I Take Tons of Screenshots and Videos While Gaming (And You Should Too)

howtogeek.com:

You don’t think twice about snapping a photo with your smartphone, but how often do you take screenshots in games? Not often enough, probably.

Games Today, Gone Tomorrow

Games are typically well-preserved, despite concerns to the contrary and the increasing rarity of physical media. But the experiences we have while playing games are ephemeral. The time you spend with a controller or mouse in your hand is a snapshot in time.

You can always go back to an old game, but you can’t play that game for the first time again. Most of us rarely replay games outside of a handful of favorite titles. If you play even a handful of games in a year, you’ve probably forgotten most of the titles you played in the last half a decade. Some of us forget what we’ve played this year.

Everything from the game you’re playing to the platform you’re playing it on, the people you’re playing with, and even the current version or iteration of a title is a transient experience. This is especially true of modern titles, games as a service, and so-called living games.

Many games don’t last. I’m not just talking about free-to-play titles like Rumbleverse that are shut down within a year of launch. Multiplayer-focused games in particular suffer the same fate. You can still boot up Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and even install the latest patches, but you’ll probably find it difficult to get a game.

We take photos and record videos so we can look back on "IRL" events. We might forget about certain things, but a still image is sometimes all you need to prompt a strong memory. The good news is that the same is true of video games.

A Screenshot Tells a Thousand Words

If you spend a lot of time playing games, you should probably spend some of that time documenting your hobby. Games are experiences like any other, and it’s amazing what sort of memories you can attach to even a virtual experience.

It’s genuinely fun to scroll back through game captures, just as it is the photo library on a smartphone or