One of the things that I do miss with games is the concept of a manual that actually contains stuff beyond the bare necessities. I'm a little too young to remember most of these first-hand, but I have a lot of second-hand games or their digital re-releases that come with supplemental content that could occupy more time than half of the games coming out these days.

I think it's telling that much of this stuff does exist, but is found elsewhere in the form of premium additions; art-books or authorized setting guides that are taking the place of things that used to be freely available. There are still companies that still bundle supplemental content with their games (Blizzard and Valve, for instance, though much of their work is more advertisement than enrichment), but they're not nearly as prominent and there's a definite barrier between the game itself and this format.

The biggest shame, though, is that you don't see tie-in content that really enriches the experience. Status symbol collector's editions are so vapid that they don't add anything to the experience other than an often tacky ornament for a shelf or a desk.

You can argue that all this stuff was expensive, but it never seemed to interfere with the quality of the games. Instead, it was a display of love for what the programmers, writers, and designers created.