Physical Digital: Bringing the Friction of Physical Media to our Digital Libraries

 New methods for recurring challenges

    Where I try pull together a bunch of different ideas and passions of mine into something that resembles a cohesive theory, and practices, for engaging more of our senses when interacting with all forms of media, along with tackling the dreaded backlog known to PC gaming enthusiasts, bibliophiles who talk about their anti-library, Netflix subscribers whose My List goes back several years, music lovers, and all those with an insatiable appetite for new art. 

    This is the (current) culmination of habits and a mindset I've been working toward for close to a decade. Something that I think started subconsciously as a result of engaging with physical media in new ways, and then shifted toward being fully intentional; picking up new techniques and ideas over the years, until recently when I saw a thought provoking video essay with an accompanying methodology and then felt inspired to do something a bit unusual for my digital library of roleplaying game PDFs.

A teaser for my digital library turned physical reference book.

Digital Dominance

    To stop burying the lead in coy language, this is all about my efforts to give myself at least some time away from the ever present existential void that is a blank phone screen or the ubiquity of glowing rectangles in every facet of my life. 

    The blank screen calls to us, an endless black void of eldritch power. Full of potential activity and stimulation. A miracle of modern technology. Convenience, resource, aid, entertainer, educator, communications, connection, friend.

    Glowing rectangles fill our vision everywhere we go. For many of us, our work and personal lives revolve around devices with a familiar display. We've willingly created this reality for ourselves. A fully digital lifestyle to ease the friction of analog interfaces. We work at desks with multiple monitors, go home to a massive screen that dominates our common living space, and everywhere we carry the little friend that only occasionally shows our reflection in a black mirror.

    Admittedly, I've described myself and applied the universal we, for both the lifestyle and the implied problems of such a lifestyle. I do this because I've seen similar thoughts echoed over the years, across many platforms and communities with varying interests. I've also seen many responses and solutions to these issues, if we want to name it so. However, I know many people who just don't see any of this as an issue. They embrace the convenience of our digital lifestyles and the ease it gives us to interact with our preferred media. After all, we've been paving this road we now walk for a long time, and the benefits are nearly undeniable.

Subtle Losses

    Clearly, I do see this as something of an issue, or I wouldn't be writing this post. The issues have a range, in terms of how they impact us (psychological or physical, maybe even metaphysical) and the severity of the impact. I'm sure other people have said many of these things better than I could, and are more qualified to do so, and I'll be linking to a couple examples later; I want to try focusing on a couple of areas where I feel the impact most clearly and have a solution to share. The art and media I love, and the ways to rekindle some of the lost spark I originally felt.

    I see the root of many issues arising in the digital age as the same things we have to gain by reintroducing physical elements into our media consumption. Those being, the friction of analog media, devices, and processes, which engage all of our senses (okay maybe not taste, since we don't usually go around licking things, but smell sort of covers it) and require intentional effort to use. The conveniences of our digital age have so thoroughly lowered the barriers between our impulsive desires and their delivery that the gratification we feel has been eroded along with the obstacles to consumption.

    When everything is just a few taps, clicks, or swipes away, the same interface and ease for everything we want to do, then it's easier to simply move on to the next thing as a distracting thought crosses our mind; alternatively, sometimes it's easier to just make no choice at all. Picking a show on Netflix, or a video on YouTube, isn't necessary if we can just keep scrolling through thumbnails, watching trailers and clips; not to mention the plague of short-form video platforms that have become the new norm. I'm going to pick up that book I've been meaning to read, but first I just need to see what's up on [social media platform]. I'm now reading the book, or watching the show, but oh I wanted to see what my partner sent me earlier so I'm just gonna grab my phone for a minute. Now I'm second-screening and not really doing any one thing fully. Oh, yeah I have been meaning to watch this show on my list for three years, but this new thing that just came out looks great and the FOMO for the new thing is way stronger. I'm kinda picking on shows and reading, but all of these feelings and processes are just as relevant to video games, music, or TTRPGs.

    The constant deluge of new content and media is overwhelming, and FOMO rears its ugly head in a variety of ways. Steam sales have been bloating my digital game library for well over a 15 years at this point, and Humble Bundle introduced a whole new way to "collect" new things in bulk. Netflix buries My List under a mountain of new releases and For You. All of these things serve to pile on to that feeling of missing out. It's challenging to break through the noise, or put up our own barriers of defense, in order to follow through on the goals we originally set. I'll let the video linked below cover the topics of the weaponized distraction industry and decision fatigue. So what do we do?

The Fun and Friction of Physical Media

    The weight of thing in your hand, the sounds it makes as you handle it, remove it from a shelf or stack filled with the same media and then open it. The odors of paper, plastic, and film. The mechanical clicks and whirs of a physical media player. Using a dedicated device that serves no purpose other than the playback of a specific type of media. These are all things that I have a real romantic view on, and I know other people don't share (like my buddy Arrowed who writes cool things about RPGs), but I also genuinely thing they create a more full and intentional experience when we're enjoying the art we love. 

    My love for books and reading is just as much tied to the sensations of reading massive hardback fantasy novels as it is the stories themselves. Selecting a vinyl record or CD to listen to is a sort of ritual, which creates dedication to my choice and a resistance to moving on to another option in the easy going sea of a streaming platform. It was these things that started me on this journey, when I started making the commitment to listen to records and read the books that had been sitting on my shelf. Listener commitment, as John Darko calls it in his excellent video 15 reasons why I STILL BUY CDs, along with many other great points in favor of physical media (privacy and content ownership), is going to be a relevant theme in the next section as I dive into the methodology of the Rule of 3 and using a Focus Shelf. I also think there's something to be said for repeated viewings of movies, spins of albums, or play-throughs of games, and I think the friction of physical media helps with this practice. It's easier to listen to that same CD again if it's still sitting in the disc tray of your player. 

   The tactile physicality of interacting with real objects, as opposed to scrolling through a digital interface, gives me a sense of engagement that I simply don't feel when I open Steam and double click on a game title. So in addition to reconnecting with my physical media libraries (yes, I still own all my CDs from high school), I'm introducing physical totems and processes into my digital library interfaces. 

My focus shelf for using the rule of three.

     Decision fatigue, or "gamer ADHD", along with the backlog of shame, as it's commonly called in PC gaming communities, are common topics. As is the feeling of dissatisfaction and lack of immersion when we do finally decide to play a game, watch a movie, listen to a full album, or that ultimate challenge of just reading a book. If I tried to pick from my entire library each night, even just for physical media, I'd be facing down literally hundreds of options, whether I was trying to pick a vinyl record or a DVD.

Take it away, 8BITJOYSTICK...

 

A great video where he covers a lot of the topics I've echoed here 

    The very brief summary of his tactile rule of three method:

• Pick three items from each category of media you enjoy. Remember to give yourself some variety within each category, so you don't pick three fantasy novels that are each 900 pages long.
• For items in your digital collections, create a token to represent that title. This introduces the physical element into your digital media enjoyment and gives that selection some object permanence in your mind. 
• Place those selections on a dedicated shelf or table with nothing else, or in a basket if you don't have a spare shelf you can dedicate. My shelf is pictured above.
• When you are ready to enjoy your selections, set aside a specified duration of time and set a timer on your phone. Place your phone somewhere out of sight and reach, but don't forget to turn on the ringer in case of emergencies. Enjoy your selected media for the full duration!
• Keep a list of the items you wish you tackle in your backlog, if that is your goal. In addition, keep a progress journal to help with remembering where you left off in a game or other media. I'm also using this for general journaling to record my thoughts and feelings throughout this journey.

    Another great video essay from Jeremy Jayne at /noclip covered a lot of similar topics, although with a slightly different focus. While we're talking about physical media and video games, might as well point your way to this excellent rant from Danny O'Dwyer at /noclip regarding the end of games on disc for Playstation.

     I've really been enjoying my time using the rule of three and accompanying focus shelf. It's helped me feel connected with my hobbies in a way that I haven't always been able to achieve as I've felt the pressures of other parts of my life. Even as I spend time with my hobbies, the joy of that time is not always the same.

TTRPGs have entered the match!

    As I've mentioned before, one of my motivating factors for wanting to get into TTRPGs was the chance to disconnect from screens more often. Read a chonker of a hardback textbook, make notes in a journal, write with pencil on a paper character sheet, gather with friends around the table, play with miniature monsters on a gridded map, and hear the clack of dice against the walls of a wooden tray. Of course, I quickly found that digital tools and resources make all those things much easier, and then I joined a great discord community and started a blog. Bought a few bundles of RPG books in PDF format. Whoops.

   The management of that digital library, and my quest for maintaining a physical connection to my preferred media, led me to a new way to explore my hoard. Within a relatively short time I found that I had forgotten most of the RPG books bundled together for an irresistibly low price and then hidden away in a nested file structure. Full games, supplements, adventures, and essay collections were all languishing in a digital void. I don't recall if we had a similar thought at the same time, or if I stole this idea from her entirely, but I know Patchwork Paladin has been working on a similar project to create a physical representation of her digital library. Here's my own end result, for now.

Three shots of my RPGs to be Played or Read binder 

     For full games I printed the front and back covers on a single sheet of paper, to maintain the impact of the art and font along with the backmatter giving a nice description of what to expect from the game.

Pathfinder Binder

5E binder includes relevant supplements and collected adventures

     For adventures I tried to print the front cover with lovely art and a summary page, usually directly from the product, which tells me the intended level range and everything I need to know about the adventure at first glance.

    I also have a binder of full games which are less of a priority, which I will not insult by posting. If I wasn't able to grab the book's actual back cover, or a summary page from an adventure, then I would make something that works as a stand-in with all the relevant information. 

    My goal here is to be able to pull these binders off my shelf when I'm looking for a good adventure to drop into my D&D campaign or I'm ready to try reading a new game. Then I can quickly find the book in digital form to actually read it. I'm really enjoying this process so far, and I've already found some great stuff that I had forgotten I owned. It's also led to me setting up a session to run Dreams and Machines for a few friends using that game's quickstart adventure.

Really excited to run this game after rediscovering it as part of this process.

I'm probably going to make another binder full of quickstarts, as a good encouragement for more easily engaging with the huge variety of games in my library. 

Quick note for people doing similar things in PC gaming.

End

    If you've felt similar things about the conveniences of our digital world, or felt the loss of physical interfaces and analog devices, then I would encourage you to reconnect with your physical media libraries or introduce physical mechanisms into your digital routine. Go to your local used media store and browse for a while. Get your CDs out of storage and put one in the disc drive of your gaming console. Put your phone out of sight and reach for two full hours and see how you feel after.