An increasingly rare site

A reader muses on the move from analogue to digital gaming and hopes that there’s always a place for physical copies of video games.

I live in Birmingham, a thriving, multicultural metropolis where there is something for everyone.

It’s changed a lot over the years, shops and trends have come and gone but there is one shop here that’s stood the test of time and is still going strong today.

I won’t name it, but it is a vinyl record shop and if you ever had the good fortune to go in there, it feels more like a celebration of music and this wonderful medium it was presented on along with all the interesting sleeves the vinyl singles and albums came in.

Why am I telling you this?

Simple, music in my opinion was probably the most important art form of the last one hundred years and they found a great medium to showcase it on.

Games have had a slightly shorter life span than music but a far more accelerated one.

I think games, music and film have all followed a similar path in their respective art forms, as far as being accepted by the stubborn masses who have opposed it as a passing fad.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of it.

‘What are you listening to that for?’

‘Things where so much better in my day when they could really sing/act’.

There are still people today who claim not to be gamers because they don’t own a console, yet are glued to their device playing some Bejeweled clone on their commute into work.

The media have always liked to jump on it too. Whether it was claims that if you played a record backwards and got messages from the Devil himself or priests outside the movie theatres when the Exorcist premiered. Or the rather constipated looking bad guys in Night Trap influencing small children to do bad things.

It was all part of a huge, elaborate plan to turn you into the absolute hell raising terror you are right now, as you sit on the toilet reading a Reader’s Feature on the GameCentral website.

All three art forms have certainly been through the mill as far as bad press is concerned and all three have took it, reluctantly, on the chin. The quality stuff still stands the test of time today, though, as it always does.

Another thing they all have in common is all three have found a format they were comfortable with, then moved onto a digital disc format and now are inevitably heading towards an internet streaming-only model.

This isn’t a bad thing of course, it’s environmentally friendly, easily accessible, and probably cuts piracy down too.

There’s still something about looking at shelves full of games and picking up the boxes that just feels more in tune with me as a gamer though. I loved the way the artwork and screenshots tried to seduce you into parting with your hard-earned cash for them.

The smell of the manuals, remember them? Just seeing the game there, when you knew it wasn’t there the day before, got my heart racing and made me want to pick it up straight away.

The high streets definitely don’t have the same choice as far as gaming is concerned these days. So the call for it is definitely not what it once was but, hey, that’s progress for you.

Which brings me full circle to that staunch little record shop in Birmingham. I’m totally OK with a format-less future for gaming, it’s an inevitability after all, but I hope in some corner of my town, and everyone else’s, there will be a similar shop for gaming enthusiasts like me to go browse, pick up boxes, purchase, talk, and celebrate what is truly good about our beloved art form.

By reader freeway 77

The reader’s feature does not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

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A reader muses on the move from analogue to digital gaming and hopes that there’s always a place for physical copies of video games.