Best Buy recently announced that they will stop selling physical media, including DVDs and Blu-rays, in 2024. This news was shocking when it was released for many reasons. Best Buy is a huge tech chain that has been around since 1966 and physical media has always been integral in their store stock. DVDs and Blu-rays are as synonymous with Best Buy as french fries are to McDonald’s. See how this is such a big deal? Physical media will always be superior to digital alternatives due to its hands-on nature, which enables consumers to own their content and form attached to it as well.

I play a ton of video games. I always do what I can to ensure I get a physical copy. I’ve played games since I was a young kid and one of my favorite things I used to do was stare at the game cases on the way back from the store. I loved reading the manuals that came with the games. Video game manuals used to have colorful, interesting artwork and screenshots. They now are straight up out of the actual picture. Manuals aren’t included anymore by developers because they believe they just aren’t necessary. While this is partly true, honestly, it shouldn’t matter.

Just because something isn’t 100 percent necessary doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be included. These small and colorful booklets contributed so much to games’ personalities. Most modern games — if not all of them — do not include manuals anymore. At most, there will be a small insert that will advertise another game, for example. This lack of physicality really sucks the fun and charm out of a lot of modern game releases and their collections. Recent games like “Alan Wake 2,” for instance, aren’t even receiving a physical release. It will be purely digital. “Alan Wake 2” is a big-budget release that many fans have been anticipating. Meanwhile, it cannot even be purchased and owned physically. This is a travesty for the industry and physical collectors. Many collectors live for the physical presence of a game release, and taking that away is taking away a lot of the fun.

Books and games both have a very similar physicality to them that speaks to our sentimentality. This is the basis of collecting. I have loads and loads of books from my childhood and teenage years that have memories written all over them. How many times have you smelled a book, whether it was old and dusty or fresh off the shelf? See how important the physical nature of media is? The physical nature of the media we consume can tell stories in their own right, without any words, and show one’s taste over the years. Smells like I mentioned earlier can help heighten our senses and make us even more interested in the given work. Collections point to the very nature of novels — storytelling. Not just within the story itself, but even outside of it. The way it looks, alone and next to other books or games. The condition of a book can really tell a lot about the person who owns it, scars and all.

There are wondrous modern e-readers, like Kindles, that allow you to read books online. I admit, it does help the environment to have online books. It’s not like one side of the collectors debate is completely right and the other is completely wrong, but I still stand on the side of physical media. You never truly own digital purchases of movies or games or books because there will always be a device needed to use them and a company to sign off the rights to it. Books and DVDs can be sold secondhand for an eternity. This is why thrift stores and yard sales can be so much fun. They add so much value and personality to the purchase.

You can’t sell a digital book or movie at a store for instance, it’s all online. That’s the crux of why I will always support physical releases. I have so many great memories of going to the bookstore, library and thrift store with my friends and family. It’s truly an unforgettable experience. If we move to an all-digital landscape, these memories will just be that — a memory. While memories are great, they’re not physical. Physical media helps us take our memories with us wherever we go. I don’t want to live in a world where I can’t smell a brand-new book.

Nicolas Scagnelli is a senior majoring in English.