What would you do if all your video games were destroyed?

Something has concerned me lately. I own many consoles and many physical video game copies. I own 8 consoles including 3 handhelds. 300 physical copies of video games I own. But, I own so many that it would be such a travesty if anything bad were to happen to them. You know like get burned or destroyed. I have this fear for a very long time because I have such a good memories with these consoles. And I'd hate to see them go. My cousin gave me most of my consoles. And I have many awesome video games I haven't even finished.

This goes generally exclusively out to console gamers before any of you pure PC fanboys get all hyper and say. "OMG, leik get a PC. Consoles are for babies. Ehhuehuehuehue! lol snort snort Lord Gaben" I've actually grew up with a windows 95. Hello?! I had like hundreds of programs I don't even know about and the video games put on there are very hardcore. 4% handholding. Like all those flight simulators and point n' click adventure titles. And I have a computer that can run Crysis 3 on high minus TXAA high smoothing. But anyway.

Me and my sister have grown nostalgic attachments to our PS1 and gamecube.

How would you react? If all your awesome video games were destroyed? Including old school consoles.

I hope this isn't too cowardly for you guys. I just had the scariest thought that's all.

I worry about this all the time. I have thousands of dollars in video games. I have thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of stuff in my house. My biggest fear is my house getting broken into. My 21 year old cousin is a heroin addict and he's been breaking into houses. He broke into my grandmothers house twice and ripped her off. I'm worried I'm on his list. He rips me off I will beat him to death. I live 2 blocks north of Detroit and 2 of my neighbors homes have been broken into. I have wooden sticks in the windowsills so no one can jimmy the windows open. I have a 2x8 board that I wedge between the backdoor and step so no one can kick the door open. All you can do is hope it don't happen and try to prevent it.

If you live with your parents and they have homeowners insurance then your covered. But in case there ever were a problem and you needed to make a claim you need to prove the stuff you have. Take pictures of everything and documents all your games and systems. In the picture make sure you have a piece of paper with your name on it. Upload the pictures to photobucket.

I don't know... and I don't wanna know. :(

Start over again I guess. Not much of a choice.

Be upset and then start over trying to replace what I had when possible.

@Alexander2cents:

Well, ideally, that shouldn't be an issue. Not speaking specifically about games, but the same applies with art. Specifically with ARTISTS, rather than art collectors. If you're an art collector who has been collecting photographs and paintings, then it's suck if your collection was destroyed in a fire. But what's worse is when the ARTIST'S work gets detroyed in a fire before anyone gets to see it.

Solution: back your shit up. If you are a "creator" of ANYTHING, then you back up every fucking thing you do. If it's something that can't be copied, then at the very least you take a fucking photograph. Invest in multiple copies on several devices, and have AT LEAST one hard drive sitting in a safe deposit box at a completely separate location. That way, if god forbid your entire house burns down, you've got all that shit stored somewhere else. And yes, repeatedly update that shit onto new storage devices, because hard drives and other storage devices will DEFINITELY fail. Rotate that shit out.

Of course, that's speaking as the CREATOR. We get into a legal grey area when the COLLCTOR does that shit. So...do it and don't tell anyone about it. Rather than copying shit so you can distribute it on Pirate Bay, copy that shit and put the copy on a hard drive in a secure safe deposit box. If this is a matter of preserving what's important, then by all means break the rules just so that it's preserved FOR YOU. In the event that your games get destroyed and there are no means to reaquire it, you've got a working copy at a second location.

Make backups of shit whenever possible, IF it's something that you really don't want to lose.

And yes, this requires effort.

If my videogame collection were destroyed. I would just start over and rebuild my collection of consoles and games. This has happened twice before. So while it may suck. You feel bad about the lost of stuff. You just start over and begin collecting anew. I have bought 9 Super Nintendo consoles over the years. Since 1991 life happens and sometimes consoles and games are lost, Destroyed, stolen etc. And sometimes you just need money for things such as a airplane ticket. This is how my Xbox 360 and original Xbox collection "ended".

But only for a time. Today I have all of the Playstations, The Xboxes and the Nintendos. 941 games across them all. Material things can always be replaced. Yes it sucks when collections are lost, Destroyed, Stolen or have to be sold. But they can be regained. Yes the loss of material stuff does hurt. You just rebuild, and continue on. But that is just the way life is.

If I lost my collection again. I will just start another one.

Very, very upset. However, one of the few good things about steam (and origin as well I suppose) is that the ownership (or rentalship, depending on your view) transcends physicality, thus most of my games post 2009 could be instantly recovered on another machine.

You must be a teenager.

Home insurance will cover any loss. Keep an itemized list and you'll get replacement costs for everything.

I got very rare and valuable items, including priceless video game stuff. I would hope to never have that scenario happen.

That makes 2 of us.

Nothing because almost all my games dont exist, they are digital

My games, as a single unit, are currently insured @ the $10, 000 dollar range.

What if all of Steam, Origin and GOG servers got destroyed at once, along with your HDD? :P

I'd only replace the stuff I know I'm goint to play again, so mostly games from this gen. Then I guess I would start over and collect games from that point onwards. I'd also weep.

Cry

And then cry moar

This. Although my collection isn't very big, I'm not the collector type, when I'm done with a console I trade it in for the next generation.

I'd be very upset. I do have a games collection (although not as big as some people are mentioning), and I put great emotional value in some of my items. I try to keep my house as safe as possible with a lot of locks and an alarm system, but the fear of someone breaking in never goes away. Just hope for the best, keep everything as safe as possible and do backups of everything that you can.

not care?

I'm no collector throw it out or donate. Not like you play all 300 games.

Go outside.

I would get the backups and make a new collection.

But most of my games are digital so if they were to vanish i wouldn't be too destroyed, afterall its just games and its not like life revolves around them.

In other words what people who invested money in OnLive are going through as we speak?

Probably say:

I've already worked on downsizing my game collection, so in terms of physical games its only about maybe 30 of them. If they were destroyed, I'd probably just buy them new, or at least rebuy my favorites.

I would redownload them :)

Sue somebody

@Alexander2cents: Years ago my apartment was broken into and they stole my consoles, games and DVDs.

I was just happy no one was home and/or hurt. The police didn't help at all, but they're lazy and corrupt here in San Francisco so I wasn't expecting much.

Afterwards, I read some books.

If I lost them as a result of someone...

• I would start think of ways of making look like an accident.
• Begin working on a speech making it sound like it was a crime of passion.
• Find a suitable place in the desert to bury the body then move to another country.

@Alexander2cents: It's always a fear, you just got to accept it

Most of my newer games are all digital on Steam so Valve would have some explaining to do. The rest are mostly older titles that are more sentimental than anything else and a few that I couldn't care less about like most of my PS3 and PSP games. I know I'll likely never actually play any of my physical copies ever again so it wouldn't be a huge loss to me. The only possible losses that would hurt my feelings are the stuff that I collect and my more expensive items like my Macbook pro which has all my passwords locked in keepass on it, my backup drive which houses gigs and gigs of stuff I've collected over time such as dvd rips, books, magazines, pictures, literally all my music...etc.

Actually now that I think about it, I really should get another fire safe big enough to house my laptop, backup drive and both of my $300 collector edition transformers at least. It's a small investment compared to what I'd lose in a fire at least.

Security alarm, camera, 2 pit bulls and all highest valuables locked up...at least that's what I do. Even my garage has an alarm on it. My only fear is that my alarm goes off, cops come and shoots my pit bulls cause that's what they seem to do but at least my stuff is safe and they did their service....well one can hope anyway.

As someone who once lost all his games and consoles (by being robbed) I can tell you it feels.... oddly liberating.

however being a realist and living in a post-modern society, that liberating feeling of not being shackled with possessions and material goods soon waned as soon as I saw previews for the next great game...

And here I am again with a shelf full of games I barely have time to play.

@Expane: This sounds wonderful. Can I put multiple answers as best answers because this is really good stuff right here.

@foxhound_fox: Really? Even collectible Items?

You get replacement value. If it's been officially appraised for insurance purposes of course.

I would feel liberated.

That's all fine and well, and it's certainly better than nothing. But it's still just money, and there's no guarantee that that money is gonna be able to replace the item. The far preferable option is to just try to avoid losing the items in the first place. This is ESPECIALLY true if you're lucky enough to own something that is actually rare as shit, like one of those gold Nintendo All Stars cartridges. Whatever value something like that is appraised at, you're lucky to find someone who owns a replacement copy. And then you'd be lucky to actually get them to sell it to you for the price that it was appraised at. Replacement value is better than nothing, but if it was good enough then everyone who owned these kinds of collectibles would actually be selling them off for the money.

I would re-download them, as all of my games are on the cloud now a days (STEAM, Origin, ARC, Battle.net, etc.)

You don't need to lose all your games when publishers like 2K games can simply wipe your single player saves for a 1 year old game. :)

Change the cloud, change the world

Delete the game servers, delete the online sync saves

That kind of attitude doesn't prevent fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, theft or any other sort of "acts of God". That's why there is insurance.

Well sure, insurance will cover your stuff if it gets stolen, but it'd probably be better if you bought a safe so that your stuff doesn't get stolen in the first place. And acts of god may be unpreventable, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's futile to keep your stuff from getting ruined by acts of god. Anyway, insurance is fine, but that's still sort of a shitty situation. You get paid out when you lose your stuff, but generally speaking people would rather have the stuff instead of the money.

Wouldn't affect me since it's all digital. Just have to redownload what I need :)

Eventually

@Alexander2cents:

I would put a gun to my head.

@huntinwabbits:

@Alexander2cents Exactly hahahaha

I haven't read all the replies to this, but I think I'm old by teen standards. I owned an Atari when I was a kid, but my brother, my cousin, and my self argued over it so much my dad cracked it over his knee, literally. Then we got a Nintendo which my dad played Mario in front of us for HOURS before he let us get a hold of it! Jerk. Then the Super Nintendo! Yes!

Then, exactly what you're fearful of, happened. Our house burned down, and all those things where gone. Including my frig'n comic books! NOOOOO! It was truly a hard thing, but you'll find out that holding the physical thing in your hands can't compare to the actual memories it created.

So with my old man knowledge (I'm 35, that's old right?) I would HATE losing all the current things I love and those things that give me that nostalgia, but I know nothing can take away those awesome memories! :D Oh, and I'd probably shoot myself in the foot as well...just to dull the pain for a bit.

Sidestep those storefronts and download what you've already paid for once using other methods...

@Expane: Oddly I think this is how I would feel. I may buy back a few of the best games in my collection, but each year I think to myself 'man. I need to trim some of these games on my shelf.'

@Alexander2cents: Probably nothing. Either start looking to collect them again or not bother. Your memories are probably worth more than the games themselves at this point.

Take pictures of them all and store them somewhere so you at least know what games you have. Maybe store the oldest/rarest items somewhere more protective. I don't know where. Maybe in the basement in a fire proof box. Much harder to set fire to a basement. Or rent a storage container because many of those places have good fire systems for this exact reason.

They are just plastic cartridges and disks in the end though. I know the owning of the physical item for so long is a personal thing but how much do they matter really?