Plagued Consoomers / Consoomer Culture - Because if it has a recogniseable brand on it, I’d buy it!

[Oxyjen]

'The Etched City' by K.J. Bishop, published in 2003.

I think you may have just caused that to become a valuable collectors’ item

 

[glass_houses]

I think you may have just caused that to become a valuable collectors’ item

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Yeah, that's the edition that was put out when it was picked up by a larger publisher. I have the original small press edition.


It's actually on Kindle Unlimited, if anyone is interested. In the years since it came out my tastes and thinking have refined quite a bit and I can see its flaws. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone I didn't know well, put it that way. It still remains one of my favourite books, however.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

Funny though that physical books continue to vastly outsell e-books, with the margins not really changing over the years. I remember when everyone predicted they would replace real books. Part of it is just some people prefer real pages (as we can see in this very thread), but also there are certain kinds of books that don't work in the e-format. I have alot of photography driven books, ie big full page photos of landscapes, buildings, etc - these are completely worthless in the e-format.

But I do prefer them in the e-format if its something I intend to read once and probably never again; I don't need my library filling up with paperbacks I couldn't sell for a penny on Amazon less a year after their release.

 

[MirrorNoir]

What the hell is Skywalker ranch anyway? Wasn’t the moisture farm on Tattoine called the Lars Homestead (as in Owen and Beru Lars)

It's a property owned by George Lucas where he does all of his pre-production and post-production work on all of his films.

 

[The Southwest Strangla]

Standard fare from the YA book front. Where it's not enough to just read books (lol what's a library,) you have to buy them all and make your shelf pretty for the internet... as well as collecting multiple copies with minuscule differences.

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This fuckin’ mini mall katanas got me lol. It’s so out of place. Lmao

 

[MirrorNoir]

honestly nintendo shit as a whole is crazy cause of retroomers. gamecube game prices are fucking insane compared to playstation 2 and original xbox games, the only ps2 games that really cost a fuckload of money now are extremely niche japanese games usually but the gamecube? you'll be paying up the ass for a zelda or mario game

I don't know why it's mostly nintendo in specific, I guess it's due to N64/Gamecube not selling as much as their competitors? but it's also definitely some fascination with Nintendo being the disney of gaming

N64 and Gamecube was when Nintendo got eclipsed by the Playstation and as such, games were not sold in as heavy quantity as they used to during the NES/SNES period. Combined with the fact that Nintendo often skipped emulating the two systems during prior Virtual Console life cycles, in favor of a rare select few games getting remade or reissued in HD at full retail price or as rare as fuck promotional discs. We are only just now getting Nintendo working on select N64 emulation for the Switch and still no sign if or when they'll begin converting GC games for legal emulation via Nintendo Switch.

 

[𝕺𝖑' 𝕯𝖎𝖗𝖙𝖞 𝕱𝖆𝖙𝖘𝖔]

Funny though that physical books continue to vastly outsell e-books, with the margins not really changing over the years. I remember when everyone predicted they would replace real books. Part of it is just some people prefer real pages (as we can see in this very thread), but also there are certain kinds of books that don't work in the e-format. I have alot of photography driven books, ie big full page photos of landscapes, buildings, etc - these are completely worthless in the e-format.

But I do prefer them in the e-format if its something I intend to read once and probably never again; I don't need my library filling up with paperbacks I couldn't sell for a penny on Amazon less a year after their release.

I prefer real books because I find it easier to focus. I've never used a proper kindle/ereader so it might be different, but with pdf/ebooks on my laptop or phone there's always distraction a click away. I sperged about this in another thread but there's also something about a shelf at a library or bookstore that makes you expand your horizons more than internet searches could ever do. You miss out on the element of finding something really interesting by random chance if you can't pick up a book on a whim and flip through a few pages before deciding on whether you want to read the whole thing.

 

[Lapis Lazuli]

The worst kind of consoomer is the kind who buys an extremely obscure game, only to hoard it and never upload it on the internet.
There was a prototype copy of a unreleased NES game known as Indy: The Magical Kid that went on auction. The game was heavily sought after, so naturally people hopped on the auction quick on the hopes that they could dump the game online and work on a fan translation. They were able to raise about 7000$, but in the end a Japanese collector bought it for 13,750$ and refused to dump it on the internet all because he doesn't want people to "pirate" the game.

 

[Vingle]

in the end a Japanese collector bought it for 13,750$ and refused to dump it on the internet all because he doesn't want people to "pirate" the game.

I got mixed feelings about this. The value of the game would lessen if other people get it, and how would it benefit the collector to share it with others?

I would be more okay with it, if the collector got paid for it.

 

[InwardsStink]

I got mixed feelings about this. The value of the game would lessen if other people get it, and how would it benefit the collector to share it with others?

I would be more okay with it, if the collector got paid for it.

No it wouldn’t. A ROM is a valuable archival tool that allows future generations to emulate old games, but it is not the genuine article and does not devalue the genuine article. No one of sane mind is going to pay that much just to play a video game, but collectors would still be interested.

 

[DuckSucker]

Plus the lack of turning the pages makes the book seem endlessly long since you can't see or feel the book becoming slimmer on one side, and if the book is on any device with internet access you're always one mindless motion away from endless distraction and never actually finishing or absorbing the thing. There's also people like me who start to get eyestrain reading dense text on a screen who aren't bothered by a physical page.

Its dumb but this and ADD are the reasons Ive never been able to get into e-books. Something about being able to tangibly turn the page and then if you want to set it down, there are chapters and you can see from your bookmark or whatever, you get a feeling of, yeah I read that much of it, I remember it, more than just being kind of more relatable to just scrolling through a news feed or some shit.

 

[Jimjamflimflam]

Maybe it's changed now but I gave up on ebooks when they were trying to sell me a 5 year old book for 15$ when i could just get a paper copy for 2$ plus 3$ shipping. That's just pure greed too keep it at that price.

I would be more okay with it, if the collector got paid for it.

They don't want the money. They want the e-dick stroking of people asking to dump it and them saying "no". It's true that they are under no obligation to dump it but when they rub it in people faces that they got it, it's all about the ego nothing to do with "muh collector value"

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

The boom box collection is serious business.

 

[moocow]

E-books are great when you "acquire" them via Library Genesis and read them on a non-shitty, non-Amazon e-reader with an actually decent-sized screen (Boox makes some great e-ink readers for example; even a couple color e-ink ones).

 

[Vingle]

No one of sane mind is going to pay that much just to play a video game

I was more thinking of splitting the cost between the fansubbers. The fansubbers would be free to set a price for the subs, to cover it.

They don't want the money. They want the e-dick stroking of people asking to dump it and them saying "no".

I missed the part where it were written that the collector rubbed it in. Just that he refused to dump it, which reads to me at least. That the fansubbers contacted and asked him.

 

[Jimjamflimflam]

I missed the part where it were written that the collector rubbed it in. Just that he refused to dump it, which reads to me at least. That the fansubbers contacted and asked him.

Maybe I'm assuming the worst but to me it's always a flex. I have this thing that others want to see and i won't let anyone else see it for dumb reason.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

Maybe I'm assuming the worst but to me it's always a flex. I have this thing that others want to see and i won't let anyone else see it for dumb reason.

This. I've been into retrogaming/emu scene for over 20 years, and 99% of the collectors do it as a flex "I got mine and you don't". Owner of Marble Madness II did this forever (though now that one doesn't matter as much).

The only valid reason for not releasing a ROM, but a rare one, is that some owners are spooked about putting out certain prototypes for fear they could get in some kind of legal trouble - in a couple of cases I know of, there are a couple of Atari 2600 prototypes where the only known copies are held by the former devs. I don't agree with this (they could push it out there secretly and lie about it), but I understand it.

Eventually the games will get out there, and it may not be in the way you expect. Vs. Urban Champion, a NES Vs series arcade game, has come up on Yahoo auctions a few times but Japanese hoarders always get it. It remains undumped in MAME, but Nintendo themselves obviously have a copy somewhere as the game is available on Switch's Arcade Archives series.

 

[Vingle]

Maybe I'm assuming the worst but to me it's always a flex. I have this thing that others want to see and i won't let anyone else see it for dumb reason.

I see your point, but I think it's more of a Western thing. The Japanese are more reserved.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

I see your point, but I think it's more of a Western thing. The Japanese are more reserved.

Having dealt with Japanese collectors before, this isn't accurate. They absolutely do hoard, and it is almost entirely for nationalistic reasons. Just as one example, it took many years to get all of the DECO cassette arcade games because of them, and they would frequently send some of people collecting money for them nasty messages about how they wouldnt 'allow' a Japanese game to be sent out of Japan. Some of the sellers themselves are like this too and will say so openly on the auctions; I know of several instances where they had to use a surrogate bidder in Japan to bid and not have the auction cancelled when they saw it was to a non Japan address.

 

[Vingle]

Having dealt with Japanese collectors before, this isn't accurate. They absolutely do hoard, and it is almost entirely for nationalistic reasons. Just as one example, it took many years to get all of the DECO cassette arcade games because of them, and they would frequently send some of people collecting money for them nasty messages about how they wouldnt 'allow' a Japanese game to be sent out of Japan. Some of the sellers themselves are like this too and will say so openly on the auctions; I know of several instances where they had to use a surrogate bidder in Japan to bid and not have the auction cancelled when they saw it was to a non Japan address.

This is something in all of japan, they just don’t like us foreigners. Different from rubbing it in our faces though, it’s more like keeping «treasures» in their country».