this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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I generally agree with the idea that some amount of piracy is, will always, and should exist as motivation to improve the market, but I don't like that everybody is taking this quote out of context for outrage bait. The context is incredibly important. When asked about whether subscription based gaming could be successful, he said that it couldn't be successful until people became comfortable with not owning their games. He's effectively on your side with that statement. He is saying that you guys want to own your games, therefore that model cannot succeed unless your ideals change.
I am not trying to persuade anybody one way or the other, but I personally don't need to own my games. Most of the time, I buy a game, play it through once (if I even finish it), and then it collects dust. Digital games skip the manufacturing process and the dust collection step, but there's no resale possibility. Ever since upgrading PS+ like 2 years ago, I'm pretty sure I haven't bought a game. I'm actually happier to see a catalog of games that has good enough quality titles, gets updated frequently enough, and is cheap enough vs shelling out $70 on a game I might not even like. I don't feel obligated to get my money's worth out of something on the catalog, just my time's worth. So I delete games before finishing them more often than I finish, mostly because most games today overstay their welcome. I don't want to mindlessly grind for xp or gear or consumables just to get to the next road block. I don't want 100+ hour adventures on a 40+ square mile plot of land full of padding. I want Celeste. I want The Forgotten City. I want Portal and Portal 2. I want Uncharted Lost Legacy. These games are shorter and finite and satisfying. I got to the last parts of Elden Ring and Ghost of Tsushima and realized that I just wasn't really having fun anymore. They became a slog. Ghost of Tsushima was pretty easy to just delete and not really look back on because it was part of that subscription, but I felt some guilt deleting Elden Ring because I paid full price for it. That made me realize that the subscription gaming isn't just paying for the games available, but it's paying for the ability to play games with no real stakes. It's cheap enough that as long as I enjoy 2 or 3 games per year, it's worth it, and I probably enjoy 10+. I'm not gaming because I want to own a game; I want to experience the feelings that these games were artistically designed to elicit. I'm more interested in memories and experiences than material goods. I have enough (or too much) stuff as it is. As I get older, my time is becoming more valuable to me because I'm terribly, morbidly aware that it is a nonrenewable, real resource that is trickling away through my fingers and becoming more scarce with every second that passes. I enjoy a game more if I feel free to quit before wasting time not enjoying it. That freedom is what I'm really paying for. And it probably isn't the popular opinion here, but that's my perspective for anybody wondering why in the fuck anybody would ever pay for something and not even own it.
Also, fuck ubisoft, fuck sony, fuck every AAA company, this is not a bullshit astroturf ad. I just wanted to disrupt the circlejerk long enough for reality to permeate through. There's obviously a market for this or it wouldn't be offered, and it wouldn't be offered unless it were popular enough and profitable enough. One day, it might be more popular than buying games, but as I look at the hundred shitty movie/TV streaming services, maybe now is the best this could ever be. Soon it could be subscriptions for publishers or even just individual franchises. That is the logical future step that will either vastly increase piracy or kill the popularity of gaming altogether. That and/or intrusive ads. I fucking hate capitalism.
Good post honestly. I'm the opposite way, I died way back on the DLC/Season Pass/Live game hill and to me a video game is a specific collection of files frozen in time forever, and I want the whole thing (including the bits they cut for DLC) and only the whole thing, I don't want any updates, live content or anything of the sort and i'm most certainly not renting anything ever if i can avoid it, especially digital content. I pirate damn near everything nowadays. I also fucking hate capitalism.
I hadn't considered (on more than a surface level) this viewpoint, I do agree wholeheartedly regarding getting your money's worth doesn't necessarily come down to ownership, but rather enjoyment/fulfillment.
I held a micro$hit game pass subscription for quite a while, and (almost) always felt I was getting my money's worth out of it, if not for game pass, there's quite a few games I'd never have considered buying, some of these have been the most enjoyable I have played.
With that said however, I much prefer not having to worry about a game in my library disappearing because a license ran out, or it was dropped from a service. I spend about 80% of my gaming budget on discounted stuff, usually a couple years after release, when most of the bugs are ironed out.
That's what I was typically doing too. Only once every couple years was I buying a game near release for near full price. I almost certainly wouldn't have tried The Forgotten City if it weren't free, but it was one of the most impactful experiences I've had in gaming.
Idk about game pass, but stuff seems to stay on PS for a pretty long time. Once I caught up with a lot of what I cared about that was older to the catalog, I stopped thinking about when things might leave the service. The biggest shit seems to stay for a year or longer. If I'm still on one game for over a year, I should just buy that game and cancel the service lol.
I'm moved. I'm still on the 3-year+-later discount cycle, but damn am I out of time for games. Work is draining during the week and the house always needs work on the weekends. The little voids of time available have stiff competition between chores, physical hobbies, and games. The hobbies and games need a relatively quick drop in/drop out phase, otherwise I'm not going to have time to get engaged. So I end up playing Fortnite/Rocket League/Fall Guys with zero hope of actually getting the season rewards I'd like or falling back on simpler games like Ace Combat or Forza Horizon to just cruise for a while. Meanwhile, the cool amazing story games I always want to pick up still get back burnered. I have more time spent replaying Portal 2 than I put into all of Fallout.
So, really, an interesting viewpoint. A service I thought was dedicated to the Ritalin-riddled adhd flashy-light-chasing children (as I say when I shake my cane at the 11-year-old that just built a fortnite fortress in the time it took me to build 3 squares moments before deleting me) actually has the potential to solve a time-guilt dilemma for someone with too much going on.
I've noticed that there's a growing number of games that allow fast drop in and out. Hades saves whenever you enter a new chamber. You can save anytime and anywhere in Subnautica. Most of the games I've played lately are like that, where the game itself is more involved but the ability to start and stop at any time is very casual.
I also play Rocket League lol. It's the only online game I play, and I've been into it ever since it became free to play. I'm not great at it, but it's good fun that has become familiar, yet I can still see pretty continuous improvement in my performance, even if the ranks aren't really reflecting it.
There's are dozens of us!