Feelies in games

What exactly are ‘Feelies’? You may be asking. Feelies are the additional physical content that are included in the boxes of video games. Feelies were very popular in the 1980’s and 1990’s but over the years have lost their way; possibly because of the increase in digitally released games which would be inferior to the boxed games because of their lack of content if these Feelies were still included. They do still exist in modern games but this is often in the limited edition copies of those games.

 The term ‘Feelies’ was initially created by the company ‘Infocom’ for their series of text adventures  in the 1980s, well before my time, that were used to enhance the games and were also used as a form of copyright protection to prevent piracy. I never really personally experienced many feelies in videogames due to being born fairly late into the 1990’s and never really purchasing any collector’s edition items but the latest example of Feelies I’ve experienced was the Elder Scrolls Anthology which contained a series of maps of the world of the game world, which was quite amazing for such a lore heavy video game series.

Although I haven’t had too much experience with feelies in my lifetime it would be quite a letdown if companies stopped producing them because of the boom of digital releases, as they convey a unique experience unattainable by just playing the game itself at this point in time. Perhaps when technology improves in the future it will make this physical content obsolete but until then I think feelies should continue to be included in video games, even if they are only included in the collector’s edition version of the game.