I have a handful of physical game discs. I need special cables to get it to connect to most TVs. Stupidly, I assumed the EyeToy camera could connect to my modern computer as a webcam. I refuse to get rid of or upgrade my console.

Over on the other hand, I have Steam and Origin libraries packed with games that have never seen the light of physical day. Receiving these games was instant after purchase, installing them as easy as anything. They work with a mouse and keyboard, a controller, some of them even with a VR headset I’m still trying to afford.

Which one do you think I prefer?

It’s the PlayStation – even though I never play it.

Let me tell you a story about a friend of mine. Let’s call him Dane.

Dane is a big fan of The Sims franchise. The Sims typically release a base game, followed by several dozen expansion packs, game packs, and stuff packs. Dane’s issue was back in the era of The Sims 3, but let me tell you about The Sims 4 for reference.

The Sims 4 base game is $40. Expansion packs are also $40. Game packs are $20 and stuff packs are $10. If you want to buy The Sims 4 and all the packs (so far), it’ll cost you over $600. That’s for a game that’s still making content.

So think of how much every single pack from The Sims 3, plus the base game, cost. Not everyone has that kind of money.

There are websites that sell game codes for cheap. CDKeys and eBay and the likes. This path was more affordable for Dane, so that’s the path he went down. Then Electronic Arts, the makers of the game, found out where the game and packs were bought and took them away.

When you buy a game, you’re not really buying a game. You’re buying a code that lets you play that game. If you lose your account, if you’re hacked, if a company doesn’t like where you got the game, then it’s gone. Your money, your saves, your in-game time is all gone. And they won’t refund you. They didn’t refund Dane.

When I buy a disc for my PS2, it’s mine forever. I can buy it at full retail price, second-hand on eBay, even from a thrift store. But these days it’s a rare find to see a computer game on a disc. When friends of mine come across PC games in thrift stores, they post pictures, we all swarm to it and gasp collectively. Everything is digital now, and I don’t trust it.

There are some games I would happily pay more for a copy of. I’d sit through the wait time, waiting by the door for the mail every morning, like a dog. With my dog. I miss the security of truly owning a game, being able to show off my game collection in ways other than screenshotting my Steam library.

All this being said, I do like not having to wait. I like not having disks cluttering up my shelves. I just wish there was an option in between – like you buy a game, redeem a code, then there’s an option to pay a little extra and have them send you out a disc. The disc is yours to backup your saves, your files, your screenshots and it’ll work even if you lose access to your online account.

I’m a very paranoid person.

Yesterday I bought yet another USB stick to download an entire TV show onto it because I fear that someday, in the far off future, Netflix and Amazon Prime and all the rest will get rid of all shows over a certain age. Or the entire internet will crash, and I’ll never be able to see old episodes again.

Going from physical to digital is scary in all aspects, because the cloud isn’t forever.

It took me years to start using Google Docs because I don’t trust anything on the internet will stick around. I’ve carried hundreds of Word documents across three, four computers now. I have dozens of USB sticks and two external hard drives. They’re the Word-document version of a game disk. Well, it’s that or write them all out in notebooks and I think my hand might hurt if I did that. Plus, my handwriting is terribly hard to read.

I still refuse to back up my files to a cloud-based service. I stick to USB sticks and hard drives, and I’d use floppy disks too if I could. I have two copies of every file across pairs of identical USB sticks. It’s my security blanket in the terrifying digital age.

With physical copies of things, you’re safe for life. When more advanced tech comes along, you can do the changeover. It’ll cost you, but only once, then you’re done. However, most cloud-based storage I’ve seen is a subscription, you need internet to access your files and it’s all hackable, losable, and uncertain.

So many people I’ve met have lost access to online accounts of 16 years, photos of more than five years, precious videos, and files they trusted the cloud to handle. Others have had their things hacked and leaked – just look at celebrity nude leaks. Tell me you don’t remember the tragedy of “The Fappening,” I dare you.

You just can’t trust machines yet. Toy Story 2 almost didn’t happen because of a silly technology mistake. Even their backups failed. Luckily, they had a backup of their backup. That’s what all my USB sticks and hard drives are. That’s why I keep my things on my computer and my laptop. That’s why I’d like to have discs for my game codes.

When you rely only on machines, you leave yourself vulnerable to people with more power than you taking, exposing, and destroying your things.

You could argue that your physical copies of games, your USB sticks, your external drives, could all be destroyed in a fire or stolen by a burglar. This is also true. This is where the cloud comes in for some. For people like me, this is where my foolproof, fireproof safe, with the backups of my backups comes in.

There’s this old phrase of not putting all your eggs in one basket, and that’s what I think people forget with technology. Maybe this is because I’m older, I still have video cassette tapes, I still buy DVDs, I still don’t “get” Blu-rays and sometimes, I burn my digital movie purchases onto disks to watch on a TV.

Or maybe it’s because I like to be safe, and I wish other people would do the same because if something snaps, then they crash and burn.

As our technology gets more intelligent, so must we. We won’t be left behind by staying physical as well as digital. We update as we go, just like technology.

It is very easy to forget about the times of running to the closest video store to rent a movie or taking a trip to a retailer to buy a new release. Although there are still some people who continue to buy physical media, it is fair to say that the number of those people has gradually decreased year after year. Even though most major entertainment industries have shifted the distribution of their media, there is one major industry that is still making the transition. That industry is video games.

The process of obtaining a video game digitally has been around for a long time. For a number of years, video game consoles have had online stores where you can purchase games and download them instantly to your hard drive. In more recent years, the number of games that are released digitally seems to be on the rise in order to cut manufacturing costs that come with producing physical copies. So why are people still going to brick and mortar stores to purchase their video games? Digital games have a number of conveniences, but they still lack some major elements that physical video games possess.

For a lot of people, buying a physical video game opens up the opportunity to save some money. Most major video game retailers have trade-in programs that allow you to bring in your used video games and trade them in for credit towards brand new releases. As of right now, this does not exist in a digital ecosystem. Video games are expensive, and this process of reducing the cost for the consumer encourages them to stick to the physical platform.

Another big reason why gamers are continuing to buy physical games is due to internet restrictions. There are several parts of the world that just simply do not have the connection speed to support large file downloads. With slow internet speed, downloading a game can take several hours, sometimes days, to complete. Data restrictions also play a large role in going physical over digital. Spending a month’s data allowance on one game download doesn’t leave you much room for anything else that uses the internet.

These are just some of the examples that can help explain why the video game industry is so far behind the others when it comes to a digital future. That being said, companies are finding new ways to innovate the traditional market of video games. Earlier this year, powerhouse tech company Google announced Stadia: a platform that offers gamers access to video games through streaming. Stadia has removed the cost of purchasing an expensive piece of hardware by using their own servers to do the heavy lifting that most AAA video games require.

The barrier to entry has been lifted, making games accessible to the wider general public. You may be thinking that this new evolution cannot be compared to the technological state that the current consoles maintain, but Stadia has promised features such as 4K resolution, minimal input lag, and a minimum internet speed of 35 Mbps. With such a low required internet speed, many individuals will be able to have a steady enough connection. In a society where people want things fast and on-demand, the instant accessibility of games can easily sway hardcore purest to give up their disc-based product.

The trend of subscription-based models has also seen an increase in the gaming industry. More and more major video game companies have created services that contain a digital library of video games. The argument of saving money on physical video games slowly diminishes when you can pay a low monthly cost and receive access to several games that would traditionally cost a fortune.

The video game industry has been slower than other industries when it comes to changing over to digital media. The gaming audience still has an attachment to physical media, which has made progression slow. Although there are still several people who will continue to push for physical media, the upcoming generation of video games may coerce people into embracing the change.