>>713799480
As someone who played a lot of PC games before Steam, WE DIDN- Just kidding, we did.
Obviously our first encounter with PC games is at the store. Yes, they shipped PC games, on disks, in a box, put them on the shelf, and sold them in stores. It's really no different than buying a box of mac and cheese. See the pic on top? That's what it looked like.
YEAH, THE BOXES WERE JUST RIGHT THERE, AND NOBODY STOLE THEM! Imagine fucking that.
But how did we know which games were worth buying? We read magazines and played demos, bottom pic related. I read that exact issue numerous times when I was 9 years old, played every demo on the disc for hours, and that's how we knew what was good. Yeah I was pretty young back then, but PC gaming was and still is my life, even when I was a child.
Word of mouth was very common too, if you worked in an office building, it wasn't unusual for some guys to talk about games and even play multiplayer games over the network. My dad brought home many games for me to play as a child, like Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Quake, and Half-Life 1.
I look back at those times very fondly. Is it worse now? In some ways yes, in other ways, no.