Messages

1

General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:

« on: November 29, 2025, 12:29:23 am »

This is the first year in almost two decades where I really don't care at all about the potential deals to be had on video games right now. The problem is multifaceted. There's very little being released that people like myself actually would want this holiday season, most of the stores in my area that still have games have a pitiful selection so even if they offer a discount online the stores won't have any product you can actually go get, and of course, the discounted games this year are mostly last year's games or crap titles and now that MSRP is higher than ever that 25% to 30% off doesn't seem like such a sweet deal anymore.

All the years I remember standing in lines to get fantastic deals on recent releases that were super hyped, and buy two get one sales when there was actually enough games in the store to pick three you wanted. It was always the most fun time of year to be game shopping. This year it just feels like it's over, it's a thing of the past. It exists on a handful of websites, and it's nothing you really want.

So yeah, it's another tradition ruined by modernity.

2

Off Topic / Re: How do you deal with getting older?

« on: October 26, 2025, 11:40:06 pm »

I recently had a birthday which puts me in my late 30s. I understand I'm still not old, and by conventional standards I'm not even middle aged yet, but one thing that has been on my mind a lot over the last year or so is how people deal with getting older.


it's a strange thing coming out of your late teens, 20s, and even your early 30s and most things are more or less as you remembered them, but then you realize one day they're not. Your relatives you've had in your minds eye as being around a certain age most of your life are now several decades beyond that, you start to hear more and more about people you knew personally dying, and even you aren't the same person anymore. You don't have the energy you once did, your body has all sorts of random aches and pains you never used to have, and you could have sworn you were just renewing your plates or paying your taxes a few months ago, when it's actually been a whole year already. I guess the passage of time and the reality of how much time has passed is starting to finally catch up with me. Does anyone else have feelings like this or have you dealt with this and somehow come to terms with it?

Poorly. It’s been something heavy on my mind for most of my 30s, and it’s something that I’ve struggled with a lot. I’ve become an old man who yells at clouds mostly, I’m a very nostalgic and sentimental person these days. I cope with it by clinging to the last remaining shreds of people, places and things that still resemble what I miss so much about the past.

I have lunch inside of mostly empty irrelevant diners that are barely hanging on and feel like retirement homes, I shop in old school brick & mortar establishments that have neglected to necessitate tech and Internet into their operation, I visit childhood spots like my local parks to go hiking on the trails and just reminisce the whole time, I listen to my music on a CD player without the distraction of other activities, I play retro consoles on my CRT, I watch reruns of classic TV shows with what feels like a brand new set of eyes and ears (it’s the same but with a totally different perspective), listen to other sad millennials relate tales about the good ole days... I often think about people who I mistook for dinosaurs when they were my age and wonder how they felt about their life when they were at this same point, to come of age in the slower, more stable, more simple times. An experience that I can't and will never know. I've taken a greater interest in history as a whole, learning about the way things were before my time.

There’s nothing that I’m more apathetic and cynical towards than present day. All the garbage going on in the world, the politics, the economic system, the unending drama and noise coming from social media that I’m supposed to care about or get sucked into. I don’t want to be a part of it any longer. For the most part, I’m dead to that world. It feels like a waste of my time on this Earth, and everything about the present day system feels designed to make me feel less human and I want none of it. I desperately wanna recapture the way I felt when I was young, or at least how I felt as a young adult. I feel like I’ve seen enough change for a few generations in just the past decade and a half. The harsh reality is, the passage of time is just a process of watching everything you love wither away and eventually die. Anyone who hasn't already realized that is just refusing to pay attention, trying to live insulated inside of a false sense of security. Life is the ultimate tragic story.

As for me, I don’t feel like I’ve changed as a person, not the core of who I am anyway. It’s important to be true to myself, and preserve my principles and values and not let external forces to pressure me into capitulation. In other words, I’ll be insufferable by the time I’m a senior. I’m always gonna live like it’s still 1999 or 2006 and I’ll never apologize for it, no matter how fast the calendar shreds it's pages. I’m a product of my time, and my time was back then.

3

General / Re: Halo is going multiplat...end of an era

« on: October 26, 2025, 12:12:21 am »

Not that it's overly important, but I will mention that Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 is generally regarded as a bad game for good reason and is, at minimum, a game that few fans of the original game wanted in its current design. It's a game based on the TTRPG, but its RPG mechanics have been considerably lessened for a sub-par experience. That is bad enough alone, but coupled with a fair amount of content that's barred behind an additional paywall and its initial price point, they come together in a way that warrants a much deserved negative reaction from the franchise's fans.

I don't know anything about the first game other than it had a very troubled history itself, but none of that even matters to me. I just like what I see as the game that it is. I've seen a lot of mixed reaction, there are those who are enjoying the game. I considered buying at launch, but physical copies sold out on GameStop and Target's websites already. There seems to be a lot of interest in the game,  but there's also a lot of noise coming from the detractors.

4

General / Re: Halo is going multiplat...end of an era

« on: October 25, 2025, 04:40:25 pm »

It's still ashame that nothing approximating the final build of the game is ever on the disc from any major publisher, not even thoroughly bug tested. That's the version we get to own down the line.

The consoles do often treat the discs as a key for download when online, as they want to just give you the latest version of the game to install. It believe it only installs from the disc if you're offline.

5

General / Re: Halo is going multiplat...end of an era

« on: October 25, 2025, 01:10:42 pm »

I'm not gonna say that I've found nothing of interest on my PS5, but it's the emphasis on the particular gimmicks of the day, the snail's pace of releases, and just the lack of diversity that really sucks. I guess if you're a big souls-like fan, then you're unbothered by the state of gaming currently because that's half of every new single player game that comes out. Currently, probably over 2/3rds of my PS5 games are indie or medium budget games. But it seems like any time a game releases that bucks the current trends, it's ignored, shit on in the reviews, and nobody buys it.

I learned just the other day the studio behind the latest Visions of Mana game abruptly went under. Apparently, that was flop of a game even though it isn't a bad game. Mindseye was another game that had my attention as a change of pace from the landscape of hero-shooters and souls-likes, and of course it flopped hard too. There was Unknown 9 Awakening, which I thought looked like an interesting new title, flopped like a fish and folks shat all over it. The new Vampire Bloodlines 2 game intrigues me a lot, but a lot of folks again are whinging about it and saying it sucks. Is it me, or is there a pattern here?

I think it's maybe not entirely just the industry itself that has a problem, I think gamers are a very fickle bunch who don't know what they want, or when they want it. Which is why all we get now are re-makes. They predictably reward sameness and shun risk, and I've seen it time after time. It can't be that it's really that hard for an underdog team to put together an ambitions new game, but almost every time it ends in bad reviews and financial failure. I don't think any of the previously mentioned games are bad, I wish they were more successful. I think those games are made for folks like me, who just want to see a new IP come along and do things on it's own terms, eschewing the conventions and "standards" set by all of the biggest AAA hits of the day. I don't care that every game doesn't do something the particular way another popular game does it. I just care about having a new adventure, with a new IP, and some fresh ideas. That's all it really takes for me to enjoy a game. I'm not an obsessed flaw hunter who gets easily taken out of the experience the moment the game doesn't do what I intuitively want it to do. Call me Pollyanna but I think games are just meant to be met half-way by the player, and to have fun with them.

I think the industry understands that if you do anything unproven, or on your own terms, or cut any corners, you could loose your ass. It's a double edged sword. So they're content to just do stuff that is proven, and just print money, because apparently a lot of gamers cannot get enough of the idea of re-makes and remasters. A phenomenon that seldom has any appeal to me, whatsoever. Gaming today is quite the conundrum of issues.

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General / Re: Halo is going multiplat...end of an era

« on: October 24, 2025, 10:07:24 pm »

I fondly, to this day, remember a conversation I had at 16 with a Game Crazy employee. I read in OPM a rumor that Halo was coming to PS3 (this was all around the mysterious PS3 pre-launch window) and he got pretty heated (remember I'm just a kid and this is a grown man) saying Halo will NEVER come to PlayStation. It literally can't. Microsoft owns it and would NEVER allow it in a million years.

People have been crying out to end the console wars, but competition breeds innovation. Without competition everyone will stagnate. I honestly just want the industry to crash. Every major AAA studio to fold, get gutted, and sadly the cycle will start all over again. Smaller to medium size indie studios will buy up franchises and start out small and form more major corporations.

It's not like buying the physical discs means anything anymore

I'm not sure what you mean. I had my internet go out for 3 days about a year ago. I bought a 2TB SSD for my PS5 and every disc installed offline. Sure, we won't get patches when the service goes down one day, but everything installed off the disc. I installed probably 30 games both PS4 and PS5.

I could never imagine a lot of the shitty things that go on nowadays, gaming or otherwise ever happening at one point, but now they routinely do and it's just normalized.

As far as game discs, it depends on the game. Ubisoft, Microsoft, and I believe EA (the usual suspects) refuse to put data on their discs as of late. Then some smaller publishers are also dabbling in online requirements just to play the single player mode. Usually games that are more multi-player focused (unfortunately a lot of games now) but offer a single player, tend to have this asinine restriction about accessing the game at all offline.

I'm so sick of every developer squandering all of their time and resources chasing that ever elusive multi-player hit that ain't gonna happen. It used to be most games were a single player campaign, with a multi-player mode as an afterthought. Now it's reversed, multi-player focused games with maybe a single player adaptation of a game that was built for multi-player. It's getting so old.

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General / Re: Halo is going multiplat...end of an era

« on: October 24, 2025, 06:17:44 pm »

For sure it's the end of Xbox, which has been dead to me since the start of this gen.

Xbox has struggled to establish trust and true brand dependability since the very beginning, the closest they ever came to a success was Xbox 360 - affordable hardware, solid ports, decent exclusives, XBOX Live was very influential in that era.

But now we're in the 9th gen, also known as "hell", where corporate greed and boardroom idiocy reigns and destroys everything in sight, and that goes for Sony and Nintendo too. All of these companies are subject to enshitification, which boils down to individuals with too much money and authority over a company not being restrained at all whenever they come up with a dumb, hair-brained idea, and then it tanks the company / makes the product or service objectively worse as they continuously gas-light the public and tell us that it's actually so much better than ever.

Everything Xbox has done since 2020, I would argue is bad not only for Xbox but for console gaming, including Game Pass, the purchase of a bunch of important studious, the release of physical games with no media on them, underwhelming multiplayer trend chasing first party titles, continuous price hikes, etc. I might be sad if they hadn't turned into such bottom-feeding garbo in the past 5 years, but alas. They were always looking for the next big thing. Break into console gaming, but then spend 15 years trying to eclipse console gaming and move beyond it because the profit isn't good enough.

I'll never own a Series X, probably never own another so-called Nintendo console, and I've made peace with that. Console gaming as we knew it is going downhill fast, and we're just dinosaurs not realizing that the comets are already hitting, and it's over. The modern gaming market, save for indie gaming, is totally enshitified and begging for it's own destruction. Halo 1 the remake, just the game that everyone was clamoring for, and that's how you know it's the 2020s. I'm so excited. 

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Off Topic / Re: How to deal with rude drivers cutting me off?

« on: May 11, 2025, 11:41:29 pm »

You just yell loudly, and shout obscenities while not really thinking too deeply about it. You should always expect the worst out of traffic, and be impressed when someone doesn't actually suck. Also don't forget we all make some stupid mistakes now and then, and I'm sure that we all have pissed someone else off. To others it can look intentional. Sometimes the easiest mistake to make is merging on someone who's tucked in your blind spot.

In the end, I'm not taking part in a race or competition to "win" anything against traffic by shaving off a couple of minutes at every opportunity. Being a driver, we think we're given agency over the outcome as we travel, but it's not that way. It's just like any other form of transportation, it serves a purpose to get us from "a" to "b", and it takes however long it takes. Just keep your eyes peeled for sucky drivers to defend your property and well being against.

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General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:

« on: May 05, 2025, 09:17:34 pm »

I seldom bought new games when they were $60. Since they went to $70, almost never. At $80? I don't know I'd ever wanna play a new game that bad. The shit-kicker is that most of these new "Triple-A" titles that come out are not only not half bug-tested at launch, but the devs know there's a ton of other shit they're withholding to sell us later, so that we end up spending what, $100+ on a game by the time it's all said and done?

I'm just not doin' it. How can you be a financially responsible adult, amidst inflation plus the global economic stupidity that's poised to screw us further, and spend that kind of money on even a semi-regular basis for entertainment purposes? It's time for a reset on this industry. It's begging for apocalypse.

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General / Re: Does anyone know what causes yellowing without sunlight?

« on: May 05, 2025, 09:06:12 pm »

I've raved about this for ages. It's the nature of paper when it's a pure white variety. Over time, with environmental factors accelerating the issue, the chemical compound of the paper breaks down and looses it's vibrant white appearance. It doesn't necessarily turn yellow, it just becomes less and less vivid as it breaks down and becomes less stable. Compared to the white plastic of the case, it will look like a different color eventually.

Has happened not only to my Wii artwork, also my Sega Saturn artwork, Dreamcast artwork, the white banners on Xbox 360 games, PS5 games, etc. Anything vivid white, will eventually become dingier white over time. A lot of my PS5 games are already doing this. I live in an environment where air humidity levels tend to fluctuate from dry to normal-borderline damp, and that's a nightmare scenario for thin little slips of high gloss paper. Hell, all of my handheld console screens turn yellow over time too, because of these dry to damp shifts. It's a common problem in Japan due to their climate conditions as well.

You have two options. Just accept this shit will turn dingy and look bad, because you know it's something that happens outside of your control. Or, use a scanner to do high-res scans of all of your artwork (avoid the low-res crap found on most websites, because it'll look like a cheap counterfeit), photo edit to tweak the dingy tint back to white, then reprint all of your artwork. It'll be good for a while, but it'll just happen again eventually. Still, you can do a refresh as many times as you'd like ones you've got all your stuff archived...

A third option, buy some cream colored DVD cases?

I think there is definitely some control

cause in most cases wii covers are still white. this is not the normal, maybe after a hell lot more time has past but not in the current era.

even with people that don't give a shit and treat wii poorly covers are still white in  most cases. I don't think wii covers are as fragile as comic books or some of that old toy cardboard. let alone ps2 covers in europe which all have white backsides. most if not all are still white. only time they get yellowed is when people actually get dirty with em. smudge insane sun damage etc didn't happen by itselves.

if this was an actual issue that happened out of nowhere people be complaining for days. just ain't it. poor storage, maybe said guy living in a humid environment it definitely didn't happen out of nowhere

It's a similar reason why people keep pictures under glass. If they didn't, the pictures would fade eventually. If you have an old book sitting around, you'll probably notice the tips of the pages look dingy compared to the pages which have been kept closed. Many types of paper when exposed to air, will eventually disrupt the chemical composition and alter the appearance. It doesn't exactly indicate that it's been abused or mistreated, a lot of times very normal use and storage can result in this outcome. Folks who ended up with cheddar cheese Super Nintendo systems didn't abuse them, the composition in the plastics were triggered by the environment, resulting in a color change over time. Other Super Nintendo systems made of a different plastic, won't do this even if it was in the very same environment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7YgfdWffh0

Random collection video as an example, but I can notice that a lot of the artwork shown here is darker than the white of the plastic cases, and that's what OP is talking about. The covers are technically still "white", it's just not a vibrant white anymore, it's more of a cream color. This is typical and only becoming more common with Wii collections.

Have you seen the pic the op send? his mario kart turned yellow.



This is not normal, nor is it common at all. unless usa wii games are shitty quality compared to pal land. but haven't seen it all that much on ebay or with my own usa wii games
if this was somewhat common sizable wii collections would have turned yellow by now.

also wii cases never had identical color to the plastic cases. they are close but not the same.

Also imo I don't think wii covers have changed color from when they where brand new and if thy did it's a very small diff that I don't notice.

i agree with you on super nes and nes consoles but this ain't it.  and with snes consoles it's mainly usage and it getting hot. cause it's always the consoles that are barely used in plastic that are still nice and grey. unless you are lucky with certain plastic revisions of the snes it's gonna turn yellow when you use it to some degree.

His example is on the extreme side, but it also might be due to the color balance on his camera that's exaggerating the color. If you notice the discoloration is more extreme towards the top and bottom edges, I see that a lot in my collection too. This is an indication of air reaching the artwork, and this is def not paper that's going to stand up to air exposure. Could have a really loose, compromised sleeve, maybe even sticking out at the top a bit, but almost all of mine show some discoloration near the edges. Like I said before, including some factory sealed games. I believe the sleeves on these are just not very well made.

If you environment is ideal, it might not happen to the extreme degree shown. But, I mean take a look at some of these random collections and notice how many are a warmer off-white than others.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wii/comments/s390fa/my_wii_collection_been_collecting_off_and_on/#lightbox

https://www.reddit.com/r/wii/comments/123nlaa/quality_over_quantity_only_the_best_games_what/#lightbox

Post up a bit of your own Wii collection, and let's have look? See if we can't find some of those warm off-white buggers.

11

General / Re: Does anyone know what causes yellowing without sunlight?

« on: May 03, 2025, 10:26:40 pm »

I've raved about this for ages. It's the nature of paper when it's a pure white variety. Over time, with environmental factors accelerating the issue, the chemical compound of the paper breaks down and looses it's vibrant white appearance. It doesn't necessarily turn yellow, it just becomes less and less vivid as it breaks down and becomes less stable. Compared to the white plastic of the case, it will look like a different color eventually.

Has happened not only to my Wii artwork, also my Sega Saturn artwork, Dreamcast artwork, the white banners on Xbox 360 games, PS5 games, etc. Anything vivid white, will eventually become dingier white over time. A lot of my PS5 games are already doing this. I live in an environment where air humidity levels tend to fluctuate from dry to normal-borderline damp, and that's a nightmare scenario for thin little slips of high gloss paper. Hell, all of my handheld console screens turn yellow over time too, because of these dry to damp shifts. It's a common problem in Japan due to their climate conditions as well.

You have two options. Just accept this shit will turn dingy and look bad, because you know it's something that happens outside of your control. Or, use a scanner to do high-res scans of all of your artwork (avoid the low-res crap found on most websites, because it'll look like a cheap counterfeit), photo edit to tweak the dingy tint back to white, then reprint all of your artwork. It'll be good for a while, but it'll just happen again eventually. Still, you can do a refresh as many times as you'd like ones you've got all your stuff archived...

A third option, buy some cream colored DVD cases?

I think there is definitely some control

cause in most cases wii covers are still white. this is not the normal, maybe after a hell lot more time has past but not in the current era.

even with people that don't give a shit and treat wii poorly covers are still white in  most cases. I don't think wii covers are as fragile as comic books or some of that old toy cardboard. let alone ps2 covers in europe which all have white backsides. most if not all are still white. only time they get yellowed is when people actually get dirty with em. smudge insane sun damage etc didn't happen by itselves.

if this was an actual issue that happened out of nowhere people be complaining for days. just ain't it. poor storage, maybe said guy living in a humid environment it definitely didn't happen out of nowhere

I see dingy looking Wii artwork a lot when browsing used games in a shop. Hell, I have Wii games still in the shrink-wrap, and games in box protectors, that used to have pure white artwork and have turned dingy. Some PS2 games in North America also have a lot of white on them, many of which have also been in my collection for years and I'll agree that on average they have not turned nearly as dingy as the Wii artwork has for most of my Wii games, all kept in the exact same space for many years. If you have an ideal environment that's never too dry or never too damp, this will happen a lot slower, but it will happen. Paper over time looses it's vibrancy.

More people are noticing hence why OP has brought the subject up, and I suspect more will in the future.

It could be a different grade of paper being used, it could be due to PS2 sleeves being a superior more protective grade of material, and perhaps holds the artwork more securely from air exposure more effectively. Probably all of the above. I know that PS5 cases have horrible sleeves which bulge out and expose the cover to the air massively, causing waviness and discoloration at the edges of the artwork, which I find to be super common. With every generation, the sleeve quality gets worse and worse as it's made of cheaper material.

It's a similar reason why people keep pictures under glass. If they didn't, the pictures would fade eventually. If you have an old book sitting around, you'll probably notice the tips of the pages look dingy compared to the pages which have been kept closed. Many types of paper when exposed to air, will eventually disrupt the chemical composition and alter the appearance. It doesn't exactly indicate that it's been abused or mistreated, a lot of times very normal use and storage can result in this outcome. Folks who ended up with cheddar cheese Super Nintendo systems didn't abuse them, the composition in the plastics were triggered by the environment, resulting in a color change over time. Other Super Nintendo systems made of a different plastic, won't do this even if it was in the very same environment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7YgfdWffh0

Random collection video as an example, but I can notice that a lot of the artwork shown here is darker than the white of the plastic cases, and that's what OP is talking about. The covers are technically still "white", it's just not a vibrant white anymore, it's more of a cream color. This is typical and only becoming more common with Wii collections.

12

General / Re: Does anyone know what causes yellowing without sunlight?

« on: April 30, 2025, 07:54:41 pm »

I've raved about this for ages. It's the nature of paper when it's a pure white variety. Over time, with environmental factors accelerating the issue, the chemical compound of the paper breaks down and looses it's vibrant white appearance. It doesn't necessarily turn yellow, it just becomes less and less vivid as it breaks down and becomes less stable. Compared to the white plastic of the case, it will look like a different color eventually.

Has happened not only to my Wii artwork, also my Sega Saturn artwork, Dreamcast artwork, the white banners on Xbox 360 games, PS5 games, etc. Anything vivid white, will eventually become dingier white over time. A lot of my PS5 games are already doing this. I live in an environment where air humidity levels tend to fluctuate from dry to normal-borderline damp, and that's a nightmare scenario for thin little slips of high gloss paper. Hell, all of my handheld console screens turn yellow over time too, because of these dry to damp shifts. It's a common problem in Japan due to their climate conditions as well.

You have two options. Just accept this shit will turn dingy and look bad, because you know it's something that happens outside of your control. Or, use a scanner to do high-res scans of all of your artwork (avoid the low-res crap found on most websites, because it'll look like a cheap counterfeit), photo edit to tweak the dingy tint back to white, then reprint all of your artwork. It'll be good for a while, but it'll just happen again eventually. Still, you can do a refresh as many times as you'd like ones you've got all your stuff archived...

A third option, buy some cream colored DVD cases?

13

General / Re: Your 2025 Gaming and Collecting Goals

« on: January 25, 2025, 10:11:05 am »

Absolutely nothing. I've wrestled with the idea that maybe I'm done retro collecting now. For a long time I've felt so close, yet so far away. Several hundred games on my list I still wanted to get, but it's meant several thousand dollars I'm just not willing (and don't have) to dump into it. Hard to believe this stuff is still going so strong all these years later, folks clamoring to collect every title you can think of, for every console you can think of in 2025. I know the appeal of doing so has greatly diminished for me. I think it's mostly the speculators still going this hard at it.

I actually found myself in my local retro shop the other day and actually picked up a couple of NES games on the cheap, unexpectedly. So guess I'm not done. I just don't have the motivation to pursue it anymore. I'm really close with a lot of fifth gen stuff, so if anything I should try knock those out. Still a lot easier said than done.

14

General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:

« on: January 14, 2025, 01:40:12 pm »

I too agree that the condemnation of current day disc-based games is a little overblown, but it's not hard to understand where the sentiment comes from. Many game companies are fine allowing their customers to do the quality control check in the official release window after pressing it to a disc, which is total BS and sometimes completely tanks the reputation of a new game. Games get released when they aren't sufficiently bug tested or in some cases not completed, and that's become way too normalized. Such an idiotic practice, can you imagine any other industry being so boldly anti-consumer?

What strikes me is that they still put forth the effort to print physical copies of games, but they've been almost completely pushed out of physical retail. Target and Walmart are slowly, but surely fazing out the last dozen or so shelf spaces they still have reserved for games. The GameStop stores I've been to of late have almost nothing in terms of games on their shelves, they intentionally de-emphasized physical games to the point it was difficult to find and even pre-order a lot of releases, which makes no sense for a niche video game store to do. As a result, there's never anyone shopping the games in their stores, and it's a total ghost-town most of the time when I would go. GameStop did this to themselves, as much or more than the industry changes did this to them. Their entire store model was always built off of circulating copies of games into the local markets, and buying and reselling the used ones. They've abandon that. I don't believe any recent leadership at the company has any real strategy for survival, they're just there to bleed the company of any value it has left to line their own pockets and then resign. This is what typically happens to a failing retail establishment.

But I understand bikingjahuty's doomer-ism, we are reaching a point where everything that we as millennials loved about the gaming experience in our younger years, is all but obsolete. We've sacrificed so much reliability and piece of mind, in the pursuit of technological progress. The account-based digital landscape has only atomized the gaming experience for many players, local multi-player has been de-emphasized in favor of online gameplay. Folks don't even care to own the games anymore, if they can get a sub which allows them to play new releases for a limited time. We're told that ownership of software is going away in the near future, that maybe consoles themselves are going away, and it's just going to be an online subscription to PlayStation or Xbox.

I won't want any part of it, by the time gaming reaches that point. I don't think we're there yet, but the pillars are falling. Game stores are giving up, shutting down, the average consumer has made the switch to the digital marketplace. I agree with biking that gaming in the current era, almost does not resemble gaming even 10 years ago in terms of quality, selection, security of purchases, any sort of hobby aspect we enjoyed. It's become so transformed in favor of big business over the consumer, which is always the story you'd expect in our late-stage economic system. It's designed to do this as a feature, not a bug. Technology is only the accomplice helping to accelerate the enshittification of all things, and the concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the few. As long as we the end users can be convinced that it's being made more "convenient", it's enough that most will abide.

I'd say the best days of gaming are in the rear view. The gaming industry is flirting with apocalypse, and in a lot of ways deserves it.

15

General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:

« on: January 09, 2025, 11:29:34 pm »

Well, yet another GameStop in my town has shut it doors. Leaving only one left. I know how much the company is hated by people for various reasons, but I've always had pleasant experiences and have a lot of fondness for the glory days of game collecting at their stores.

It hits the feels with closings like this, I've been going this location literally since they opened their doors in 2008. I remember just stumbling on this location right when it first opened, and being enthralled with all the stuff they had, back when I was just starting to collect. We never really had independent stores in our area, so physical media was reaching it's peak and suddenly there were several GameStop stores in my town. This was the only one built from the ground up as a GameStop. I started to hit all of their locations on a weekly basis, and did so for many years. They've all been going sharply downhill since the pandemic, but I drove by this same location this evening to find it had just been shuttered. Just a real bummer and depressing reminder of how all good things come to pass, being there from the excitement of the beginning, to the bitter end.

As if there were any silver lining to it, I did manage to snag the actual GameStop logo marquees that were on the outside of the building (the light up signs), from going to the dump. They're absolutely huge and there's nothing I can do with them, but it just felt like something I needed to do as a homage to a store that meant a lot to me over the years. I'll probably let them go to someone who wants them eventually, but I couldn't let them go to the landfill. GameStop love them or hate them, are a piece of gaming history just as Funcoland was, and one day I think more people will recognize that.

The times, they are a changing, and I simply hate it. The end of game stores, the end of physical games. It's just no fun this way.