Defending Retail Gaming and the Physical Disc

 This is a repost from a thread earlier today: I just thought I wrote a particularly adamant response, and so I decided to post it as a blog. I read the quote in the italics, and it just set me off for some reason.
 

             " Gamestop is a cancer to the brick and mortar game business. How can you defend against downloadable games when you have Gamestop being the posterboy for the physical game industry? "

Now, even though this first sentence is a bit harsh, I still see physical copies as an absolute necessity. Why? 

Because without physical copies of games, there's no way to protect against hard-drive errors, you can't lend games to friends, no option for rental, and no resale ability.This would not only negatively affect consumer decisions, but also game designs.

Imagine a world where we can't rent and we can't resell our games. We'd have all made the mistake of buying Brütal Legend, especially considering the lie that was the demo. Providing a good demo will become more important in a game's debut than even  good marketing and press.

Now, this wouldn't be quite SO bad if you could then easily lend games to friends, but that wouldn't be an option either. There's no way I can buy all the games that are coming out this year. Heck, in the first quarter of this year alone, I'd like to spend upwards of $400 on games alone, and that's disregarding the games I missed last year. So instead, I plan to borrow games from my friends and we'll all collectively pick up the majority of the quality titles this first quarter, and rent the ones that aren't high priorities to us.But if lending comes down to giving someone your entire hard drive (and, effectively, your ability to play,) then I'd be stuck never playing Bayonetta or many of the other good games that are starting to come out at an increasing rate.

Meanwhile, electronic memory in general still isn't something I trust enough to make important purchases to. Computers crash, downloads fail, Xbox Live forgets that you downloaded a map pack...these are all problems that I've experienced. Worst of all has to be my current issue with most of my downloaded tracks on Rock Band 2: nothing works unless it was released for download in 2009. Other tracks I've downloaded in that year don't work, and the reason is completely unbeknownst to me. Switching the disc for a Rock Band 1 disc hasn't solved the problem, however, and I've tried re-downloading the tracks and that didn't work, so it appears to be a hard drive issue, further complicating the "downloadable games" issue.

But the biggest problem with downloadable titles is the inability to garner a refund, or at least SOME compensation being returned to you. The nice thing about reselling games at a place like GameStop (although everywhere else in the country seems to have the worst GameStop and EB employees I could imagine; my area has great clerks all the time who seem not only knowledgeable about but actually interested in games,) is that if a game runs dry quickly, you'll even get more value based on how recently the game was released. Resale value makes taking risks more profitable for gamers, as does a used game's price; eventually, nobody will take a risk on a game like Demon's Souls or Psychonauts. Meanwhile, I'd be furious if I had downloaded Scribblenauts to my DS and couldn't get my money back for it in some way.Hell, I'd be miffed if I couldn't sell Assassin's Creed II eventually, and that was my pick for Game of the Year; but there's simply a point where there's no more content in it.

This problem of an eventual "wall" of content would lead to some foolish game design choices. Game designers would look for ways to give their game infinite replay value due to cost of simply letting their game "end", or extend their game far beyond its intended length in order to meet these needs. Remember the completely unnecessary version of multiplayer in Star Wars: Republic Commando? The unnecessary addition of deathmatch, capture the flag and landgrab modes to many, many games waters down the experience overall, but would likely become a staple as opposed to genuinely well-made multiplayer experiences. Meanwhile, linearity would decline due to the need for replayability, leading (at least in the short run) to more morality sliders (Fable), arbitrary "game-changing" decisions (BioShock), and multiple-play-through achievements (Eternal Sonata, inFamous, Mass Effect).

The only things that seem to be controversial in my post just by looking at are the trustworthiness of technology (maybe I've just had a bad run, but I promise you it's all 100% true), the quality of service at retail localities, and the price point on games (weekly deals could probably help with this, but not enough for there to not be at least some backlash in risk-taking IMO), but let me know if I've completely misjudged something else about the gaming community.

 This is a repost from a thread earlier today: I just thought I wrote a particularly adamant response, and so I decided to post it as a blog. I read the quote in the italics, and it just set me off for some reason.
 

             " Gamestop is a cancer to the brick and mortar game business. How can you defend against downloadable games when you have Gamestop being the posterboy for the physical game industry? "

Now, even though this first sentence is a bit harsh, I still see physical copies as an absolute necessity. Why? 

Because without physical copies of games, there's no way to protect against hard-drive errors, you can't lend games to friends, no option for rental, and no resale ability.This would not only negatively affect consumer decisions, but also game designs.

Imagine a world where we can't rent and we can't resell our games. We'd have all made the mistake of buying Brütal Legend, especially considering the lie that was the demo. Providing a good demo will become more important in a game's debut than even  good marketing and press.

Now, this wouldn't be quite SO bad if you could then easily lend games to friends, but that wouldn't be an option either. There's no way I can buy all the games that are coming out this year. Heck, in the first quarter of this year alone, I'd like to spend upwards of $400 on games alone, and that's disregarding the games I missed last year. So instead, I plan to borrow games from my friends and we'll all collectively pick up the majority of the quality titles this first quarter, and rent the ones that aren't high priorities to us.But if lending comes down to giving someone your entire hard drive (and, effectively, your ability to play,) then I'd be stuck never playing Bayonetta or many of the other good games that are starting to come out at an increasing rate.

Meanwhile, electronic memory in general still isn't something I trust enough to make important purchases to. Computers crash, downloads fail, Xbox Live forgets that you downloaded a map pack...these are all problems that I've experienced. Worst of all has to be my current issue with most of my downloaded tracks on Rock Band 2: nothing works unless it was released for download in 2009. Other tracks I've downloaded in that year don't work, and the reason is completely unbeknownst to me. Switching the disc for a Rock Band 1 disc hasn't solved the problem, however, and I've tried re-downloading the tracks and that didn't work, so it appears to be a hard drive issue, further complicating the "downloadable games" issue.

But the biggest problem with downloadable titles is the inability to garner a refund, or at least SOME compensation being returned to you. The nice thing about reselling games at a place like GameStop (although everywhere else in the country seems to have the worst GameStop and EB employees I could imagine; my area has great clerks all the time who seem not only knowledgeable about but actually interested in games,) is that if a game runs dry quickly, you'll even get more value based on how recently the game was released. Resale value makes taking risks more profitable for gamers, as does a used game's price; eventually, nobody will take a risk on a game like Demon's Souls or Psychonauts. Meanwhile, I'd be furious if I had downloaded Scribblenauts to my DS and couldn't get my money back for it in some way.Hell, I'd be miffed if I couldn't sell Assassin's Creed II eventually, and that was my pick for Game of the Year; but there's simply a point where there's no more content in it.

This problem of an eventual "wall" of content would lead to some foolish game design choices. Game designers would look for ways to give their game infinite replay value due to cost of simply letting their game "end", or extend their game far beyond its intended length in order to meet these needs. Remember the completely unnecessary version of multiplayer in Star Wars: Republic Commando? The unnecessary addition of deathmatch, capture the flag and landgrab modes to many, many games waters down the experience overall, but would likely become a staple as opposed to genuinely well-made multiplayer experiences. Meanwhile, linearity would decline due to the need for replayability, leading (at least in the short run) to more morality sliders (Fable), arbitrary "game-changing" decisions (BioShock), and multiple-play-through achievements (Eternal Sonata, inFamous, Mass Effect).

The only things that seem to be controversial in my post just by looking at are the trustworthiness of technology (maybe I've just had a bad run, but I promise you it's all 100% true), the quality of service at retail localities, and the price point on games (weekly deals could probably help with this, but not enough for there to not be at least some backlash in risk-taking IMO), but let me know if I've completely misjudged something else about the gaming community.

Fantastic post, can't believe no one's commented yet (though it is a little long :-p). 
 
I pretty much agree with all you've said except maybe the second to last paragraph since I can't forsee that happening for all games - mainly because declining sales with each new piece of content may be less economically beneficial than charging a higher price and 'locking in' a user for all the content. I'm not 100% certain on that, it's just another possibility. 
 
But yeah, I think you're right on with the the rest; not being able to re-sell games or swap with friends etc. Some people compare it to music but I disagree with that comparison because whereas with music you can store it on mutiple mp3 players, hard-drives etc (so you'll always have a back-up if there is a fault) with games its on one drive and one system so you can't swap (unlike music) or create multiple copies for safety. Also downloadable music is relatively cheap compared to (full e.g xbox games on demand type) games and I think that for something relatively expensive, people still want a physical copy as proof of purchase or ownership.  Also I like displaying my collection on my shelf - at least for most of my games.
 
In addition, retail shops, however bad or unpleasent for the knowledgable gamer, are a huge advertising space for sony, microsoft etc. Imagine if microsoft released all xbox games online from day 1 of the 360 - loads of sales would have been lost since since  you would have to actually own an xbox first before being able to know what games are on it! At least with retail a 'casual' consumer can go in without owning the console or visiting game websites to find out what games are available.
 
I think the right way to go is not 100% digital distribution but a combination, releasing games in retail and online. Like how it is now : )

i like downloading games for the PC at least. i would not with a console as who knows might happen to the hard drives or servers for the company. somebody might want to redownload something but the servers aren't online. a person can not downloading it again. steam u can put onto a disc as a backup. the consoles u can't do that.