God yes, I'll pick up every meaningless bit of trash for whatever little it may grant.

ehrmm... forget anything about fun, To take the challenge maybe?
At least thats how I rationalize it to myself...
You know, try to reach where no one else has before...

Bonus in vgames:
It -might be- you could find a way to break the vgame,
find a hidden easter egg, reveal some secret... you name it!
Yes, I got highly inspired ages ago when -just urban legends-
(internet/hyper-informed were weird dreams)
talked about few killing Pacman with their skill...
That inspiration still stands. And not only in vgames! :)

And my 2 cents:
Please, just dont react mindlessly to a "chicken" call :)
Prove is not a compulsion, but you fully under control

Once we decide that something is valuable or desirable, our brain will start to give a slight endorphin rush whenever we get that thing. (Many pay-to-win games take advantage of that to extreme levels.) Even when something is no longer useful or valuable to us, it's difficult to break that reaction in our brain that says "Whoohoo! I got [useless junk]!" The endorphin release triggers a fraction of a millisecond before our logic kicks in and says "But I don't need that..."

If inventory is limited, I usually try to keep one "full stack" of each crafting material, barter item, upgrade component, etc. -- especially if the game also provides some kind of bank/vault/stash for long-term storage. That gives me the reassurance that if that thing does become useful again, I've got it covered or am at least a good way into it.

In games where materials go into their own separate inventory... pfft, grab it all and horde away. Nothing lost there.

I know pain.....


that said, the unreal fear of using something i might need later always managed to put a certain restraint on using items

Doing so right now in Fallout 4. I'm really done building and crafting stuff in this current run, yet I still have the urge to hoover up all the junk(!) that I see just in case. I literally have thousands of most materials at my home base now.
Was it plus or minus 50% of the time moving around sluggishly because you were over-encumbered?

A lot of fast travel trips to Goodsprings where my central storage was and offloading stuff there. The only cases where I was walking there encumbered was when finishing DLCs and grabbing everything relevant from them to move to the central storage. Could easily be an hour IRL and 2 in-game days of leisurely walking through the wasteland from the DLC entry point to Godsprings

We live a in a very different age now, a digital one of plenty, but many of us precede this age, and we got our compulsions out of necessity and they are now hard to break .... and of course we still have this worry that in an instant everything will go to the shit house. You could even call something like the COVID 19 impact a wake up call for encouraging such worries.

It's not just toilet paper and baked beans cans we feel the need to stockpile on.

I think we've become conditioned to collect things in-game.
In older games you had to do it just to survive in the game.
In many later games you had to do it in order get more powerful and be able to beat bosses (JRPGs for example).
Then came looter-shooters, where it's collecting for the sake of collecting, like some mini "gear management game".
More recently survival games of various kinds, where it's collect-craft-repeat.

In real life I have a bad habit of amassing books, but in my defense it's mainly used and rare(ish) books, especially textbooks of various sorts, in my opinion older academic books are better, at least the way I wish to learn and study.

Collecting is a basic instinct. That's why games use it.

Some people weigh the collecting instinct vs obstacles moreso than others (for a variety of reasons).

Now, collecting a resource in-game once there is no reason to continue collecting it... that is truly just running on compulsion / instinct. It's all fine... as long as your in-game home doesn't become a hoarding fire hazard! ;)

It sounds like you're describing a common practice in open-world role-playing games, particularly in the context of the game "Fallout: New Vegas." Fast-traveling to a central storage location, like Goodsprings, to offload items is an efficient way to manage your inventory and gear. However, it can indeed take some time in both real life and in-game days to transport items back and forth, especially after completing DLCs. This approach allows you to keep your inventory manageable and access essential items when needed.

In some older games, you had to do it just so that you wouldn't be caught without an item that turns out to be required.

(An example of this is the inafamous Babel Fish puzzle in the Hitchhiker's Guide video game.)


One other quirk: When I play a Dragon Quest games, I tend to hoard seeds instead of using them. (For those not aware, a seed is a rare consumable that, when used, permanently increases a stat.)

I've been known to do this with similar items in other games as well.