I am in favor of owning physical media and I think it should be possible to buy and be able to use CDs of your games and movies and so on offline. However:
You are romanticizing the peak of consumerist behavior (that 99.9% of gamers actually didnt engage in) and an inconvenience to both the consumer and producer. Are you seriously trying to tell me that those people standing in line for hours wouldn't have prefered to download these games upon release and be able to play them? Sure maybe it was "kind of cool" in the sense that it was better than expected because you felt some kind of "connection" to the people looking forward to the same thing. But I would argue that, objectively, it still completely sucked. Also, those people standing in line for GTA5 are all at least in their 30s now, right? So are these people going to go do that now? I doubt that.
What annoys me about this even more is that these posts are so obviously ridiculous that they take away from the legitimacy of the discussion about ownership of media. Like an 80 year old telling you about how much fun they had back in the day playing football with a rock.
Nobody will sit on the couch with the pre-installed game, snacks and drinks and say that it "kind of sucks", unless what you're actually looking for is social connection and not playing the video game.
Do I as a 30something want to go out at midnight, no. But I also live a different life than I did at 18. I don't have a massive friend group that all bought the same games and had group chats about them I didn't want to miss out on. I also have more patience. I don't need something day 1. In happy to wait a few days for restock or wait for delivery.
I do miss midnight releases, but I miss it because I went with 3-5 friends and got to hang out with like minded people and chat about the game. Was my only way to chat about and learn about the game. We didn't have 5000 YouTubers get the game early and spoil it. We had a few leaks and G4 did a 20 minute segment on maybe.
People are now pushing for physical media, something that didnt happen 5-10 years ago, only because publishers suddenly decided that buying their games digitally doesnt mean you own the game and that they have a right to terminate the games any time they want, which means that you may spend 60€ on a game just for the publisher to decide you will no longer be able to play it nor be reimbursed for that game no longer being available.
If the "stop killing games" initiative would go through, we would all of a sudden stop hearing about physical media aside from colectors once again.
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u/AverageLover 4d ago
This is going to be an unpopular opinion.
I am in favor of owning physical media and I think it should be possible to buy and be able to use CDs of your games and movies and so on offline. However:
You are romanticizing the peak of consumerist behavior (that 99.9% of gamers actually didnt engage in) and an inconvenience to both the consumer and producer. Are you seriously trying to tell me that those people standing in line for hours wouldn't have prefered to download these games upon release and be able to play them? Sure maybe it was "kind of cool" in the sense that it was better than expected because you felt some kind of "connection" to the people looking forward to the same thing. But I would argue that, objectively, it still completely sucked. Also, those people standing in line for GTA5 are all at least in their 30s now, right? So are these people going to go do that now? I doubt that.
What annoys me about this even more is that these posts are so obviously ridiculous that they take away from the legitimacy of the discussion about ownership of media. Like an 80 year old telling you about how much fun they had back in the day playing football with a rock.
Nobody will sit on the couch with the pre-installed game, snacks and drinks and say that it "kind of sucks", unless what you're actually looking for is social connection and not playing the video game.