Gaming, outside of ‘the big games’, has become so disposable that the hobby doesn’t look anything like it once did and has become harder and harder to manage. When I say ‘big games’ I mean titles like Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3, or The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and I select those games as an example because they all feel like premium releases – none are currently part of a subscription service, all will hold a higher price even in sales, and they’ve each been hailed as masterpieces.
That’s not to discourage playing smaller releases, indie darlings, or live-service games, but as the years and months pass, it feels like so much of the gaming landscape is disposable. I guess you could compare this with the film industry which, for many long years could only be interacted with by going out to the cinema. Then we reached the VHS era and the ‘straight to video’ age where you would watch something and within days instantly forget it.
In a recent chat with colleagues, where we were praising the days of going to shops to buy games on discs or cartridges, it had me thinking about the attitude I had toward games when I was growing up. When saving up money to buy a game I wanted was more of an event not only because I was saving my own money, but because there were far fewer games being released, which meant they felt that bit more special.
Now, I know I’m starting to sound a bit ‘old man yells at clouds’ and given that I just turned 42, I’ll take that. However, while I still love gaming now as much as I did when I was a teenager, it has lost a sense of importance.
Services like Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus, both of which I have active subscriptions for, seem like browsing through Blockbuster back in the day. There’s so much to choose from that very few of the games on offer feel special, I browse the catalogues seeing numerous games that could very well be absolute bangers, and oftentimes I’ll find something great, but then it’s ‘delete and move on.’
Much like watching the neverending stream of action films in the 1990s, it feels a bit like the equivalent of taking a stack of cases to the counter in Blockbuster, watching them over the weekend while consuming earth-shattering amounts of popcorn, and then remembering only fractions of them.
And it seems that this is the current direction of the industry where we rarely invest anything more than a monthly fee and then nothing holds value. Of course, you could take the chance to pick up your favourites when they go into a sale but even then, so many games are only released in digital formats and we own nothing physical. Don’t even get me started on selling boxes with a download code inside it.
It doesn’t help when publishers tend to treat gamers as numbers on a spreadsheet rather than genuinely passionate people. Even entries in well-established franchises feel like we’re meant to throw away the one they released last year and be herded over to whatever the updated entry is, as long as we keep buying the battle pass or season pass.
The issue is, I’ve harped on about this for several minutes, but I understand it’s actually a blessed place in which we find ourselves. Games are easier to make than ever for community creators and smaller teams, people who want to simply log into Fortnite every day can do so, and those without disposable income can pay one monthly price and enjoy hundreds of games.
I want more games to feel special without exorbitant price tags for special editions that sell out to scalpers, for our money to mean something beyond endless subscriptions, which will only get worse when companies inevitably move on to cloud streaming. I’m just an old(er) guy who wants a bit more substance, for everything to have meaning, for things to be remembered and cherished, rather than cast aside, or worse, never experienced.