Has game buying lost it's magic?

Never again going to the store to see if that game is there, going home unwrapping it, reading the thick manual and look at all the extra cards/posters in the box.

Oh well, it's all about the game I guess, these days it's just way more easier and cheaper.

I blame the global warming

Well you can still go out and buy those games at full price. :P

you read my mind...I used to spend Friday's night every other week going to a game store (though it's the motor ride from my place to the store that made it worth it) and bought at least 1 360 game (it was before I became a PC user). There was this cute girl at the retail always thought I was older than her given my trimmed facial hair. And I love that feel of putting that white game case into my satchel (yes, I have an awesome looking satchel)

I've not been to the place for more than 1 year, newest 360 games I have were delivered straight to my house.

I seriously don't know what happened...steam happened to me, perhaps?

Wait game stores still exist :-P.

I see what you mean, feels like I would play a single games for months back in the day, now I has 200+...and yeah it feels less special, still awesome though to have a selection to play, I prefer it.

Digital distribution made it too easy to get games, and then they started losing their magic when you're not waiting for the game to pop in your mail / going to the store and get it.

I have a ps3 so I still feel that magic. I felt it a month ago when I went to best buy to pick up Red Dead Redemption. And The Last of Us is being released soon so I have that to look forward to.

I agree, and I think this problem stems from 3 main causes.

1. It's much easier to spend money over a computer than it is in person. When you're buying an item with cash there is an evident sense of loss when there is less money in your wallet than there used to be. Even with using a credit or debit card in person it still feels like "oh, geez, I just spend $XX." Online, though, it's so much easier. Sites save your credit card information so you can buy items with literally 1 click. Paypal just takes money out of your bank account with you barely having to pay attention. The latter's effect is increased even moreso now with Paypal's new "Bill Me Later" feature, so you don't even spend the money until months after you bought the item and you'd already forgotten about it.

2. Steam has over 2000 games at your fingertips, not including DLC, mods, software, videos, demos, or packs. Unless you already have an incredibly expansive library, it is almost impossible to browse through every game on Steam and find nothing that sparks your interests.

3. You can always find a game for less than its retail value online. Always. Even pre-release.

All of these things make games much more accessible than they used to be. I used to love walking into EB Games and looking for something to buy. There was a smaller selection of games, which made each game that much more unique. The majority of the time I would walk out of the store with nothing, but even if I did buy something I felt the oomph in my wallet. Now, I can browse the internet and find a new game I can buy at a discount any time, any day, which leads to my collection being filled with games I didn't really want in the first place, while simultaneously spending 10 times more than I would have before. In the past few years when a new game came out I would get excited. When Lollipop Chainsaw, or DOA5, or Catherine, or MK9 were coming out, it was like, "yeah! New game! I'm gonna be playing this all week!" and it was fun doing so. Now, Remember Me comes out, a game I'm looking forward to for months, and I buy it at discount, beat the game in 7 hours and it's just like, "That was fun. I'd play more but you know I really gotta finish BorderlandsDarkSoulsDeadIslandFarCryDMCSleepingDogsetc first."
The excitement is all but gone.

That's my 2 cents. I'm hoping The Last of Us will be different since I've been looking forward to that since Uncharted 3 and it'll be the first console game I've played in a long while.

You just said why it feels like this: back then, you felt nice buying a game for full price, because it felt nice and nostalgic. Why did it feel like this? Because even more time ago, you had to save up and wait months to have a game. You had anticipation, that is what made the whole thing special.

Now what? You buy cheap games all the time, it's no problem at all right now. Your anticipation is gone, along with your desire for games.
That's why I avoid such thing, I play all the games I buy, and I only buy games I'm sure they're great.

I know that feel...

Exactly that feel

+1 here.. it felt such an achievement when I bought a ps1 game..

It seems you're just not getting the same feeling as you do with physical game copies.

True story. It's kind of a love-hate thing.

Yes. It lost that special magic. Now it's just 'buy a game to play and ignore it for the rest of your life'. I have 204 games (well games + DLCs) on Steam. In all honesty, I never thought I'd own so many games. And I just keep on buying and buying and buying, knowing that I won't play most of them. I see a discount, I buy a game and it sits in my inventory for God knows how long... and honestly, it's starting to feel like a problem, you know? I ask myself often, why do I buy games? What is the point? Am I wasting my money? I could have bought something else, or give money away or do something useful with it!

Yes, it has somewhat lost its magic to me as well. When I was younger, had less disposable income and games were more expensive, getting a new game was something special. I remember saving for months to get a game, and when I finally got it, and I could sit down and play it, man, that was great. And those times when my parents would surprise me and give me a game, just because, it made my week (this was not a common event, and I always got used games, but used games are still games! I still remember when I got my copy of Metroid. My parents hardly got to use the TV that week)

Then my family got a PC in 97. Suddenly I was exposed to a whole world of cheaper games. Where a brand new game would cost about 600-700sek (cartridges...), a brand new PC game would cost 400sek, and an older PC game would cost as little as 100sek! (1€~10sek) Man, I could get a game every second month. But here it lost a bit of its magic. I still did not get games all that often, but it was less of an event when it happened, and a friend of my father would sometimes give me games that he had beaten, so that meant even more games.

Then in 04 I discovered online shopping. Games for less than 100sek? Now I can buy plenty at once! So my game library started to grow quite fast. Faster than i could realistically beat the games.

Fast forward to when steam sales became a big thing. Now I thought I was swimming in games, but I started buying them with really thinking about it. Getting a new game was nothing special. I could often get 4 games for the price of a hamburger (we have really expensive hamburgers here).

And then came the bundles. The first few did feel like events. I was getting several good games at a very low price, but the way they were set up made them feel special. Buying the first HiB and that 5 games for $5, it gave me the same great feeling as when I actually manage to find a great bargain (like when I found that incredibly nice leather bound collection of all the Conan stories for 10sek). But the bundles just keep on common, and these days they just don't feel special at all. I don't get that great "bargain feeling" from buying them anymore. And due to how bundles have changed my perception of game prices (100 sek for a game? You are kidding me, right?), I've begun to buy less games outside of bundles.

So that is my story. A bit on the wordy side, I have to say :P

If you have a console, which I do go out and buy my games for it, you still experience it. But with the PC platform it's becoming more and more common to buy online for a code. So yes for the PC platform maybe it is losing it's "touch" but with the console you still experience it (well i do anyway).

I remember buying a Game with a fancy box,one big ass manual and maybe 1 to 3 other things like keyboard layouts,maps or whatever in it.Since the day this stopped and everything was ondisc (pdf mostly),buying games indeed lost its magic

I remember having 40 ron(romanian curency) =13 dollars in my pockets and walking into a store and games are so expensive (walking dead was 30 dollars), so i was exiting with that feeling; not enough money to buy that great game.

now i just sit at my pc, i see, oh great walking dead 4 dollars humble bundle, let s get it.

i understand that feeling some of you have, now everyone gets games and most of them don t even play them.
But these deals todays are not forever, are for a limited amount of time and help poor people like me.

Pirating games lost it´s "magic" too =)
Most prices for steam games are so low and awesome if you know the bundle sites and the right shops that it´s much better to wait a maybe a month or two and buy your games legal and multiplayer ready^^

It's the Nazi's fault.

I might go to store and buy a physical box, but only if it DRM free (including not requiring steam, uplay, origin, etc)

At the moment retail is most of the time cheaper for AAA I bought Lego lord of the rings for $19 at eb games cheapest its been on steam is $25 and i was happy because it took a while to find the game cheap :D