I recently found some old music playlists of my own creation from 2011-2012. While the playlists themselves still exist, my efforts to compile or at least listen to the music on them has been a challenge. Many songs are no longer physically being printed. A handful are not available on any streaming services. Some are not available in any form online or not. It has been a fun dive into my own sort of history, but the experience has really made me consider how many things we considered great or even essential at a time are now lost.
Some games I grew up playing and that inspired me to pursue a career in game development are extremely hard to find or practically impossible to play easily. My memories of them are hopefully never going to disappear, but it does make me consider how fleeting things seem to be these days. If a game is not a major success it might disappear one day. Or heck, success might not even be a factor if a long enough period of time passes. A console generation passes, an operating system no longer supports certain kinds of software, or peripherals no longer being manufactured breakdown and become monuments to the games they controlled. This isn’t a new idea, losing the tangibility of them items, but it does seem like it has become more and more common. Of course maybe that is just age catching up with me finally.
Is there anything we can do to slow this reality from happening, or is it just part of life? It makes me feel like I should be appreciating the entertainment I really love while I still can. Or maybe someone in the future will make the equivalent to Discogs for games, and I can drop a few dozen dollars into purchasing game from it on a random nostalgic afternoon.