Well it wasnt by accident, I regularly search ebay for old games just so I can have them. Even if I never played them its just something I have then. In the past year I have bought 50+ PS2 games and 20+ Xbox games, all of which I may or may not ever play. But I am fine with that.

Did you start out in videogames with the intention of collecting stuff, or did it just happen later on?

It wasnt my intention to collect games before. But over the years my hunger for more games grew stronger and turned me into a collector. I dont just collect games for their rarity and for the sense of ownership (did i use that right?) I mainly buy games just to have vast collection.

I'm a fan of new play mechanics as well, though not a designer.

I... don't rent games either, unless I have a reason, such as needing to get opinions on a few games quickly.

Reason is, more often then not I want to play the game again later and who knows if i'll find it again?

This happened to me when i was a child, i'd use my allowance to rent a game every weekend and buy candy.

When the store went out of buisness and sold all it's games i couldn't "save" a number of my favorites, that had long since been out of stores since a lot were NES games and it was the SNES era.

I have games i may never get too... but I think i will eventually.  That's what retirement homes will be for, when I don't want to play the new fangled videogames i'm sure to hate due to age based bias.... or just being poor and on medicare.

If not though... oh well.  It's good to have options.

Nah, I just started buying more games when I graduated, and finally had a good income.
Then again I'm back to uni now with barely any money (will have time to catch up on some games) :D

@ richardhutnik

it wasnt my original intention, since I was only 6 when I started playing games. But it has become a main focus of mine with video games. I still love to play video games, and I hope I always will, but I have discoverd I also enjoy collecting them as well. Even the cheesey little collectibles that come with special editions. I am just glad I can afford to do this.

I accidentally became a collector years ago. I've long since realized it and accepted it, and now I embrace it. :P

For me, it had been a quest to find game play experience that are unique and never seen before, and be able to try them.  This then switched to actually owning the games and getting to them some day.  Now it got a bit out of hand, and I am looking to reduce the amount of this happening.  But now, I end up liking certain franchises (Crackdown and Mass Effect) and I see dream concepts coming about (Stuff like Fable III).  Then I fall for hype.  I also like to end up own retro arcade games.

I used to sell old games but then I found a neo geo at a garage sale for 9 dollars, 2732 games (as of my last inventorying) latter I haven't looked back 25 cents for Dragon Warrior 4 is quite sweet.