Will we remember the physical pieces of games the way we once remembered books?
As games shuttle their way towards complete digital distribution, we should remember that there was once (and could be more of) a physical component to the experience. Adam Kirsch’s review of Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books outlines the value that the material object has to its creators:
Books are tokens of identity — which is why most of these writers declare their reluctance, or inability, to throw out a book. Yet when Price asks them what they think will happen to their libraries after they die, all the writers here are resigned and realistic: “I’m sure that after my death my books will be scattered just like my clothes and furniture,” says Edmund White. If our books are our second bodies, dissolution is inevitable. What is hard to imagine is a future in which we have no bodies at all.
So who will be watching after my DS cases after I’m gone?
-Jamin Warren
