An end to an era? Nah, just making room for more era.
YOU: So Curtis.. what did you do on your last day of 30?
ME: Well, I was cleaning my office and trimming down the library of computer games. I threw out a spindle of 150 disks and an ungodly amount of jewel cases. I would say I just trimmed out something like 50 games from my collection.
YOU: What?!!?! That's a lot! Why did you just throw them away? Couldn't you donate them or something?
ME: Well.. trust me.. no one would have wanted those and a lot of them had missing disks or CD keys or were just plain illegalz. I kept all the good ones, don't worry.
It was amazing how much wasted space there was even in the "new" packaging introduced about 10 years ago using smaller boxes. I also realized that a few years ago the gaming industry made a second switch. Instead of small cardboard boxes about the size of a hardcover book with CD jewel cases and manuals inside they switched to small plastic boxes that were the actual jewel cases. No taking out the essentials and throwing away the packaging there. With some of them you can remove the CD and manual and put the CD in a paper sleeve or something but most of them have the CD key to the game printed an the giant plastic case. LAME.
In the end my video game library has been reduced from its previous volume of 1 medium sized box, 1 stuffed cd booklet that has traveled to way too many LAN parties, and a GIANT spindle that used to house 150 or so blank CDs (no, they didn't all get burned into games). The collection is now compressed to 1 small box.
I also found a few audio books I thought I had lost. Looking back I wish I had taken a picture of it, but its probably best not to have photo evidence of the nerdery.