A Closer Look...
Mar. 7th, 2010 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owsf2000This is an article by Stan (A person who happens to post at Atari Age as well) taking a closer look at downloadable content for consoles that brings up the question as to whether or not it's really good for the video game industry overall. In particular, the views he tackles in particular are from the collector/gamer approach than the pure gamer approach.
I tend to agree with what he says, since I love having an actual physical collection. Proof of my purchase, and a far more solid reassurance that the games are actually there rather than on some corrupted hard drive/flash disk/etc.
One thing he didn't deal with however is that DLC is a bit more insidious than simply not being able to even get a game (secondhand or firsthand) 10 years down the road if you didn't buy it when it was first released. Sure you can back stuff up in some cases, but that's not always perfect either.
Consider Heavy Rain. A game that, unlike the DL-only Mega Man 10, has a physical disc that you buy. So for collectors, excellent! You can keep it! Display it! And 10 years later you can play it just the same as now right?!
Right?!
But Heavy Rain, like what seems to be an increasing number of modern games, has a lot of bugs in it. Enough so that on zero-day there was already a large enough patch to download and install that they packed in some origami for players to play with while waiting for it to download and install.
Ten years from now are those bug patches going to be (LEGALLY) available? It's not enough to say "I'm sure they'll do something to ensure gamers aren't affected when the time comes." Because that's nothing more than hopeful guessing. Unless you have some inside knowledge to the contrary, it's far safer to assume that players will be SOL since by then they already have your money.
So 10 years later you have your physical copy of the game and you go to reinstall it to play through it a few more times. At best, you have nothing more than a bug ridden game to enjoy. At worse, the PS3 might refuse to play it at all until you download the by then nonexistent bug patches...
I'm the type of gamer that:
1. Will go back years later and play through a game I've enjoyed in the past.
and
2. Buys so many games at times that it takes years before I even get around to PLAY it for the first time.
Seriously. I have about 20 games from as far back as 2008 that are still factory sealed. And many others before that which I opened and maybe played an hour of before getting distracted by the Next Big Thing that I was more interested in. (I do plan on getting back to Doom 3 at some point for instance.)
So what does this mean for me? It means I spend less money on current gen games ... period. Last thing I want to do is buy a game that I won't have time for for a year or three (but have to buy NOW since it likely won't be easily available by then) and by the time I finally get around to playing it, I find out there are massive game wrecking bugs in it and quite likely by the time I first try to play it the patches will no longer be available.
This is why I'm interested in knowing, in particular, whether there are bugs in modern games. I need it to determine if I will be buying a game or not. Minor bugs such as Cool Ass Weapon never actually dropping from a monster you defeat I can probably live with unless you need Cool Ass Weapon in order to complete the game. Game breaking bugs and annoyances however I plan on avoiding like the plague if possible. If I accidentally buy one with a massive bug patch, I'll probably play through it once then trade it in to go buy something else. Ideally tho I'd prefer to avoid purchasing it altogether.
I tend to agree with what he says, since I love having an actual physical collection. Proof of my purchase, and a far more solid reassurance that the games are actually there rather than on some corrupted hard drive/flash disk/etc.
One thing he didn't deal with however is that DLC is a bit more insidious than simply not being able to even get a game (secondhand or firsthand) 10 years down the road if you didn't buy it when it was first released. Sure you can back stuff up in some cases, but that's not always perfect either.
Consider Heavy Rain. A game that, unlike the DL-only Mega Man 10, has a physical disc that you buy. So for collectors, excellent! You can keep it! Display it! And 10 years later you can play it just the same as now right?!
Right?!
But Heavy Rain, like what seems to be an increasing number of modern games, has a lot of bugs in it. Enough so that on zero-day there was already a large enough patch to download and install that they packed in some origami for players to play with while waiting for it to download and install.
Ten years from now are those bug patches going to be (LEGALLY) available? It's not enough to say "I'm sure they'll do something to ensure gamers aren't affected when the time comes." Because that's nothing more than hopeful guessing. Unless you have some inside knowledge to the contrary, it's far safer to assume that players will be SOL since by then they already have your money.
So 10 years later you have your physical copy of the game and you go to reinstall it to play through it a few more times. At best, you have nothing more than a bug ridden game to enjoy. At worse, the PS3 might refuse to play it at all until you download the by then nonexistent bug patches...
I'm the type of gamer that:
1. Will go back years later and play through a game I've enjoyed in the past.
and
2. Buys so many games at times that it takes years before I even get around to PLAY it for the first time.
Seriously. I have about 20 games from as far back as 2008 that are still factory sealed. And many others before that which I opened and maybe played an hour of before getting distracted by the Next Big Thing that I was more interested in. (I do plan on getting back to Doom 3 at some point for instance.)
So what does this mean for me? It means I spend less money on current gen games ... period. Last thing I want to do is buy a game that I won't have time for for a year or three (but have to buy NOW since it likely won't be easily available by then) and by the time I finally get around to playing it, I find out there are massive game wrecking bugs in it and quite likely by the time I first try to play it the patches will no longer be available.
This is why I'm interested in knowing, in particular, whether there are bugs in modern games. I need it to determine if I will be buying a game or not. Minor bugs such as Cool Ass Weapon never actually dropping from a monster you defeat I can probably live with unless you need Cool Ass Weapon in order to complete the game. Game breaking bugs and annoyances however I plan on avoiding like the plague if possible. If I accidentally buy one with a massive bug patch, I'll probably play through it once then trade it in to go buy something else. Ideally tho I'd prefer to avoid purchasing it altogether.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-08 08:10 am (UTC)At least with physical games however, if a game fails it's just that. ONE game. You can buy a new console if you need to if that failed as well, and you'd be right back to where you started.
With download-only content, if the console's servers have removed support, then getting a new console doesn't help you. You'll have lost it all.
We'll have to wait until the PS3/360/Wii era is over however to see how this shit slides. We're only getting a tiny taste of it with MS pulling the plug on the original xbox April 15th since it wasn't utilized nearly as much as the current gen is utilizing the digital aspects.
I'm still trying to decide exactly how I'll approach the digital content crap for when I finally get the PS3 etc next year some time. I know I'm not going to be buying a lot in that manner, but at the same time I'll probably let myself buy a couple cheap games that I'll consider tied to the console. Sort of like how when you bought the Sega Master System back in the day, there was a default game on it that could be played if you didn't put a cartridge in the slot.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-10 07:37 pm (UTC)With download-only content, if the console's servers have removed support, then getting a new console doesn't help you. You'll have lost it all.
This is true. No matter how hard-to-find it may be or how exorbitantly expensive it may be, I should, at least in theory, be able to find a copy of FF7 somewhere.
To go back to the patch thing again, though, there are, again, PC games that got released with a bunch of bugs in them, but then the devs completely went out of business shortly thereafter, only releasing a mediocre patch or two, if even that much, that did little to fix the broken game. At that point, players were pretty much screwed. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade_%E2%80%93_Bloodlines) comes to mind. The only reason I bought this game, years later, was because I learned of fan-made patches that were released that mostly fixed the brokenness.
Of course, admittedly, it's probably not very feasible that we'd ever see similar fan patches for broken console games if Xbox Live or PSN support ever went down forever.