It can oftentimes be quite revealing to see what a gamer keeps in his personal library. And in what condition. I'm sometimes accused of hating games, because people end up latching on to very specific details in my writings or in what I've said, and can't see anything else. But when you take a grand view of the kinds of the games one willingly wants to hold on to in his library, and to proudly display, and to affectionately keep in good (sometimes limited) condition is a whole other story. It's much harder to refute someone when you see something like that.
I must confess I had a friend who I thought was quite harsh on games. I thought of him somewhat as an Anton Ego sort of fellow. Turns out that was a false impression. Because when I eventually saw the kinds of games he was buying, the kinds of games that he was hungry to play, it was quite illuminating. I never would have thought in a million years that he would so much as even look in the direction of some of those games without a sneer. But here he was, excited by the kinds of games I had been casually dismissing for not being the best of the best. Sometimes even based on something he'd said!
But, no. Here was a genuine game lover. As genuine as it gets.
Game Libraries
Re: Game Libraries
Literary Taste: How to Form It - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13852/13 ... 3852-h.htm
Arnold Bennett wrote: Buy a library. It is obvious that you cannot read unless you have books. I began by urging the constant purchase of books—any books of approved quality, without reference to their immediate bearing upon your particular case. The moment has now come to inform you plainly that a bookman is, amongst other things, a man who possesses many books. A man who does not possess many books is not a bookman. For years literary authorities have been favouring the literary public with wondrously selected lists of "the best books"—the best novels, the best histories, the best poems, the best works of philosophy—or the hundred best or the fifty best of all sorts. The fatal disadvantage of such lists is that they leave out large quantities of literature which is admittedly first-class. The bookman cannot content himself with a selected library. He wants, as a minimum, a library reasonably complete in all departments. With such a basis acquired, he can afterwards wander into those special byways of book-buying which happen to suit his special predilections. Every Englishman who is interested in any branch of his native literature, and who respects himself, ought to own a comprehensive and inclusive library of English literature, in comely and adequate editions. You may suppose that this counsel is a counsel of perfection. It is not. Mark Pattison laid down a rule that he who desired the name of book-lover must spend five per cent. of his income on books. The proposal does not seem extravagant, but even on a smaller percentage than five the average reader of these pages may become the owner, in a comparatively short space of time, of a reasonably complete English library, by which I mean a library containing the complete works of the supreme geniuses, representative important works of all the first-class men in all departments, and specimen works of all the men of the second rank whose reputation is really a living reputation to-day.