I'll freely admit it, I am a video game collector as well as a video game player, as my huge piles of game cases in various parts of the house will attest to. But I enjoy looking at all the various games I have collected over the years, admiring the box art paging through the game manuals (even if I am not going to play that game at the time.) I love the physicality of it, to hold in my hands a work that someone (often many, many someones) has put a lot of time, imagination and work into. Something that, save for some factors (taking care of the disk or cartidge, having a working machine to run it on), will last for a long time. something I own and can show to others.
Having physical media is something that it is rapidly changing, and someday soon will cease to exist entirely. That will be a very sad day for me.
Progress can not be stopped, like an unrelenting tank. And like like a tank, it does not care who it grinds under it's treads. Digital media does have its good points...and its bad. Games are more and more becoming piecemeal affairs, as downloadable content allows companies to sell characters, quests and clothing(!) even after the game player has bought his/her 60 dollar game. Do you have buy the DLC? Of course not. More and more though, it seems important parts of the games has been stripped out to sell later to gamers, something companies wave over the grasping hands of the masses, just out of reach. Already payed 60 dollars for your game? Too bad, you have to pony up an addition 20 dollars to REALLY enjoy the game.
Aside from DLC, and which saddens old time gamers like me, is that soon there will only games on a consoles' hard drive. No case to admire, no manual to page through, nothing. Only....air, really. In the future, all gamers will own basically air. Or a series of ones and zeroes. Whatever the hell downloaded stuff is. Yes, it's a game that can be played on the console of your choice...but you don't really have it, do you?
This has a lot to do with my age, of course. For over twenty-five years I have bought and rented (and returned) video games. I enjoy looking through cases, putting disks or inserting cartidges in consoles or handhelds. Eventually going fully digital is a HUGE and difficult thing for me to do, which is patially the reason I am stuck at last generation games/consoles. Sure, many games are still made into physical format, but the whole DLC format is putting me off.
While I am still negative toward digital media, I think independent game studios who would have a snowballs chance in hell of ever getting their unique work published have enbraced the much cheaper digital route to great success. This in my mind is a very, very good thing. While the big studious rehash the same old thing because they cannot afford to take risks, independent studious take risks all the time to great success. Independent games are the reason video games should be labeled art:they are imaginitive, thoughful and emotional. Not just yet another first person game where you shoot the bad guys in the head.
So, while I still have my psychical games, I want to game for years to come, but the future of the media itself disheartens me. In order to continue my hobby I love so much I may have to embrace digital media; but I will yearn for what I have left behind.
