer as to why is simple enough: not a single other franchise have I ever loved as much as DOOM.