Long Live Play PSN Community Spotlight

Hey everyone! It’s the latest edition of PSN Community Spotlight, where it’s your chance to get your PlayStation story featured on the PlayStation.Blog. By reviewing the dedicated space on the PlayStation Community Forums, we find compelling PlayStation stories and commentary, then deliver a $50 PlayStation Store voucher code to the winner every week.

Remember to read the posting best practices for more info.

This week’s spotlight is from PSN member renewman1. Stealing is lame, but read on to find out how this military man found a great way to rebuild his collection.

Thievery and Optimism: A Story!
Hi there PlayStation fanboys, fangirls, and fanpets (I know you’re out there!). My name is Renewman1. I am 22 years old, a veteran of the United States Air Force, a Computer Science college student, and a PlayStation fanatic. Akilleez Might (winner of The Tester Season 3) doesn’t have nothing on me! I wanted to start writing these entries as kind of a connection to my world and how I see all things Sony. However, like all good stories and police reports, we have to start at the very beginning.

My story begins back on June 6th, 2010. I was a fresh faced Air Force member on my way from Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia going to Kunsan Air Base in Gunsan, South Korea. I was excited to be going to another country and like a good PlayStation fan, I packed my PS3 and my rather large collection of games in my checked in luggage and flew from Virginia (where I currently live now) to Seattle. Upon arrival I rechecked my luggage (never can be too careful) and resubmitted it to the baggage claim and went on my merry way. The next leg of the trip required us to fly to Anchorage, Alaska before finally making our way to South Korea.

As we were flying away from Anchorage, disaster struck. The left engine of our plane began to smoke! Fortunately, the pilot turned the plane around and we landed safely back in Anchorage. Since it was a malfunction of the turbine and needed a new part, we were grounded for the night in Alaska. Also unfortunately, we were not allowed to gather our luggage from the plane. After a restless night (I mean could you sleep with the sun beaming in your eyes at 12 midnight?), we jumped back on the plane and finished our journey to South Korea.

When I finally got to my base and settled in, I unpacked my luggage to assess my things. To my horror and amazement, a large gap of where my games and Blu-Ray movies were was missing. I thought that they had maybe shifted during flight but to no avail. Someone had come on board the airplane in Alaska and stole from my luggage. After doing some tallying of all the games and movies missing, I had hit the grand total of $1,300 worth of games and movies gone. Of course I was depressed. The culprit had managed to steal a whole bunch of brand new games and movies I had bought. Not only that, when the thief saw they could no longer fit any more boxes on them, they began to take games from cases and left the cases in my suitcase.

So as I sat there with my nearly empty collection of games I thought: “Well I don’t have any physical games, what can I play on PSN?” Apparently a whole lot! I started grabbing games I had never played before: Flower, fl0w, Everyday Shooter, just to name a few. My digital collection grew and I didn’t care anymore that my games got stolen. I never lost faith in Sony to be able deliver great content anywhere in the world online. Of course I went back and replaced all of my games and my PS3 game collection is now over 75+ games strong and that’s not including the slew of games I have on my PS3 from PSN. It definitely helped that this was right around the time PlayStation Plus was first being rolled out so I jumped on board and got even greater deals and games then I did before! When Sony says the PS3 “only does everything”, they really mean it.

Do you have more games on your HDD then actual physical games? How are the increasing options in the digital space impacting your decisions to buy games? Congrats to renewman1, who is now the recipient of a $50 voucher redeemable in the PlayStation Store! Send in your stories here, and feel free to read renewman1’s original post here.