Playing Games in The Name Of Research

Any of you guys seen that art institutes commercial? Ya know what I'm talking about, the one with the game director for God of War III. While doing some lore work for "This World", his line popped into my head: "...before I played games for hours in the name of research..." and it hit me. That is exactly what I need to do.
I took the aspects of our game and broke them down into the most important aspects: Creature collecting, Turn Based Strategy, and Lore. I got my self a Nintendo DS emulator, a Gameboy Advance emulator, and the following games:
-Pokemon: White
-Dragon Quest IX
-Final Fantasy Tactics A2
-Fire Emblem
-Rune Factory 3
I figure each of these has enough to do with any number of those aspects to be useful for my research, and now for the past two days I've been sitting braindead in front of my computer reading what 16 bit characters have to say about the same exact thing. I have to wonder: Am I really being that productive? Is this really how I want my rpg to turn out? and Why does anybody still pay for handheld games when its so easy to get a ROM?