Having a tangible thing somehow makes it mean more, think about picking out a record or CD to play and leaving it to play as opposed to scrolling through infinite music to choose what to play.
>Having a tangible thing somehow makes it mean more, think about picking out a record or CD to play and leaving it to play as opposed to scrolling through infinite music to choose what to play.
The same could be said in reverse. Just to highlight that this is a subjective experience, and not an objective truth. "Having an infinite pool of music somehow makes in mean more, as opposed to the dusty collection that you happen to have at home".
On the other, there's something deeply "unmagical" about loading up a huge menu of games. Even if they're organized in some way (console, genre, studio, whatever), even if you include box art and info, it's simply not the same experience. Most retro gaming channels I watch on YouTube talk about this phenomenon--mostly in the context of "why do you have shelves full of games".
Different people will think different things about this. I have a 77 square meter home (~830ft2) and like, I'm not fitting all the games I ever bought in this place, let alone all the albums, books, etc. I have flash carts, hard drives, and a kindle keyboard v3. I kind of chalk it up to "life is a beautiful struggle". Friction is good, actually, it enriches life, and these kinds of little agonies are fun to just discuss and find common experience over.
Although, to be honest, if the digital world didn't exist at all, I'm sure I'd manage to have a good time all the time. It's just that now that it exists, I prefer it more - streaming over physical media for example.
I think that what you really want is going back to pre-internet times when access to media was limited, so every single piece of media had value. You had one casette, you'd listen to it back to back because there was nothing else. Nowadays media feel meaningless not because they're not put on physical plastic, but because you have infinite access to it at all times. Some people argue that you could try to restrict yourself to some specific subset, but deep down you'll always know it's just a theatre.
Since I accepted the fact that I hate most of humanity and 99% of commercial products are slop, I started valuing things much more. The rush of "wow I found something that isn't slop" mimics the old feeling of getting a new disc.
