#also this isn’t a gamer post. This is a post about how all ffxiv content from before endwalker has the same blm joke which is UNTRUE

[fisherrprince]

”black mages can’t move” WRONG double triplecast xenoglossy umbral soul strike

[autumnslance]

PSA from an Older Gamer

I posted this to twitter but let’s put it here too:

If worried about growing toxicity in FFXIV due to more people--and people coming from other games--remember it's up to us to combat that. Kill toxicity with kindness. Remind folks being snarky jerks that attitude isn't necessary. Let people know how fight mechanics work. Offer help if wanted.

I've defused plenty of party salt by making a light-hearted comment, ignoring the salt and being encouraging and helpful, or just flat saying "that isn't necessary" and moving on with the above. Griping about more toxic behavior, or joining in on it versus the toxic players, isn't helpful.

FFXIV has mechanics to let folks know there's new players in party. It's designed to reward helping others. With cooperation as a focus of both story and content. So live up to that and be an example and don't let others ruin the game for you and others. Kill toxicity with kindness.

---------

Now this is coming up because a big name WoW streamer made public his character and server name as he gives the game a try, to generate hits on his stream. It’s clogged a datacenter with players both from his stream trying the game for the first time, or established players dropping in to see the fuss, rather than just letting the fellow play the game and decide for himself (also his job is literally to make a spectacle of himself online so this isn’t too surprising).

Established players acting like jerks, griping and moaning, isn’t going to help change these peoples’ minds, it isn’t going to help them like the game, it isn’t going to show them that the toxic behaviors that work in “those other games” aren’t acceptable in FFXIV.

This isn’t helped by youtube, twitter, and other sites being run by algorithm and negativity tends to generate more hits and interactions as people argue; it inflates the perception of hostility and toxicity. Especially as people engage instead of eyerolling and moving on to actual enjoyable things.

If you don’t want toxicity, stop contributing to toxicity. Stop jumping on every “Bad Take”--especially when it’s really just an interpretation or point of view you personally disagree with. Stop vague posting about people who annoy you. Stop making “call outs” for for petty disagreements or simply for disliking someone; there’s no moral imperative to dig up dirt if someone just doesn’t vibe.*

There’s a lot you can get by with by just ignoring negativity and not adding to it. If I feel really fiery about something, I bang out a post--then leave it in my drafts until I cool down, reread a few hours to days later, and 90% of the time the moment’s passed and/or I realize it’s simply not worth the trouble to post.

Stop spreading negativity, about yourself and others. Offer help, offer information, ignore the people purposefully being jerkish for the attention. Encouragement and helpfulness not only shuts those types down, but also makes the gaming experience more pleasant for oneself and others.

If we want to be a non-toxic, welcoming community, we have to make it that way ourselves, regardless of the inevitable small percentage of loud brats who try to bring the rest of us down to their level. Don’t let them.

============================

*This of course doesn’t apply to genuinely dangerous people, and we do have a few who haven’t been removed from the community yet...

But I swear many “call outs” I see crossing my dashes too often read as “this is all really confusing and feels like it’s all IC disagreement? This is just incompatible play styles? Were boundaries discussed and set ahead of time? Do people not know it’s OK to stop a scene and go ‘no this isn’t cool’? That retconning/rewriting a scene or plot is fine? That you don’t have to play with everyone and anyone? That it’s OK to just not get along with everyone and can simply be civil at public events while not interacting further?” Things to consider, is the other person really “a dangerous predator” or simply likes RPing things you don’t and you didn’t get that info ahead of time and maybe they’re being unwittingly inconsiderate but not necessarily malicious--more often than not, I assume thoughtlessness over active malice, because the latter generally makes itself really clear sooner or later anyway and those receipts tend to be much clearer.

[writingonjorvik]

Can We Discuss Game Hiatuses?

I want to preface this enter post with the comment that I am absolutely not saying "Oh, if you're not enjoying SSO, you should just leave the community." That's a bad argument used against criticism that I do not promote. However, I am going to talk about how if you're not enjoying SSO, why you should take a pause from playing.

I'm going to generally credit @centeris2 on this topic, because while I'm not using direct quotes (because private convos aren't exactly the style I want to use for Can We Discuss), we had a long conversation about this topic and she made a lot of good points for this that I wanted to discuss. Some of these points are based on her opinions, a lot of out thoughts blurred together so it's hard to directly credit, and she gave me the ok to talk about it and use her thoughts.

In any case, let's start with the fact that it is perfectly normally to like something and still drop it for years at a time, or to not directly engage with it. For instance, I adore the Legend of Zelda franchise (were it not obvious from my recent to be rescheduled event), but I haven't personally picked up a LOZ game for a year-ish now when I replayed Minish Cap. That doesn't revoke my LOZ fan card, that's a perfectly normal thing to do. Most of you will have done this throughout your life, more and more recognizably as you get older.

This however can get blurred by fandom. It is very often that folks with hyperfixations on a thing, who may or may not engage with something more regularly than other media, will get involved in fandom and make a lot of content for that fandom. These people can produce loads of content on a piece of media and this can fuel a community, even if the rest of the community isn't actively engaging with that media. It also doesn't specifically mean that people with hyperfixations are constantly engaging with that media. Going back to that LOZ example, I wrote LOZ fanfic for years without actively playing more than one LOZ game maybe a year or two. Content can be queued, be entirely original outside of the media, and still last a long time and engage with the fandom at large.

The point is to say, even if you make content and enjoy a piece of media, you don't have to actually be playing/reading/listening/watching it constantly. In fact, normally modern fandom culture makes that pretty easy to do, though it can sometimes make us feel like we're still engaging directly with the media even if we're technically not. But it's good to take a step back and acknowledge that. A lot of younger fans in fandom have a hard time with this, which is why I'm taking the time to point it out. A lot of young fans will hyperengage in a fandom because they want to be involved in this fandom they love, only to burn themselves out and be turned away by their frustration. It's important then to acknowledge this scenario to encourage better, healthier involvement with fandom. Still, in this situation, you can easily bow out of a fandom if you need to take a break and then come back when something new happens in it, like a new release or update. This may feel like a fandom "dies" when a piece of media ends, but for active media, it's a normal and healthy thing to do.

SSO on the other hand does not encourage the ability for people to take a break, or at least it does it at the detriment of the player. Because of the weekly updates, players are constantly checking for the chance that there is something interesting coming out. This is somewhat addressed by the monthly roadmaps the team has been putting out, but that also just extends the period of time people are waiting for news and they're still staying in the release cycle for more clarification. For instance, we know Silverglade Village is getting an update at the end of the month, but knowing SSO's release cycle, are they going to tease some more of the changes? Are they going to reveal how wide the area of update is going to be? Will any NPCs get updates with it? This is still in the weekly cycle and it keeps players from building up actual suspense for updates if we know when content is coming out. It also takes away a lot of suspense when the content isn't main content, like new areas or story. While the suspense for the Fripp quests I would say were quite large, I wouldn't say that any of the other updates have shared the same attention. This is why most companies will release roadmaps for quarters or for a year.

And this isn't to say that SSE as a company shouldn't be releasing media content weekly, they should. That's good social media. But there are ways to engage with fans that don't drag out a reliance to engage weekly, things like community contests, highlighting fans, or promoting fanmade content. But when every update is super in the eyes of social media, fatigue and apathy are going to start to kill actual excitement unless it's something major.

I don't think it's a secret that I think the weekly updates aren't good for the game on the development side. I think it creates a pseudo-crunch culture on the developers so that they can't work on larger projects that players are asking for, like an engine overhaul (it took FFXIV two years to do theirs, when are the devs supposed to have time on SSO to switch now). But, I also don't think it's good for the players. Yes, there's something every week, but how are players actually engaging each week and how much time can we build up anticipation or get excited when each week that gets diffused by something that's not super exciting the majority of other weeks? Which doesn't mean that that content is bad, but it clearly builds frustration in the community to have "filler" content. When's the next story quests, when's the next map expansion, when's the next major mechanic being added, etc. We're constantly discussing the next big thing and then finding reasons to be excited in the meantime. This does not spark joy.

But in order to take a break, either you need to be on top of your Stable Care (likely to pull you back in), or just stop caring about your horses while you're away (unlikely considering the horse girl is strong in this community). The first requires Star Coins, which is arguably saying "You have to pay real money to take a break," and the second is actively punishing you mechanically for not being committed to playing. Neither of those allow the player to take healthy, normal breaks from the community to engage in other things. And that's an issue.

Yes, MMOs need regular engagement. Active servers and participation are a part of what makes them more marketable. But there are ways to do that without penalizing players. And I'm not suggesting that the care system needs to be entirely removed, but it does need to be entirely reworked so players can leave the game without coming back penalized. Things like the care system not affecting stats, but increasing your RNG for finding doubles of crafting items, or doubling your shilling rewards from dailies. WoW's inn system rewards players for taking breaks by double your exp gain longer depending on how long you were away. Others like Guild Wars 2 will give you log in rewards that build up to bigger prizes over time. There are ways to do this.

And I understand that a lot of folks like the current care system because it's realistic. But there has to be a line in game development where enjoyment in a game is prioritized over the realism of the game, not to mention the health of the player. Yes, the daily care system is more realistic, but if it is developing an obsessive habit of play to enjoy content that is, realistically, months to years down the line, that's not good for the player and should be changed so players can break from the game without coming back to punished controls. There are better systems that can still be realistic, things like crafting feed schedules to recover health boosts faster instead of having to see the vet, increasing how often the mood goes up so it doesn't take a whole week, changing it so when taking a horse for a ride the mood will increase every 10 or so minutes by engaging with a horse you like. Rewarding players for getting on and playing the game instead of making them dread missing when they should be coming back with excitement for the game.

All of that said, I want to encourage all of you to play more games where you can. I know there are system limitations, restricted budgets, and sometimes regional limits because of limited languages or just straight regionlocks. But in the same way reading makes you a better reader and writer, gaming makes you a better gamer (and developer/designer if you go that route). It helps you identify what you like in games and in the same way that reading other things makes coming back to your favorite all that much better, so does playing other games. I'm going to reblog this in a bit with some games I'd recommend with links to Steam and Epic and I'd encourage you all to do the same.

The takeaway I hope to give is that it's normal and healthy to take a break from games. You can still engage with media without directly engaging with it through fandom. SSE can do more to not penalize players for wanting to take a break, and should. And where you can, you should play more games and break for the health of your relationship with a piece of media you like.

[haillenarte]

hikari no otousan, pt. i;

Here is a partial translation of an interview with Maidy, the blogger behind Hikari no Otousan.

My source text is is this article from 4Gamer, but I won’t be directly translating the information before the interview. Essentially, it’s commentary from the cast and crew.

One interesting point: Yoshida was asked if they did any special visual effects for the shooting of the drama. Yoshida’s team apparently offered to lend their assistance with the shooting — for example, they could have adjusted weather and time in-game as necessary for certain scenes — but the “game actors” refused, and patiently waited for the appropriate lighting and time on their own. So, in that way, shooting the drama in FFXIV was the same as shooting the drama in real life. Also, the screenplay writer himself plays FFXIV, so he had little trouble writing the script for the drama.

Just as a side note from myself (you can skip it if you’d like):

I keep being asked to weigh in on the use of “Daddy” in the title, and my answer is that, while I understand why they went for it — the use of otousan is playful in a way that the more formal Father of Light is not — I think they really, really shouldn’t have, for really obvious reasons. They could have gone with “Dad of Light” if they felt “Father of Light” was too formal, but “Daddy of Light” is just weird.

Alas, it’s too late to change it now, but I did read one defense of the Daddy of Light title from the English forums:

"...Did it ever cross your mind that the name might be for the JPN audience and is appropriate to the context? Two, why in hell would you conclude something creepy because of the use of the word ‘daddy?’”

This comment perplexes me. Or, to put it more bluntly... look, the person who posted this doesn't know what they're talking about. The English name isn't really for the Japanese audience. The Japanese name is for the Japanese audience. I'm fairly certain that most Japanese people are not aware of the sexual slang use of the word "daddy," and they don’t think much of the “Daddy of Light” title, but still, it's primarily thought of as 光のお父さん by Japanese players, not "Daddy of Light." There have been cases where a thing’s English title is better-known to its Japanese players than the Japanese title — but in general, no one’s referred to 光のお父さん as “Daddy of Light” in Japan outside of promotional material.

Also.

Even Maidy, the original author, translated 光のお父さん as Father of Light.

So.

It’s valid to choose “dad” over “father” when translating otousan, but I’m pretty sure the decision to call the show “Daddy of Light” was mostly an attempt to catch viral interest. I don’t know who was responsible for it and I’m not going to point fingers, either, but it feels to me like they wanted people to be interested in it (haha, daddy of light! people are gonna make so many memes!), and if anything, it just turned people off from the whole idea.

Daddy of Light exists to be the English subtitle, presumably for English speakers, and in my view, the sheer confusion it's caused among English-speaking players has been more to its detriment than its benefit.

Also... you know, I often hear this complaint that "daddy" has been co-opted by modern slang, but I don’t get it. Honestly, "daddy" has been creepy for adults to use since the word "sugar daddy" entered public consciousness in the 1920s and skyrocketed in the 1980s. Of course, I don't speak English with my own father, so I guess I can't relate to people who have fond memories of innocently calling their fathers "daddy," but really, I have found it awkward for people to refer to their mothers and fathers as "mommy and daddy" since I was about five years old. Like, even at that age, I thought it was overly childish. If anything, the modern use of the word "daddy" is the only logical development the word could have gone through.

On to the interview with Maidy!

Q: How did your father react when the TV drama was finalized? Maidy: Oh, he was really happy. I think he was even more excited than I was.

Q: Has he complimented or rewarded you at all? Maidy: I didn’t get anything special, but he stood by me and supported me, and encouraged me to go where I wanted to go.

Q: Once he found out about your blog, did your relationship change? Maidy: Yeah, it’s definitely changed. At least, in my opinion, since I don’t have to keep it a secret anymore, I think we’ve become more like normal friends than parent and child. Recently, he’s been playing with (FC member) Kirin-chan and our other friends even more than me, so we’ll talk about that kind of thing at the dinner table.

Q: What was the most difficult episode to shoot? (FC member) Aru-chan: I don’t normally use emotes and talk at the same time when I’m playing the game, so I had to practice doing that a lot...

Maidy: I was always really worried about the other FC members. It was their first time doing this sort of thing, so I’d always be asking, “Are you okay with this?” “Is this too hard?” “Are you stressed out?” I’d try to go around and listen to everybody.

Q: How long did you spend on filming every day? Maidy: We’d film for about two hours every day. After the filming with my friends ended, I’d go location hunting with the director to find new places we could shoot, and we’d do that until midnight.

Q: Rather than the “original author,” it seems more like you became one of the drama’s directors. How do you feel now that it’s finished? Maidy: Well, it was more like everyone was working so hard on the drama, and meanwhile I was there like, “Is it really okay if I just sit and play the game?” So I felt more like, “I’ll do anything to help!” “I really want to help!” But, I mean, as I think every gamer will tell you, it’s fun to challenge new things, and I really enjoyed the experience of working on it.

Q: As far as acting and directing goes, did you feel that any of the director’s requests were unreasonable or too much to expect? Maidy: Well, the director wasn’t used to directing game characters, so at first the acting was left almost entirely up to us. But as he got more and more used to it, he’d start giving us specific instructions like “Smile for four seconds here!” But, in between that and then, we’d throw in our own ad libs and we had a lot of fun competing with each other to give our best performances.

Q: As you get better and better at performing, the bar gets set higher and higher, huh. Maidy: The more we filmed, the better we got. It was very RPG-like in that way. But it was fun because it’s a game, more than anything else.

Q: Did you ever have a character die while filming battle scenes? Maidy: Yeah, we did. We could have had a “rescue team” set up to raise people off-camera, but we decided not to. And then, if it was a rare monster or something we couldn’t possibly miss, we’d be like, “Hurry up! Res me!” It could get pretty tense.

Q: You’ve been writing about the behind-the-scenes story of the drama production in your Producer of Light series. Could you tell us a bit about how that got started? Maidy: I wanted to share this new adventure with everyone, so that we could all get excited together. “It’s gonna be a drama? Well, why not?” I wanted to express my own excitement like that.

Q: You’re keeping this blog about the drama’s production, but I’m sure there are things you can’t write about that you have to keep secret. Isn’t that hard? Maidy: Yeah, there’s a huge pile of things I can’t write about, but it’s still fun.

Q: Your blog is full of screenshots, and you had to experience them again when filming. In your opinion, what was the most impressive scene? Maidy: Well, it’s not quite what you’re asking for, but I was really surprised when I went to supervise the live-action filming, and there’s a childhood flashback scene where Mr. Osugi has a child actor on his shoulders, and I really felt that. All the flashback scenes have such great atmosphere. They’re like my own memories, and they make me really emotional.

Q: You shot the drama based on the events of your blog, but endgame content then is really different from endgame content now. When you were shooting the battle scenes, did you go and equip what you would have been wearing at the time? Maidy: We tried to wear what we would have been wearing, as much as possible. But that was pretty hard, and it caused a lot of issues, and since the Eorzean part of the drama is all (the protagonist) Akio’s mental scenery anyway, sometimes we’d prioritize appearances. But we were very careful with the equipment. Especially with Dad’s, since we had to change it as his character leveled up.

Q: Right now, do you have any in-game goals? Maidy: I’ve got plenty! But the first thing on my mind is always support for beginners. If people become interested in FFXIV because of this drama, I’ll want to talk to them about all sorts of things and teach them not to get lost, and all that kind of thing. I guess I’ll just tell people on my blog.

Q: This drama had the support of all your FC members and friends, but have your friendships changed at all because of it? Maidy: They helped me keep all of this a secret for a whole year, and I became closer to my family as a result. As a friend and as the FC master, I’m grateful for everybody’s support.

[virginieboesus]

Why I Prefer Owning Physical Copies of Games

As of yesterday, there has a been a lot of coverages around the interwebs of Google’s latest project, Stadia; a streaming service for games that is comparable to the likes of Netflix. However, what I’m not going to do is rehash the same old article that you’ve probably read over a hundred times already. I’m not here to pass judgement on Google Stadia, especially as it’s only just been announced.

Instead, what I wanted to do was talk about the gaming industry’s move away from physical discs to digital downloads and, now, streaming of games. I wanted to talk about my opinions on this move, and why I still prefer to own physical copies of games rather than digital versions.

Potential Loss of Access

The first thing that we’re going to talk about is the fact that, with a physical copy of the game, no-one can take it away from you (except by breaking into your house and stealing it). Once you’ve paid for that game, you have it on disc for as long as you look after the disc. Naturally, there are certain types of games where you’ll still lose access to them eventually, such as MMORPGs when their servers are turned off. However, that’s the minority – for the large majority of games, we will be able to keep them and play them whenever we want.

However, when it comes to digital games, there is something that happened in the past that we all need to keep in mind. How many of you remember P.T? Judging be the playable teaser of Silent Hills’ popularity, I would guess that a lot of you do. Well, if you take P.T as a case study, it paints a potentially scary side to digital games. When you have “bought” a demo, even though it is free, you download it to the hard drive of your PS4 and added to your PSN account. From there, you should have access to it for as long as you have that PSN account. However, after the Silent Hills project was shelved, the demo was entirely removed from the PSN and you could no longer redownload it, even if you had already added it your PSN account.

The reason I want to bring this to light is that, if that could happen with a demo, it could potentially happen with a full release game as well. So, in my head, there is always going to be a concern in my head about whether the digital games that I purchase will just be removed one day. On top of this, with Google Stadia being compared to Netflix and other streaming services, it also brings is a similar issue.

There have been many shows and movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime and NowTV that my wife and I enjoyed. However, they all had a limited lifespan of availability on their specific streaming service and are now no longer available. If the gaming industry is moving towards a similar setup, then I must admit, I have concerns that we will have incidents where we will be enjoying a game and then it will be removed from the streaming service. And when that happens, we won’t have a leg to stand on, because we won’t actually own the game.

Ownership of a physical copy of a game means that you are able to ensure you continue to have access to it whenever you want to play it. That game can’t be suddenly taken away from you.

Games As A Service

Now, this one is a bit more controversial, potentially. Gaming as a service isn’t a new thing at all. I mean, MMORPGs have been charging subscription costs for years. However, until recent years, this mentality of monetisation was largely limited to the MMORPG genre. That was fine. The issue comes with the prominence of gaming as a service in other types of games now. For example, there are a huge amount of Freemium games out there now, where you can get the game and play it for free, but to get the most out of it you need to pay a recurring fee or buy in-game “coins” of some sort.

Again, this used to be limited to the likes of Free-To-Play MMORPGs or Mobile games, but has now flooded the PC and Console market as well.

The reason why it is possibly a controversial subject is that, for some games, it is a legitimate business model. For example, MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV use that money to help fuel development of high quality content that is added to the game (in the case of FFXIV, that includes free content every few months). So, gaming as a service can be a good thing. The issue arises when this mentality becomes the most prevelant thought in developers or publishers’ minds – when a game is built and developed purely with the intent of making it an ongoing subscription service, the gamers are the ones who lose out.

But that’s not really fixed by having physical copies of games, so you’re probably wondering why I’m even talking about it, right?

Well, it comes back to the Google Stadia again. You see, a single game that is pushed out with the sole intention of driving a subscription fee is bad (in my opinion) so an entire gaming library could be horrendous. At the moment, we don’t really know much about the games that are going to be on the Stadia. In fact, we only have a few named so far;

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Doom Eternal

An unnamed title from Q Games

So, as it stands, it’s unclear how many AAA titles are going to be ported across. There is a high possibility that we’ll end up having a lot of games added to it that are lower quality games with excessively long game time – this would purely be to ensure that you keep paying your subscription fee.

I am hoping that won’t be the case and that the Stadia will offer top quality games, but the cynic in me doesn’t think that will be the case. I do, however, really want to be proven wrong. If gaming as a service can be made into a positive for both the industry and the gamers, then that would be great. It is, however, still a concern for me.

Especially when I think back over all of the games I have played across the last 25 years of gaming, and realise that my favourites were all disc-based games before the internet was really a thing. Those games offered me hundreds of hours of enjoyment, without the need to pay money for them every month…

Preservation Of Games

The third part of this little look into my head and why I prefer physical copies of games comes down to the preservation of the medium. Relatively near where I live, there is a Video Game Museum, which is amazing. On top of that, collectors such as myself and those much bigger than me are storing and protecting the games that they love. This care and storage help to preserve the creativity and brilliance of these games that would otherwise be lost to time.

Now, I know full well that digital games can be made available at any time through online stores, or the files can be stored on the cloud for safekeeping. But, let’s take a step back and look at some recent news; specifically, let’s look at a MySpace. Now, this is a bit different, yes, but think about it – 12 years ago you added photos or music files to your MySpace. They should have stayed there forever, until you decided to remove them. However, due to an error in server migration (which happens far more often than you would think), all data from those 12 years is gone. It’s lost, forever – you are never getting those photos or music files back.

Next, imagine that those files had been your games that you had lovingly been collecting on your favourite Digital Store. All of a sudden, every game you have owned and collected over the past 12 years just disappear. Oh, and it’s not just your copies of those games, but every copy of every game from the last 12 years. All of a sudden, that’s 12 years of the gaming industry that basically no longer exists.

Yes, this is an unlikely thing to happen, but when you consider the fact that MySpace lost photos and music (which take up a lot less server storage space than games), there is the possibility. On top of this, even the likes of the PlayStation Network were hacked into, and there are numerous reports of Xbox Live accounts being accessed remotely as well. Hackers are always finding new ways to access digital data and networks, becoming more and more aggressive in their actions once they have access. With the way the internet landscape is now, there is an ever growing chance that someone will one day find a way to access and format the servers that hold your games. And that’s not me trying to scaremonger.

I work in the Digital industry for my day job, and we are also having to find new ways to secure servers. The problem is, these security “holes” can only be fixed when they have been discovered and it is usually hackers who discover them.

With physical copies of games, it doesn’t actually matter if those servers are compromised. You will still be able to play the games that you love, because you have the disc version of it.

Cases On The Shelves

The last aspect of owning physical copies of games is really a personal aesthetic choice. As many of you know, my blogging office also doubles as a game room and streaming area. In this room, I have bookcases and shelves that are filled with games. They are all sorted alphabetically by platform, and look beautiful! That’s something that you just don’t get with digital copies of games.

Yes, your PSN account or Steam library may look nice with a long list of games, but it really isn’t the same. I mean, think about how amazing a room full of old books looks. It’s an outstanding sight! That’s also true for games, with their cases and box art creating wonderful collages of colour and style.

That’s completely missing if you purchase the games digitally. Instead, you have a single console in the room, with all of the games just floating in the digital cloud. You don’t get to marvel at the beauty of those CD or DVD cases on the bookshelf. Yes, it’s not exactly a big thing at all. But for me, I would much rather have a book case full of games to look at then just the one console.

And That’s All Folks

That was a very long post, wasn’t it? I apologise if it ended up being more of a rant, but I really wanted to share my opinion on digital versus physical games. Naturally, I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. I mean, life would be boring if we all agreed on everything. But I hope that I have at least managed to explain the mess of thoughts in my head in a coherent manner.

What are your opinions on digital games versus physical games? What do you think of the Google Stadia? Let me know in the comments below!

from More Design Curation https://www.16bitdad.com/blog/why-i-prefer-owning-physical-copies-of-games/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-i-prefer-owning-physical-copies-of-games source https://smartstartblogging.tumblr.com/post/183598845365

[smartstartblogging]

Why I Prefer Owning Physical Copies of Games

As of yesterday, there has a been a lot of coverages around the interwebs of Google’s latest project, Stadia; a streaming service for games that is comparable to the likes of Netflix. However, what I’m not going to do is rehash the same old article that you’ve probably read over a hundred times already. I’m not here to pass judgement on Google Stadia, especially as it’s only just been announced.

Instead, what I wanted to do was talk about the gaming industry’s move away from physical discs to digital downloads and, now, streaming of games. I wanted to talk about my opinions on this move, and why I still prefer to own physical copies of games rather than digital versions.

Potential Loss of Access

The first thing that we’re going to talk about is the fact that, with a physical copy of the game, no-one can take it away from you (except by breaking into your house and stealing it). Once you’ve paid for that game, you have it on disc for as long as you look after the disc. Naturally, there are certain types of games where you’ll still lose access to them eventually, such as MMORPGs when their servers are turned off. However, that’s the minority – for the large majority of games, we will be able to keep them and play them whenever we want.

However, when it comes to digital games, there is something that happened in the past that we all need to keep in mind. How many of you remember P.T? Judging be the playable teaser of Silent Hills’ popularity, I would guess that a lot of you do. Well, if you take P.T as a case study, it paints a potentially scary side to digital games. When you have “bought” a demo, even though it is free, you download it to the hard drive of your PS4 and added to your PSN account. From there, you should have access to it for as long as you have that PSN account. However, after the Silent Hills project was shelved, the demo was entirely removed from the PSN and you could no longer redownload it, even if you had already added it your PSN account.

The reason I want to bring this to light is that, if that could happen with a demo, it could potentially happen with a full release game as well. So, in my head, there is always going to be a concern in my head about whether the digital games that I purchase will just be removed one day. On top of this, with Google Stadia being compared to Netflix and other streaming services, it also brings is a similar issue.

There have been many shows and movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime and NowTV that my wife and I enjoyed. However, they all had a limited lifespan of availability on their specific streaming service and are now no longer available. If the gaming industry is moving towards a similar setup, then I must admit, I have concerns that we will have incidents where we will be enjoying a game and then it will be removed from the streaming service. And when that happens, we won’t have a leg to stand on, because we won’t actually own the game.

Ownership of a physical copy of a game means that you are able to ensure you continue to have access to it whenever you want to play it. That game can’t be suddenly taken away from you.

Games As A Service

Now, this one is a bit more controversial, potentially. Gaming as a service isn’t a new thing at all. I mean, MMORPGs have been charging subscription costs for years. However, until recent years, this mentality of monetisation was largely limited to the MMORPG genre. That was fine. The issue comes with the prominence of gaming as a service in other types of games now. For example, there are a huge amount of Freemium games out there now, where you can get the game and play it for free, but to get the most out of it you need to pay a recurring fee or buy in-game “coins” of some sort.

Again, this used to be limited to the likes of Free-To-Play MMORPGs or Mobile games, but has now flooded the PC and Console market as well.

The reason why it is possibly a controversial subject is that, for some games, it is a legitimate business model. For example, MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV use that money to help fuel development of high quality content that is added to the game (in the case of FFXIV, that includes free content every few months). So, gaming as a service can be a good thing. The issue arises when this mentality becomes the most prevelant thought in developers or publishers’ minds – when a game is built and developed purely with the intent of making it an ongoing subscription service, the gamers are the ones who lose out.

But that’s not really fixed by having physical copies of games, so you’re probably wondering why I’m even talking about it, right?

Well, it comes back to the Google Stadia again. You see, a single game that is pushed out with the sole intention of driving a subscription fee is bad (in my opinion) so an entire gaming library could be horrendous. At the moment, we don’t really know much about the games that are going to be on the Stadia. In fact, we only have a few named so far;

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Doom Eternal

An unnamed title from Q Games

So, as it stands, it’s unclear how many AAA titles are going to be ported across. There is a high possibility that we’ll end up having a lot of games added to it that are lower quality games with excessively long game time – this would purely be to ensure that you keep paying your subscription fee.

I am hoping that won’t be the case and that the Stadia will offer top quality games, but the cynic in me doesn’t think that will be the case. I do, however, really want to be proven wrong. If gaming as a service can be made into a positive for both the industry and the gamers, then that would be great. It is, however, still a concern for me.

Especially when I think back over all of the games I have played across the last 25 years of gaming, and realise that my favourites were all disc-based games before the internet was really a thing. Those games offered me hundreds of hours of enjoyment, without the need to pay money for them every month…

Preservation Of Games

The third part of this little look into my head and why I prefer physical copies of games comes down to the preservation of the medium. Relatively near where I live, there is a Video Game Museum, which is amazing. On top of that, collectors such as myself and those much bigger than me are storing and protecting the games that they love. This care and storage help to preserve the creativity and brilliance of these games that would otherwise be lost to time.

Now, I know full well that digital games can be made available at any time through online stores, or the files can be stored on the cloud for safekeeping. But, let’s take a step back and look at some recent news; specifically, let’s look at a MySpace. Now, this is a bit different, yes, but think about it – 12 years ago you added photos or music files to your MySpace. They should have stayed there forever, until you decided to remove them. However, due to an error in server migration (which happens far more often than you would think), all data from those 12 years is gone. It’s lost, forever – you are never getting those photos or music files back.

Next, imagine that those files had been your games that you had lovingly been collecting on your favourite Digital Store. All of a sudden, every game you have owned and collected over the past 12 years just disappear. Oh, and it’s not just your copies of those games, but every copy of every game from the last 12 years. All of a sudden, that’s 12 years of the gaming industry that basically no longer exists.

Yes, this is an unlikely thing to happen, but when you consider the fact that MySpace lost photos and music (which take up a lot less server storage space than games), there is the possibility. On top of this, even the likes of the PlayStation Network were hacked into, and there are numerous reports of Xbox Live accounts being accessed remotely as well. Hackers are always finding new ways to access digital data and networks, becoming more and more aggressive in their actions once they have access. With the way the internet landscape is now, there is an ever growing chance that someone will one day find a way to access and format the servers that hold your games. And that’s not me trying to scaremonger.

I work in the Digital industry for my day job, and we are also having to find new ways to secure servers. The problem is, these security “holes” can only be fixed when they have been discovered and it is usually hackers who discover them.

With physical copies of games, it doesn’t actually matter if those servers are compromised. You will still be able to play the games that you love, because you have the disc version of it.

Cases On The Shelves

The last aspect of owning physical copies of games is really a personal aesthetic choice. As many of you know, my blogging office also doubles as a game room and streaming area. In this room, I have bookcases and shelves that are filled with games. They are all sorted alphabetically by platform, and look beautiful! That’s something that you just don’t get with digital copies of games.

Yes, your PSN account or Steam library may look nice with a long list of games, but it really isn’t the same. I mean, think about how amazing a room full of old books looks. It’s an outstanding sight! That’s also true for games, with their cases and box art creating wonderful collages of colour and style.

That’s completely missing if you purchase the games digitally. Instead, you have a single console in the room, with all of the games just floating in the digital cloud. You don’t get to marvel at the beauty of those CD or DVD cases on the bookshelf. Yes, it’s not exactly a big thing at all. But for me, I would much rather have a book case full of games to look at then just the one console.

And That’s All Folks

That was a very long post, wasn’t it? I apologise if it ended up being more of a rant, but I really wanted to share my opinion on digital versus physical games. Naturally, I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. I mean, life would be boring if we all agreed on everything. But I hope that I have at least managed to explain the mess of thoughts in my head in a coherent manner.

What are your opinions on digital games versus physical games? What do you think of the Google Stadia? Let me know in the comments below!

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