In the olden days, when I returned home from the E3 Game Expo, I carried an additional suitcase just to hold the glossy catalogues of new games. In 2003 -- the square boxes that held catalogues in the Media Room were empty and distributors and producers handed out CD's containing their new games.

This year -- while there still were some CD's, the latest was a post card with a URL. You know, while I am all for protecting the forests and saving the planet, what this new trend costs is my time. It was faster to flip through a physical catalog and pick out the games then to go online and click thought a bunch of images. The ultimate end of this is to be sent a list of URLs instead of my going to E3 and visiting my friends and advancing my hearing loss.

This, "you do the work instead of us" bit happens regularly with instructions for games, mostly for kids. They are placed on the game disk so you have to print out the manual. This is the same as "Some construction required" and "Batteries not included". I don't want to put it together, I want batteries included and I want my manual. Grump. Grump. Grump.