• reddig33@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I’m more let down that such a small thing is packaged in a big case. Made of plastic no less.

    • Gonzako@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Well, aren’t these supposed to be collected? They are there to help your sort through your phisical games

    • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Aluminum cases need to become standard for physical copies. Not plastic with an aluminum veneer, all aluminum.

      They can be cool and do aluminum tubes holding a flash drive with the game on it if they want so they can laser engrave the sides and screw on top with the title and art.

      • hydroptic@sopuli.xyz
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        5 months ago

        So your take on an environmentally unfriendly and resource-intensive way to package games would be to make it worse?

        • PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk
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          5 months ago

          It’s a tough one. You’re not wrong by any means, but equally the environmentally unfriendly bit is why people buy physical media. The memory card holding the game is mostly superfluous because of day 1 DLC or patches, but it’s the box; art; manual; and physical tangibility that matter to a collector of the media.

          Ideally there would be a middle ground - sack-off the normal physical edition and purchase the memory cards themselves - and push up the price and pay for a premium edition of the copy made from better materials.

          I suspect we’d only get the worst of both worlds though, the cynic in me thinks.

      • VaultBoyNewVegas@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I remember getting Prince of Persia 2008 in a steel case for a birthday or maybe Xmas and loved the design of it. I haven’t seen my steel case editions recently.

    • normalexit@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The original Gameboy just had form fitting plastic containers for the cartridge and cardboard boxes. id love a return to that…

  • Norgur@kbin.social
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    5 months ago

    My wife got me a copy of Mass effect Andromeda as a gift once. She bought the physical copy (or so she thought) since that makes a better gift. When I opened the case, there was literally nothing in there but a code for EA Origin on a sticker.

    • Cosmonaut_Collin@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Ea games are awful for this. I bought sims 4 when it first came out and had the same issue. It’s so cool that I can’t own games even if I try to buy the physical copy. I’m just glad that other companies haven’t been doing digital only hard copies.

    • 4am@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      They literally sold you plastic trash that could have been a man email 🤦‍♂️

    • yamanii@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I mean, do you even have a bluray drive on your PC? That’s why they do it, I remember having the option to buy San Andreas on one dvd or 8 cds or something, precisely because people don’t often replace their drives.

      • Norgur@kbin.social
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        5 months ago

        They can sell codes in stores all they want. But… print them on a nice greeting card or something instead of using about 100g of ABS plastic?

  • Geek_King@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    The height of new game glory for me were the old school huge boxes PC games came in. It wasn’t uncommon to get a thick manual with wonderful art, sometimes spiral bound, maps, other neat add-ins. Even console games had nice manuals with useful information you may not otherwise know. I miss that stuff.

    • MamboGator@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I still have all my big box PC games, and they all have thick manuals full of lore, character biographies and art. We lost an art form.

      • Geek_King@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I collapsed and recycled all of my large PC game boxes out of necessary, but I have every single manual/map/pack-in though!

    • PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk
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      5 months ago

      I wrote a similar reply to a higher comment without seeing yours, and I completely agree - I miss it.

      I was a bit younger in the 90s and half the magic of the ride home was reading the manual so you could hit the ground running when you installed it/put the cartridge in/loaded the tape.

    • TheMinions@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I very distinctly remember pouring over the City of Heroes art book/manual they shipped with that game.

      Man I loved that game. So fun.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    If anyone is old enough to remember Infocom games, they came with “feelies,” just random fun stuff related to the game they decided to include. It occasionally was needed to solve a game puzzle, but usually not.

    I can still smell that box. They had a certain smell back then.

    • The Picard Maneuver@lemmy.worldOP
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      5 months ago

      When people talk about games having heart, this is it. Little unnecessary goodies just because you’re excited that people are buying your game and you want them to be into it.

      • wazzupdog@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Getting a new game and having books and stickers to mess with on the ride home until you can play the game.

        • Kiosade@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          “Kids these days” will never know that feeling. Of course, they’ll have their ipads, so probably won’t care.

  • invertedspear@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Why are there clips for a manual yet never a manual or even an info card? Seems like this started in the PS3/360/Wii generation.

    • Godort@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Some games come with an insert or a manual, but it’s rare.

      And it’s cheaper to have only one case design rather than two

    • TootSweet@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Yeah, as Godort said, some games do come with manuals. The Knights of the Old Republic (the first one) port to the Switch is one example. (Presumably KOTOR II as well.)

  • JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    … and cloth maps. And developer notes. And figurines. And trinkets from the lore. And the game costing under $20. And…

  • FunkyMonk@kbin.social
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    5 months ago

    Those booklets were more joy to little me on the car ride home than the game itself many a time.

    • onion@feddit.de
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      5 months ago

      Farming Simulator 2011 had a big map poster

      Oh but I have Kingdome Come: Deliverance on like seven dvds

      • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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        5 months ago

        Tell me what console or system or even game manufacturer that lets you buy their game, download it to a portable micro SD and then lets you play it from there.

        Not even steam lets you do that and you don’t even have a direct way of knowing what’s on the micro SD card without making a label for it which good luck.

        • hswolf@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          First, you can totally make a steam library on a portable device like a microsd or an external drive (I do and I play on different places with the same drive), and play it on any device running steam.

          And don’t start the “oh but you need steam installed”, since with the proprietary sd, you gotta have the propriety device as well.

          Second, sure I can just lavel it, a 3 seconds job. Don’t you need the proprietary sd to come labeled as well? Also, I don’t need to label anything, I have dozens of games there and select which one I want to play.

          Your defense of OP’s comment is also weird but that’s okay, we all are always learning.

          Each format of game has its own merits ans they are only better than another on an objective comparison, as for subjective, just use whatever you want.

        • Madlaine@feddit.de
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          5 months ago

          Kerbal Space Programm - and I guess most non-DRM-games on Steam, as long as they keep all their stuff in the game dir.

          • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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            5 months ago

            No steam is definitely not the bastion to use as they really aren’t gonna work. They like games tied to accounts.

            You could say GOG games but it really still defeats the point of it not being even close to similar to a physical game you could resell and having a nicely labeled piece of physical media.

            I know you aren’t the person originally with the really bad argument btw, but yeah the list is super small this would work for.

  • SquirrelX@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    At least it has something in it, not just a piece of paper with an online download code…

  • thehatfox@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Be thankful there is still a case to open and a cartridge inside, for now at least.

    Still sad to see, there’s no feeling like the anticipation that builds from reading a game manual on the car or bus ride home.

    • FarFarAway@startrek.website
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      5 months ago

      Sadly, yes. Got a switch for Xmas this year. Went and bought a mario game, and was completely taken aback when the inside of the case looked just like this. I sat there totally feeling this exact post.

  • yamanii@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    It’s why I stopped buying physical games, I’ll just pirate everything if they take away my digital library.

    • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      You stopped buying physical copies of games because they stopped putting manuals in the box? How is that better?