One of the pictures Nintendo will not talk about.
Long ago, in the ancient days of the Colecovision, the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Sega Master system, and more, there was always one aspect of gaming that was always a certainty: the game itself would always come in a solid form. The humble cartridge which was the reliable standby, and still is in some cases, made gaming a bit more tangible for the gamer when they were able to take the game with them and use it in another system.
Owning a cartridge always gave a sense of ownership over the content that was purchased. Or at the very least, a copy of it. That way, the only thing barring a player from being able to use the product was a power outage. While it eventually became expensive for the larger publishers and studios during the Nintendo 64 era, there was a sound logic behind Nintendo’s determined, or bull-headed, others would say, decision to stick with cartridges. Compact Disc technology, when used for the gaming medium, was still a relatively new thing as Sony’s Playstation was able to produce larger games, but the truly good ones that utilized the technology was few and far in between. They were often worth the wait, such as Final Fantasy IX and Xenogears, which defined RPGs for the generation.
It was not until the next generation did the cartridge start to show its age and eventually, with the Nintendo Gamecube, did the publisher jump on board with its own disc based games. However, games still retained the sense of ownership when it was purchased. This was also helpful in creating a second hand market that allowed more players to play these otherwise expensive games at a lower cost. It would also be a source of consternation of larger publishers in the future, but that is neither here nor there and is best elaborated in another article written by one of the site’s other talented writers.
How do cartridge?
This changed during the latter half of the aforementioned generation when Valve Software released the first iteration of their digital distribution platform: Steam. Being a PC only application, it narrowed the possible avenues players would have if they wanted to play the hotly anticipated Half-Life 2. The first public iteration of the platform was less than ideal. In some cases, less than functional. Constant crashes, incompatibilities, and bugs of all shapes and sizes plagued the first versions available to the public. In addition, the first rumblings about Digital Rights Management came to the forefront when players, able to download the games at will, still began to feel as though they never owned the games at all, but simply rented them with the license they have paid for.
Despite the initial drawbacks, it was only a few years after Steam’s release when it entered into profitability. As time passed, more and more publishers and developers sent their games onto the platform due to ease of access, cheaper prices for consumers, and how simple the interface was. This eventually became a means for more independent developers to showcase their wares to a market that would never had the chance to share what they had in the first place.
Gaben: The Patron Saint of Video Games.
On the other hand, it gives as a somewhat unsettling reminder that the games that players have access to is dependent upon the consumer’s ability to access the servers that the games reside on. In some cases, larger games can and will eat up the bandwidth of a consumer’s household, and since not all Internet Service Providers are created equal, some will find their allotted download amount eaten up at a far greater pace than they would have liked.
While Valve has made assurances that the customers who have purchased their games will still have access to the items they have purchased, should Steam ever go under, it still leaves a somewhat foreboding picture. Currently, the debate in the United States senate still rages on as law makers are arguing about the state of a free internet and the internet that the larger ISPs, such as Comcast, would prefer to have that would come at the cost of now defunct Net Neutrality.
As a side note; with the advent of other digital distribution platforms that have tried, and failed, to copy Steam’s success, and attempts by larger publishers to curb used game sales, games with online only components have been part of this disturbing trend. Especially in games that were notably single player in the first place, in both benign and malicious forms. Mass Effect 3, Dead Space 3, Simcity, Diablo 3, Dragon Age: Origins, Starcraft 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, and the first version of the Xbone are all various examples of required internet connections to play.
A screen that everyone can enjoy!
The first problem hit some consumers worst, as the aforementioned restrictions placed upon them by the ISPs would make it difficult as some would find their internet cutting out at the most inopportune of times. This was compounded by Adam Orth placing his foot within his mouth and enjoying a delicious shoe sandwich when he made comments about why he would want to live in a podunk where internet connections are spotty at best.
The second problem comes in the form of the servers that the publishers and developers own. They are not always going to be up. Want to play Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2? Too bad. They took down the servers back in 2010. Never mind the fact that they still had players. To be fair, the license EA had with the rights owners of the Lord of the Rings franchise had expired and they had no choice. However, for EA not to see this occurring shows an incredible lack of foresight on their part. At the very least, there could have been an alternative means for customers to continue playing the game after the servers go down so as to give means for people who did not have a chance to play it in the first place.
While gaming can exist as it does presently, with lots of digital distribution for games that cannot afford the means to be sold in brick and mortar stores, it does not leave much chance for proper archival for future access. Most of the games that have appeared because of digital distribution can be easily left behind and forgotten. It would not do to allow games such as Braid, Bastion, Super Meat Boy, Cave Story, Terraria, and Minecraft to be so casually left behind when they were instrumental for games that are coming out now and possibly in the future.
The question is; how?
While there are servers out there that can host games like the aforementioned for a long time, being able to do so in perpetuity would be much more difficult due to the costs.
So, readers; what would you do?
