How Online RPGs Screwed Up My Consumer Sense

For those that don’t play online RPGs or any kind of online games that involve a community, item collecting, and rare treasures, let me educate you for a moment. These games all have one thing in common: rare items. These items are not like the rare items you would normally come across in offline RPGs where you are pretty much promised to come across it if you play long enough or are lucky enough. No, these items are items that you can get for a set timeline—most commonly for about a month—and then after that set timeline is up, the item goes away. When they go away, those that bought them or acquired them will no doubt hold on to them with the vain hope their price will go up. Owning a discontinued item is a very exciting investment.

In an online role-playing game only.

In real life, rare items don’t really lend themselves very much to exciting investments anymore. Oh, sure, you could use comic books as examples, but that market bubble popped a long time ago. The only ones worth anything any more are well over 50 years old and so rare they are spoken like legends themselves. Disney has been known to pull this trick every so often, but whenever they need a buck, those DVD reissues that they “threw back into the vault” come out again. But what about those items that have been discontinued by the manufacturer for whatever reasons those may be? Those obscure collector’s items that geeks like myself try to acquire and keep shrink wrapped are often sought after to the point of personal bankruptcy.

Which leads me nicely to my little epiphany I had just now. I was adding something to my Amazon Wish List when I noticed one of Samurai Jack season DVDs has been discontinued. I fearfully looked to see the alternative buying options only to fear potentially being conned into buying a bootleg copy… again. And in that panic, it suddenly dawned on me. The reason I wanted that item in the first place wasn’t because I was a fan of the series and wanted to relive it. It was to study the art style. But I already had a DVD that fit that role just fine, so why did I need the entire set?

See, this is where the collector in me will start yelling and screaming with illogical reasons as to why I would want the entire set. Yes, it’s nice to have the entire series of stories to relive and revisit whenever I’m feeling nostalgic, but in the end, what I was looking at was something I didn’t really enjoy to the point where I’d seek it out in its entirety. Which is sad given the fact that I love Samurai Jack but found their stories rather hit and miss. At least with the Batman: The Animated Series collection, I knew I would enjoy every story they put out, even the bad ones. It’s also why I haven’t bothered looking into the Justice League collection since I only like a handful of episodes and not the entire series. And yet here I am still waiting on Animaniacs vol. 4 just because I love the show and its nonsensical humor that is not only dated but still able to stand the test of time.

I guess part of me just wants to hold on to something from the past like a photo album. I know another part of me wants certain things so that I can show them to other people in the future, hence why I have some Queer Cinema titles on there that I need to buy the moment they become widely available. But the rest of the stuff on there as far as my entertainment goes is pure nostalgia. It won’t bring me any kind of good short of being able to relive a happier time in my life that doesn’t exist anymore save for the vague memories of that time.

So the smart consumer in me came out and looked at my wish list and deleted that which served no real purpose or things that I wouldn’t miss. It actually freed up several hundreds of dollars I could have potentially spend. But looking back on it all, I can’t help but wonder why I was behaving that way in the first place. Why did I want so many items where I already got what I wanted out of them?

I’ll tell you why. It’s because of the behavioral trait I picked up playing online games where there was an emphases on collecting rare goods in the hope of being able to make a profit out of it. And sadly, those days are over in the real world, thanks to mass production.

I really need to get back in touch with reality. Living a cyber life 80% of the time is proving to be damaging to the little exposure of reality I get in my daily life now.