I used to pride myself on my video game collection. My collection of GameCube titles, in particular, was a sight to behold. The GameCube came out just before I graduated high school, so while I was in college and working part-time I had quite the expendable income with which to buy whatever I wanted. So while I picked up every GameCube game worth playing, I also picked up a few terrible games just because they were part of a series and would look nice on my shelf. For example, Electronic Arts' Everything or Nothing was the only good James Bond game released while they held the license, yet I felt compelled to buy Agent Under Fire, Nightfall, and From Russia With Love, just so all the games could sit next to each other on my shelf. Likewise, despite having already played every Resident Evil game, I picked up the hard-to-find ports of Resident Evil 2, 3, and Code Veronica just so they could sit between the first game and Resident Evil 4.

Inline Image

But these days, the video game collection doesn't seem to matter so much anymore. In a world where the major consoles already offer day-one full digital releases and with the Wii U seemingly doing the same thing in a couple months, it's hard for me to care too much about maintaining my video game collection when I never actually see it.

Is this what it feels like to grow older? "Back in my day we kept our video games on a shelf and we cared about how we presented them." That's how I'm feeling right now. Sure, we're not through with physical video game discs yet, but the time will soon come when the only reason you go to the game store is to buy redemption codes for games you will then download. I just can't get worked up about owning every Mario game when I know I won't have them lined up on the shelf next to each other. I don't care about my collection unless it has the ability to look like a collection.

On one hand, this is great. Agent Under Fire is a terrible, terrible game, and only buying games because I want to actually play them and not for the sake of maintaining a "complete" collection will save me one hundred billion dollars easily. But on the other hand, it feels like we're nearing the end of an era and I've gotten old enough to fear change.

I've never been fond of change in my life. I'm stubborn that way. And yet, I still feel like I'm all for the pursuit of digital distribution and the elimination of physical media. It's just hard to let go of appealing box art and fresh paper manuals to flip through.

Inline Image

How do other people feel, I wonder? Am I really the only one that is struggles with this most peculiar of issues? Will you miss having a video game collection you can put right next to your TV and look upon with pride or do you think the benefits of digital distribution far outweigh any perceived negatives? Am I acting like an old prospector from the 1800s? Should I spend the rest of my days complaining about how in my day there were no colors and and you kids have it too easy with your hip hop and your downloads?

I look back at that nice GameCube Resident Evil set on the shelf with some amount of measured satisfaction. And yet, Resident Evil 5 and 6 (for your system of choice) would never look good next to them anyway, physical disc or not.