How many things do you have around your house or room that show people what you’re in to? If you’re a motorsport fanatic, do you have signed helmets or cans of incredibly rare engine lubricant on your mantle? If you’re a World of Warcraft addict (and you should seek help for that you know), how many Pandaren Brewmaster figurines surround your Alliance-branded coin set?

A more interesting question is: what is the benefit to us of owning this stuff? Is the pleasant and ensnaring sensation of nostalgia easier to elicit with objects around that constantly invoke memories of good times? Is it to do with the need for a comforting and familiar home-space? Or do the objects serve, like a clothing choice or a hairstyle, to contribute to an outward appearance of how we would like others to view us?

A blog which endeavours to explore issues like these through the examples of gaming is a perfect place for me to be posing these questions, as it’s my experience that gamers (that is, people who occupy themselves with the product and process of gaming industry as a primary hobby) are among the most likely to surround themselves with indicators of their pastimes. Shelves full of new games, old games we remember from childhood, old games we don’t remember but have anyway, myriad machines and toys and figures and posters and shirts. What is the main purpose or function of these collections? Time for divergent theories!

1: Nostalgia

This would certainly explain why, for example, there’s a figure of Squall Leonhart on my shelf (he’s the dark chap with the sword in the top right of the pic above). It certainly makes sense that a person would collect objects that remind them of childhood or good times and experiences from the past, in this case Final Fantasy VIII, one of my most vibrant and cherished memories of gaming in the mid-nineties. Another good example would be band t-shirts that a person has kept from a gig that was significant to them somehow.

But surely this can’t account for all relic collection. Two specific problems I can spot on my own shelf – a Sega Dreamcast which I love but actually never owned when it was current, and face-washers depicting scenes from Super Mario Bros, a game that was first released months before I was born. These anomalies would be the equivalent of our muso either ebaying a shirt from a gig she didn’t bother to go to but later realised she would have really liked to, or wearing Sex Pistols gig shirts even though she’s 16 years old and clearly doesn’t have a first-hand experience tied to them.

This doesn’t rule out nostalgia entirely of course. The Dreamcast could be reminiscent of a general time or mode of game that I remember even if I didn’t own the machine, and I could of course be nostalgic for the time I experienced Mario (or the Sex Pistols), even if it was years after the fact. There are other possible explanations however…

2: Personal aesthetic

The argument offered by this theory is pretty simple. Basically if I like games I will like things that have to do with games for the same reason. If I love the art-style of The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker, it makes sense that I would like to wear a shirt with the same aesthetic, or put up a poster on my wall. It’s pretty well established that most people like to look ‘nice’, and have their home look ‘nice’, and it follows that their interpretation of ‘nice’ will be informed by their interests.

For example I once boarded at the house of a man whose entire kitchen was coated in Elvis memorabilia. Mostly decorative plates, but also posters and clocks and records. The man had even made a decent effort at an Elvis pompadour and sideburns, although he was a little thin on the top to really pull it off. It’s unlikely that his choice of décor was informed by nostalgia. Most of the stuff was pretty new and fairly generic, and as far as I could tell this guy had never met or had meaningful experiences with Elvis. However it was clear that he admired Elvis’ style and thought his visage looked good, and he consequently thought his kitchen looked good full of Elvis.

For the record I did not think the kitchen looked good. I avoided spending time there as much as possible.

3: Image projection

Probably my favourite of these three theories to think about. Have you been into Jay-Jays recently? Have you seen the sheer multitude of video game related items they stock there? Some of them aren’t even contextually accurate, and many of them spit in the face of the spirit of the games they attempt to represent. This fact seems to imply the motivation for wearing the item doesn’t lie in the above two theories, but rather was selected for the trendiness of its cultural symbols. I met a friend’s girlfriend once who was wearing a t-shirt that made a very subtle reference to the art of vegetable throwing in Super Mario 2. I assumed she was a fan but when I mentioned it she had absolutely no idea to what I was referring. The resultant irony was that I looked like a complete loser.

The collecting of items as a communication of personal image is a phenomenon of which there are a billion examples. Retro-style pre-faded shirts for one. Or rings made out of scrabble pieces (sorry if you are actually a huge scrabble fan hipster-lady I saw on the tram this morning). Don’t mistake this theory for some sort of negative critique of the people wearing / displaying these items. I think it’s entirely plausible that every aesthetic choice we make is driven by the need to have others see us as attractive or interesting. However I would really like to believe the choices are informed more by the former two theories.

4: Inseparable or unknowable mixture of these three theories

As is often the case (sigh), this seems most likely. Or is it the cop-out option? Why do you collect what you collect? Feel free to detail your opinion in the comments below. If you can’t be bothered, I’ve also included a poll for extra fun!