Comments: 1 (Go to Comments)
Categories: Commentary
Tags: blog banter
The sixth installment of Blog Banter is, once again, governed under the auspices of bs angel. Blog Banter is a presentation of individual discourse united under the blanket of a common theme. Individual interpretations of the theme may cause some discrepancies. Concerned citizens should contact bs angel here. Beneath this entry are a series of hypertext links which will lead you to variations on this month’s topic:
Digital distribution of games vs. buying physical boxes and discs, which do you prefer and why?
Okay, I’ll get to this eventually.
There are two books I’m really interested in reading. They are gamebooks (along the lines of Choose Your Own Adventure, except horror-themed and aimed at an older audience) and they are out of print. I can buy them online for around $40 each (I won’t), but this would accomplish nothing other than shifting $80 of my money to some hoarder.
Annoyed at this, I contacted the publisher to see I could buy the books from them (I can’t). Then I contacted the author and offered to buy spare copies he might be willing to sell (he isn’t). Finally I asked him if he could mail me the books and I’d return them putting up something as collateral in the meantime (he wasn’t interested).
So here’s a case where I attempted to purchase (or borrow) goods in such a way that would reward either the publisher or the author. I’m now left with the option of buying them legally online or um… stumbling across scans. And this pisses me off.
Back to the question – in the short term, I don’t care. I just want to play the game. I downloaded Indigo Prophecy as an Xbox Original, played it, liked it, deleted it. If I want to, I can re-download it, but I doubt I’d be able to seven years from now. I’m almost positive that I’d have to buy a used physical copy from some hoarder. And this also pisses me off, because as convenient as digital distribution is, it isn’t archival.
And to end on an amateurish point: digital distribution might be the future of games, but how far into the future will those games last?
Check out these other Blog Banter articles! Triage Effect, Living Epic, Silvercublogger, Mahogany Finish, Video Game Sandwich, thoughts and rants, weblog.probablynot.com, XboxOZ360, Zath!, Delayed Responsibility, Gamer Unit, Hawty McBloggy.
On June 25th, 2008 at 10:28 pm, Silvercube wrote:
Good points.
I still prefer the actual disc over digital though, unless its some $5 game.. then it does not matter to much :)