How has video gaming changed for you since 2009?


Have you noticed much difference?

Would you go back to video gaming of 2009?


What do you miss from that era?


Has the change been for good?


I am going to respond to every second comment under the post

Let's play along.

1. Online killed the DVD star. Gone also are physical manuals and posters.

2. The physical bargain bin has been replace by a huge virtual one. We have gone from playing what we have from having more games that we will ever be able to play.

3. Paper manuals, posters, and other physical stuff.

4. Pros of nowadays market:
- I did not like oversized boxes. There was a thrend of making them larger and larger to draw attention. It passed, eventually. Still, it is good that there are no oversized boxes that were packing mostly air.
- Lots of games available, some of them very cheap, yet good.
- GOG has been one of the best things that has ever happened to PC games. Old games can be invited to dwell here and meet both new and old acquaintances. Plus, without crippling DRM.

Cons of these days:
- Sometimes, selling games way less than complete or too buggy.
- No physical stuff. Printing on demand might be interesting, if GOG could work it out.
- Too much to choose from, yet only a fraction of the stuff is original, and a big portion turns out to be crap. Sometimes it feels like there might be a bubble in the computer games market.

To be found in the future:
- Publishers want to turn sales into a service. Compound that with playing on virtual machines (Geforce Now, Stadia...). It all might lead to a big change in how games are played, and we might be writing ten years from now about what do we miss from gaming in 2019 :P

That's very interesting and insightful!


I miss physical discs a little. A tear starts running down my cheek upon remembering them


But GOG and online distribution in general is more comfortable.


Perhaps also manuals were better back then


Also perhaps video games were superior back then I meant that as in 5 out of 10 not 1,0,1,0,1,0,1

It has certainly changed by not remaining the same but rather undergoing a transformation of sorts and therefore becoming different than it was before this alteration. Having undergone this transition, the paradigm has shifted and the status quo now varies greatly from the previous state of affairs.

and do you think it has enrichened the complexity?

In the changes of the world the shapes of lands and of seas have been broken and remade; rivers have not kept their courses, neither have mountains remained steadfast; and to Cuiviénen there is no returning

Or, to put it in another way:

In my mind and in my car
We can't rewind, we've gone too far

Not at all.

I do believe that video gaming has become more complex


However the greatest game of all time, Baldur's Gate 2, was released 2 decades ago

crpg's have made a come back and fps games are no longer the end all and be all. That is the good stuff.

Games as a service is the new buzz word among game publishing suits, and that is the bad stuff.

Classic games are almost always better

Games becoming too bloated -- 120GB for an install is way too much

Game length arguably shorter with the trendy "indie" thing still riding its peak

Lot more games are just flash and no depth


Procedurally generated still a buzz word

Its the Ship of Theseus problem but with taste.

Totally agreed! It's a mixed bag!

oh, shucks. finally, an interesting Geralt's thread... and I overslept it.

jokes aside, why 2009?

I am now more leaning towards smaller games and indie games. Don't get me wrong, triple A games look really good but aside from that, there is really nothing much more to them. I'm more of a plot and story guy when it comes to games. Looking forward to that werewolf game though.

I second that.