I don;t know about VCR tapes but cassette tapes have a tab on the top that keeps from recording over them. Of course removing that tab takes about ten seconds. :P

I wholeheartedly agree with some of Leroux's post and all of mrkgnao's.

I'm a casual gamer who likes to tinker.

I've probably spent more time figuring out how to disable huds and tweak gameplay then actually playing games.

I uh... I game collectors.

Yeah, doesn't have the same ring to it.

You don't like my post as well? ; ;

i know the VCR (VHS?) have a black square which i think is supposed to be a write protect. but considering you could break it you can't put it back to do its original function (whether it was protect or write) never tried it in practice though. ;-)

I'm a gamer.

I do a pretty decent job of managing my backlog (it's not as brobdingle-ee-donglee-ee as Yogs) and while I have a few games that are a bit more *for show* than playing, I make sure that I at least try for balance. That is, I like to have a couple games "lined up" for whatever mood might strike me, without having too many that it's just overwhelming / I know there are some I'll never touch.

It also helps that, while I will sink a TON of time in a game if I'm in love and can't get enough of it, I feel no obligation to continue playing something if I feel it's "run its course."

you can use sticky tape to cover the hole if the tab is broken off
the vcr doesnt care if the tab is broken off or not

all it cares about is if the hole is coverd or not

if the hole is covered the tape can be over written
if the hole is open its write protected

I don't buy games I don't plan to play, except...

Bundlemania and Steam Cards cahnged all that over the last 12-18 months for me. I would buy a bundle for one game i wanted and then activate the rest and idle them to get cards. With proceeds from card sales I managed to get some games I wanted but would never have paid for. Then I discovered Steamgifts, and I could gift the games to gain levels on SG and qualify for better giveaways. And I won some good games!

BUT! That created an entire time sink for me: scrolling through Steamgifts constantly, checking every bundle all the time, spending time creating giveaways, leaving my computer on over night just to idle games, etc. And on top of all that, my monthly spending on games was growing! Sure, I was getting more for my money, but I was also spending more money! I fell into the consumerist trap. Think how much I'll save by buying this! You always save more by not buying it.

However, I have successfully backed away from all that and am in a much happier place now. I have many many games I do want to play. I am playing several of them now. I waste less time and money on shopping for games and related activities.

I still have wishlists, but the pressure is off. I can more realistically say to myself: I will probably not have time to play that game until next year. So I can afford to wait.

Depends on the games and if its physical. I have collected a lot of oldies over the years, iv got a lot of digital but thats just from buying good deals on bundles.

I do this a bit - funny enough it's often the cheapest games that I scrutinize the most. It's very easy to just snatch them up so I'm VERY careful to really pour over whether or not 1) I really want them 2) when will I / how likely will I get to them and 3) how many other things do I have on my plate.

This way I can screen out a lot of stuff that would explode my backlog. I actually had to do this the last sale with two games I've been wanting a little bit, but that were in an "off" genre for me. I liked the subject matter and story potential, LOVED the source material (and they were even games I was hoping would show up here) - but at the end of the day I knew I wouldn't play them until Halloween and I knew they might be a bit cumbersome / aged / difficult enough that I wasn't sure what kind of fun I'd get out of them. Will I revisit them later? Sure, most likely. Did I need them now? Probably not ;)

I buy my games to play them, but who am I kidding? I've been collecting them for quite a few years now. Quite simply:

1) Some games are too cheap to pass up and I'll snatch them because of that or I'll miss my chance once the sale is over, even if I wasn't overly interested in playing the game.

2) I keep playing the games I like over and over, since the controls are already in my memory and everything is familiar. New games require learning and sometimes I'm just not patient enough, so they end up in the collection while the old favorites get replayed.

3) I keep thinking I'll eventually have the time to play all my games. My one greatest worry is that maybe someday I'll be too old or too tired of playing computer games. People's tastes change with time. Then it'll feel like a computer game collection was a poor investment. I take no pleasure in owning my games for the sake of owning them.

Gamer.
What ever I get if it's below 2 GB I play and finish it within a month (or atleast I try to do so).
That's why my backlog is very small.

I thought I'm the only one to have Data size rule, most of my backlog was 5+ GB games that i need to uninstall them when i needed more space.

Gamer and discriminating collector.