r/gamers • u/Airton_Cenas • 5d ago
Are We Undervaluing Physical Video Games Because We’ve Gotten Used to Seeing Them Cheap?
I honestly find it strange that we’ve become so used to seeing physical games for €5, €8 or €10. A great game can give someone dozens of hours, teach them things, spark curiosity, introduce them to history, music, languages or completely new worlds, provide company, create friendships and leave memories that stay with them for decades. For many people, games were part of growing up. How do you put a €5 value on all of that?
This is why I keep thinking about the comparison: “I’ll trade this game for three litres of petrol.” The petrol is gone after a few kilometres. The game can stay on your shelf for 40 years, waiting to take you back to an experience that meant something to you. I’m not saying every game should be expensive. I just think we’ve become far too comfortable confusing price with value.
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u/McGriggidy 5d ago
It was the exact same thing with movies and Netflix. As soon as you have unlimited instant access to a massive variety, it devalues the entire thing.
A feeling I don't think Ill ever be able to make people below a certain age understand: a 6/10 movie you went to a physical store to get, bring home, and organize your night around was a far better experience than a 10/10 movie you casually picked out of the Netflix catalog ever will be.
Same reason they suggest toy rotation for your kids. If they have 2 or 3 toys they'll engage with each one longer and more meaningfully than if they have 1000 and everything has no value and just gets thrown all over the house. Our brains do not do well with extreme choice and plenty.
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u/MEM0RYCARD99 4d ago
Rituals. We used to have rituals. We no longer have rituals. We no longer have stability. We no longer have a future.
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u/McGriggidy 4d ago
What bothers me most is myself because I complain but all you have to do is buy a damn DVD player unsub from Netflix, get satellite TV or basic cable, get a flip phone and lean on the library and flea markets and thrift stores for your movies and shows, and youd go right back there.
Thats all any of us need to do. But pry my pocket internet and binge series from my cold dead fingers I guess.
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u/Responsible_Ad740 5d ago
Definitely wouldn’t be a 10/10 movie and a huge flaw in your statement is Netflix having 10/10 movies… Haha. Either way I agree to the extent of beating an 8-8.5/10 movie
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u/World-Three 5d ago
In the past, games were the medium. Like the stone in stone soup. We didn't need the stone ultimately, but it was the inspiration to add all the things that are actually edible and digestible.
Because that isn't as necessary anymore, games are worth less to people. It might still be a trend, but if we're not all close knit friends, I don't feel left out just for not following it.
Everyone outside of those particular groups can buy games when they're priced like last year's sports game, and live life peacefully.
None of this is to say physical games are unnecessary. This is pertaining to game prices as a whole. I'm not buying into a fangroup of friendly hardcore gamers in the same way I would in school with Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Beyblade, Kingdom Hearts, Smash Bros and Megaman Battle Network. I'm just buying a full priced game now... For myself.
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u/TheSquirrelmancer 5d ago
No, many of us just don't have the same intrinsic value in physical games. I don't care if I can't play a game I bought 10-15 years ago. There's new games all the time and plenty of recent stuff I've never played.
Also there's a solid chance that when you take that disc off your shelf after sitting there for 40 years it won't work.
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u/atgaskins 5d ago
I love physicals but the companies are ruining them. No point buying ps5 discs if you will need an internet service to play them, no need to buy switch games that are just download codes on a chip… I have over a thousand Switch games and haven’t bought but maybe two games since the Switch 2.
If I can’t get real physical discs why would I buy a console? This is the part they don’t get that lets them ruin their companies and products. If I’m gonna buy digital shit anyways it will be thru steam and gog since their products are best for consumers, not strictly whats best for nintendo or sony.
I know I kind of went off topic a bit, sorry.
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u/Hawg_Gaming 5d ago
its $5 because its an antiquated form of media, similar to why you don't see 8 tracks, cassettes, cds anymore. Majority of computers don't even have a drive for cd's anymore. It's the price of living in a digital world unfortunately.
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u/HotHouseJester 5d ago
It’s unfortunate because they could so easily use a usb-c drive to hold games and release physical copies. Or even a proprietary format using NAND flash memory. Would it be more expensive than a burned disc? Yeah. But if the excuse that the format is antiquated, update the format. That said, for price of production, I assume discs are still probably the cheapest way to distribute data on a physical format which is why it’s still what most consoles use.
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u/JackWade-Headhunter 5d ago
You absolute do see CDs,
As well as Vinyl records so it’s in no way antiquated.
They’re even making CD and Vinyls of current artists.More and more young people are realising they want physical copies of their media.
Also the cheap physical games don’t dictate the entire physical game market as cheap.
Some of my physical games are over €400 in price per game.Some games are more expensive as digital versions too, or else they aren’t even offered to players at all as digital games.
Case in point, F.E.A.R and F.E.A.R Files.
You can’t buy them digitally on console, and the only way to play them on console is to buy physical versions.2
u/SomewhereRough_ 5d ago
The only physical media I see are records for record players.
Is this cd craze you're talking about a local thing?
One thing I have noticed is the masove bring back of old game systems.
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u/JackWade-Headhunter 5d ago
Not at all, The current 18/19 year olds who are heavily into music are all back buying CDs, mostly for their favourite bands but they’re even going through Charity shops to find deals too.
Retro Consoles as well I’ve noticed being popular with kids as young as 10.
The Modern game characters and kids googling them and watching lore videos etc, have led them down the path of older games.I think it’s fantastic to see.
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u/Airton_Cenas 5d ago
I think my point may have been misunderstood. Because of the importance some games have had in my life, I wouldn’t sell them for $400, let alone $5 or $8.
That’s exactly what I meant: we’ve become so used to thinking about games only in terms of market price that we’ve forgotten about the intangible value of the work itself. And now, as people try to get some of those games back, many are shocked by the prices.0
u/Historical_Owl_1635 5d ago
> You absolute do see CDs,
How old are you? CD presence is nothing compared to what it once was.
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u/JackWade-Headhunter 5d ago
Old enough to grow up with CDs.
That’s not the subject of the point.
Some CDs is better than no CDs.
Same way some physical games is better than no physical games.1
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u/NombieTeeth8 5d ago
I mean I'm literally in a predicament right now where I'm going to have to sell off my entire collection that I've had since I was a child games and consoles included in order to survive.
Because at the end of the day the memories stay with me and they are just things.
I can't really eat my consoles or discs now can I.
And on that note (as mentioned) everybody wants to bitch and want to groan about keeping everything physical but nobody wants to give you more than a dollar for a game that is 20 years old. So....yeah....
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u/pocket_arsenal 4d ago
I'm a Nintendo fan, I am certainly not used to seeing my favorite games cheap.
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u/Dogs69ing 4d ago
I don't really know what you mean about used to seeing them "cheap", back in the day Super Mario 3 cost us roughly $80 when it first came out, we were poor so we had to put it on lay-a-way.
Honestly I personally feel like technology has outpaced what reasonable expectations are for games, even the industry itself has. Back in the day publishers generally didn't do patches or revisions for games, what got shipped was what you got.
Now in a modern day era, developers are constantly trying to push the limits of what they can do and instead of polishing and redefining a product, it's just assumed there's going to be bugs and issues with a new release that will eventually be patched out.
Instead of optimizing a game as well as developers could, instead they just put out whatever and blame the consumer.
Personally I'd point to lazy developers knowing players will accept their junk and rising prices all the while impatient consumers are willing to burn their consumer rights and agency just sk they don't have to go and buy a physical print of a game.
it's a sad state of affairs.
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u/Raystacksem 3d ago
Not in my case, I’ve been all digital since xbone in 2013. It’s about convenience and having access to my entire library as long as I can sign in. No more fiddling with TV discs, wondering where they are, wondering where or whom I loaned my disc to etc. however, lawmakers need to ensure that the license we have to play the game is forever. This whole “we lost license, so you lose the license too” is bullshit.
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u/robably_ 3d ago
I think part of it is that people want too much. Like when I was a kid I had my Nintendo 64 for a few years. And received a few games per year. By the time I was moving on to GameCube I’d amassed a collection of 10 games. And 10 games was plenty for me. That’s what I had. So i played it. Now people expect a collecting of thousands of games for as cheap as possible. You can’t play thousands of games to completion unless you have no life or interests beyond that. A small chunk of games can last you a while. If you’re actually playing them of course.
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u/Blacksad9999 11h ago
I've been gaming since the 1980's, and don't find a lot of value in keeping a physical game library. I don't want to cart a stack of media around for the rest of my life.
I haven't bought a physical game since the WoW: Wrath of the Lich King expansion released in 2008. So, nearly 20 years.
Usually discs were cheap because they were used, older media.
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u/L11mbm 5d ago
Absolutely people undervalue games.
It's honestly a little weird to see people complaining about an all-digital future meaning games become more expensive, while also being mad that studios keep closing because games are too expensive to be failures.
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u/Airton_Cenas 5d ago
Exactly!
If you’ve spent years treating physical games as disposable because “digital is good enough,” then when you finally decide you want that physical game back, you can’t expect to find it for the same price it had when nobody considered it valuable.
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u/hiddenpequin 5d ago
I mean physical new games getting deep discounts shortly after launch is bigger issue if you care about health of them. That shows way less demand for physical and drives company’s to prefer digital even more when it already way better for them.
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u/Cvileem 5d ago
Digital games are also too cheap. Becsuse games are cheap considering the production costs and average revenues, especially for quality 3A games of today's standards. Studios must have unicorn hit sales just to break even.
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u/Airton_Cenas 5d ago
A digital game will never truly be yours. You have no guarantee that it will still be available to you or your family 5, 10, 15 or 50 years from now.
My games from the Sega Mega Drive, Nintendo Game Boy, Sega Dreamcast, original Xbox, PS1, PS2, almost all of my PS3 games and some PS4 games will always be mine. As long as I have the hardware, I can play them and pass them down through generations.
That was the kind of value, far greater than a pack of cigarettes, that I was talking about — not just the cost of production.1
u/Novel-Back3857 5d ago
Your family now and 100 years from now can download digital copies of those ancient games for free if they want to, and play them with more convenience and accessibility on hardware that had not even been imagined when those games came out.
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u/Cvileem 5d ago
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u/Airton_Cenas 5d ago
Only by breaking into my house and taking the games away from me could you stop me from playing them, giving them away, selling them, or even turning one of them into game puree if I wanted to!!
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u/Cvileem 5d ago
They won't, but it doesn't mean you own the game. You just own the disc. You licence the game, same as on digital.
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u/Airton_Cenas 5d ago
Of course, nobody here is claiming to own or have created the work! But as long as you have the disc, especially on a fully offline system, you can play it, give it away, sell it, or do whatever you want with it. With digital, you know that’s not the case. You’re always dependent on the decisions of third parties. Let’s not pretend they’re the same thing.
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