"Physical" Video Game Preservation Makes No Sense, VG are Naturally Digital
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- čas přidán 28. 11. 2023
- "Physical" Video Game Preservation Makes No Sense, VG are Naturally Digital. I love game cartridges and game discs as much as anyone else, but I think gamers in their enjoyment of the aesthetics of these formats have started to become blind to the fundamental nature of what a video game is. With the recent news about stores starting to phase out DVD and Blu Ray sales, there has been a wave of talk about the need to "buy physical" and "physically" preserving games. This whole notion sounds romantic, but also cuts against the fundamental nature of what a video game is (hint: digital code / electronic automation). So as cool as the ultra expensive game carts and Sega Saturn discs you buy are, they are not any more "physical" than a hard drive filled with iso and rom files.
In this video, I also discuss my thoughts on what I would consider a true analog format which is printed media whether it is books, manga, or visual art. I go over why this type of media has a more tangible and real difference between its physical vs digital versions and why I think these formats have been able to buck the digitization trend, versus games which are now up to 90% digital sales. I also discuss my thoughts on game manuals and the physical printed media included in a lot of these physical releases and how, in my opinion, it is more of a selling point in many cases than the actual game discs (printed booklets are truly analog after all).
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I think preservation is more about keeping games available than actually physically possessing them. Preservationists don’t want publishers holding all of their games behind subscription services in the future like Nintendo does with their switch online service.
In the real world they can't though. Rom dumps exist.
I dislike how Sony does that as well with certain emulated games like Resident Evil 1 on their PS Premium service. Microsoft does it to a very small extent. That Space Jam tie-in game was GamePass only for a limited time. GoldenEye is technically the same, but you get a digital copy if you own Rare Replay digitally.
I hate how switch locks their virtual console behind an overpriced piece of crap Switch online BOOSTER PASS. When I see that crap, I just turn on my Retrocade emulator that I bought of of Amazon for the same exact price as BOOSTER ASS, but I'll just download every single Booster pass game and more & I'll never have to worry about yearly subs just to play classics like Super Metroid & Streets of Rage 2.
Oh yes absolutely, and i agree with that for sure. But I do think there is still this marketing angle a lot of people push on when it comes to selling physical copies of games at higher prices, or how some gamers feel guilty or something for buying digital versions of games.
Basically, we do it ourselves.
And if you wanna keep your childhood copy of krustys super fun house too then the more the merrier.
For me, physical media engenders more respect for the art and makes it feel less disposable. Like how with vinyl/CDs people would listen to full albums, while with digital music people mostly listen to the popular singles. With games it is less extreme, but I feel more of a pull to finish the physical games I have on my shelf as opposed to titles from the long list in my steam library.
I absolutely agree actually. With physical art like paintings, books, and even vinyl to a degree, there is a special tangible value you can feel. With video games however, that sort of effect is lost on me because it's basically like buying an ipod with songs preloaded on it. The ipod is cool and everything, but there is no actual human touch to the circuitry or tangible feeling to the game at all. You don't interact with the physical container at all other than plugging it in. Also I find the video game grading thing hilariously stupid. People are spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars for what is essentially a really fresh label lol. They actually have 0 idea what the integrity of the circuity of the cart is at all. You could spend thousands of dollars on a cart that is a breath away from failing, and spend a couple of bucks on a cart with a ripped label but a board that will last decades.
@@TheElectricUnderground Disagree. Many people fondly remember the tangible quality of the cartridge, the snap it makes in the console, the fun of flipping through the manual, the authenticity of holding the console’s original controller and playing it on a real CRT TV. The digital games of today can’t duplicate this experience, especially for those nostalgic for that vintage form. Besides, a shelf full of authentic games and boxes looks cool-not so much that game list on Steam.
Someone already made a chart on this, especially the latter part. They found that most people on Steam just play the same popular games all the time. What's intriguing is that people do buy games, but never even start them or complete them in the first place which is already an extremely small minority. It makes sense since you'd often see profiles of people who have over 300 games, yet never played. But look at their hours on CS:GO, GTA V, DOTA2, etc, and they are in the thousands.
@@TheElectricUnderground You’re still overlooking the other elements, from the CRT TV to the original controller to the all-important manual. And again, most people display their physical games whenever they can. Games, from a collector’s standpoint, is all about the tangible.
digital is better since you dont waste physical space in your home, then you run out of space to put things.
Time to write a small novel because this is something that is important to me.
Physical games come with consumer right protections. The First Sale Doctrine in the US gives you rights over that product you purchased. Not only do you preserve and fully own the product in it's current state/version (digital patches server side and often forces patches before and after release.) but you can legally sell or trade that product for the rest of your life. Not the case with digital. For example in the current state/version physical product, you could play God of War on PS5 in 60fps before an official patch was made for it, but only if you had the physical disc. The digital version was patched before and after release where you could not until an official patch was applied. Patches do not always improve games. Also, physical products cannot be forcefully patched or censored.
Even if you buy digital and then backup roms, if your account is ever taken from you/banned, or that game is pulled from the store/your account due to licensing or some issue with the game (games based on IP's or with licensed music often get pulled due to these reasons) then you can not LEGALLY possess those roms anymore and are technically breaking the law by having them. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure if there is a law that gives protection to digital only backups. There are little to no laws protecting the customer from abuse from copyright or IP holders toward their purchased digital products (such as removing content, removing purchased DLC, removing games entirely from the store/accounts). Even though most games are installed on disc systems due to read speed limitations (switch games are not due to low read speed design straight from the cart) all of that data still exists in it's current state on the disc/cartridge itself and can be installed to multiple platforms or passed down to multiple owners for their own devices.
Now games that require online connections or are not complete on the disc or cart and require downloads to even complete the package the customer purchased are a different story and should always be pushed back against.
Emulators have been legally established as legal and physical products can always be used with readers to play them if necessary, or can be backed up at any time. Also tech is constantly evolving where third parties are able to emulate older hardware exactly even in physical form (such as FPGA hardware).
I've accepted the loss of manuals, though some games still do have them. But I will never give full digital control to publishers or platforms. You'll really see prices go insane and less customer rights than ever.
None of this matters unfortunately because if you bought a physical copy of something like Wildstar on PC you still got your game stolen from you. Like Mark said, the game is digital no matter what, the law gives you the right to do what you want with the executable on the disc, and it will install the game... but the actual digital game won't be playable.
@@TherinThimble-rs3se Wildstar was an MMO, an always online game. You never owned any of it as it required servers from the makers to even play and THEY held your data hostage. When physical media was given up by PC customers, they lost control of the entirety of it and have no rights to their purchases as a whole. Customer rights have been taken from PC gamers because they allowed it. Programs like Steam tricked PC players with convenience until it was too late. Now there's multiple launcher "exclusivity" forcing players to download to play games they don't even own and are just renting 😂 There are still a few PC games released physically, but others have seen what PC has lost and do not want it to also happen to their platforms.
@@shaggysweetness You can have digital games without DRM. There are ways to have older versions of games, digitally, without DRM, in your control. There is also... you know... piracy.
@@SLAMTUCKER Very few give that option, and there's no way to legally "sell" or "give away" digital games like from GOG after you've purchased them. The simple fact of the matter is that all purchases made digital give you little to no protection as a customer by law and still has legal control over whatever you do with it due to that. Of course piracy is always there but we're speaking in the legal sense. If there's ever full digital only control and no physical options, you can bet every company will hammer down on every single site hosting them way more than they do now.
@@shaggysweetness Why would they hammer down way more all of a sudden even though we are probably past 90% digital sales? Not to mention on PC it is probably close to 99%. Piracy is going away not because of draconian shakedowns, but lack of interest. Not to mention with DRM free games there is literally nothing anyone can do about it (the same example Mark uses with reprinting books). Also as an FYI, you may be shocked at the numbers of totally DRM free games on Steam. The legal argument really falls apart too as just about every video on CZcams could technically be violating some stupid copyright law precedent somewhere. If you actually care about preservation pushing DRM free, open source, easily available digital titles, or failing that, hacked/modded/pirated versions are literally the only things that makes sense.
This is how I feel too. By the time physical availability becomes a problem for a platform, I’m usually good sailing the high seas for what I want.
yes exactly sean, and i think this is what we see happen every time ha. Imagine you spent hundreds of dollars on physical ps3 games thinking it would be the only way to play them in the future, and now jailbreaking a ps3 is a cakewalk and sony have given up even stopping people ha.
@@TheElectricUnderground
You are half right and half wrong because when we talk about physical media in video games we don't talk about just any physical edition of a game but one that actually includes the game in it.
I like buying physical but i didn't bother buying the physical edition of Gran Turismo 7 because you need to be online to play it. So having a physical version is pointless.
I have the physical version of GT 1-2-3-4 etc. You can play them offline and even now almost 30 years since PS1 came out i still put those discs in my console and play them. That has value for me that i can still do that decades later.
You can say "how long will those physical media last" because your kid destroyed some of yours but mine seem that will probably go until i die. So what more do i want?
Sure you can now emulate those games as well BUT will it have been really that easy if we didn't have physical media? I am not sure how many will be playing GT7 30 years later or even if it will be possible.
You yourself said that the best way to preserve stuff is by making copies and putting them on SSD's , hard drives, servers, USB sticks, memory cards etc. Guess what all that stuff is? Yes they are Physical media. Physical media is needed for things to exists.
And that is why a physical release of a game helps that. Because there is no better way to make sure that game will exist by releasing millions of copies of it in the hands of millions of people all around the world. A digital only release has the game only on 2-3 servers and some consoles if the users don't delete data after playing.
Much more risky for that game.
You also forget that games became more recognized and many want to preserve them now. But in the old days of gaming when we had cartridges etc no one was thinking about preserving the legacy of gaming. If we had digital services from the start then very little from that era will exist. You wouldn't have the thousands of Roms of NES and SNES etc games.
We have them now because they had physical media and people could later find that media and pull the roms out of them.
You also forget about streaming. This digital era leads to just streaming and owning nothing. You can't pull anything out of streaming and cloud gaming etc. You don't have the digital data at all.
You say what purpose does a DVD serve but DVD movies have now saved our ability to see the films as original released after studios started deleting or changing scenes for their modern sensitivities.
then mine as well sail the seas all the time. the thing is sailing can be risky with viruses.
@@TheElectricUnderground Jailbreaking and emulating used to be very easy back then because console drm was in an infant state. Now not so much. We can barely emulate a PS4 console and only early Playstation 5 consoles have been jailbroken.
There's a problem wtih phasing out CDs and Blu Rays: Streaming often does not offer the same quality.
Agreed!!
Streaming DO NOT offer the same quality, further more, I like owning my CD’s, 4K Blu-Rays and Games. Don’t get me wrong, I do have a digital library on iTunes, PS4 Pro and XBOX Series S, however I still like to import physical games from Playasia like the Japanese Shmups from M2.
By a wide margin. We're talking something like a 20-fold difference in bitrate if you compare streaming to blue-ray.
Piracy has same quality backups, if they don't serve the native quality then don't buy it.
who said anything about streaming just hold the file somewhere on your pc all a cd/blue ray is just some phsyical structred that hold that data you could do the same with a baisc usb stick or hard drive
@@jd2792 where do you think you'll get "the file"? option a: from a blu ray? well duh, then you need blue rays. option b: from a streaming platform? good luck with that! ;) option c: buy a high quality download? apart from a tiny amount of music, they just don't offer that.
I have to dissagree here, not with the fact that physical games have that much more value then digital games, but more with the fact that just because books are not digital means they are much different than video games.
Media is just the storage of information. Wether it is a story stored in a book, a game stored in silocon chips, or music stored on a vynel record, all of them are just information stored in some type of medium. The only difference between analog and digital media is just that digital media stores its information as a stream of 1s and 0s. This means that something like vinyl records or movies on film, are also analog media.
All of these methods of storing information require some sort of processing in order for you to understand it. For a physical book, this would be that you need to both know how to read, and be able to understand the language it is written in. Even for a painting which is also just a way of storing information, you still need to know what you are looking at to be able to understand it. Now, the processing you need to do to understand the information in a book or a painting is quite minimal compared to most other media, it is something that most people can do without any extra tools as long as you have learned how to do it. But for almost everything else, including a bunch of analog media, you need some sort of machine to process the information for you in order for you to understand it.
Just because something is stored on analog media doesn't make it different. A book is still going degrade, just like any PS1 game will and both will be destroyed just as easely in a house fire. Both are also useless if you don't can't process their information, a book written in Polish is just as much of a paperweight to me as an NES game without a way to play it.
Digital media is also stored physically somewhere, just like with a book or a vinyl. Even if they are extremly tiny, the 1s and 0s are still stored in the physical world, whether it is in semi-conductors, the polycarbonate layer of a CD or in punched cards like from the 1960s. They all take up physical space just like any other media, and has a storage limit. Also while a lot of mediums that store digital data can be rewritten, like hard drives, SD cards and CD-RW, almost all physical games troughout the years was printed on non-rewritable mediums, just like with a book, a mask-rom chip of a Gameboy game cannot be changed after it has been flashed, and a CD Saturn game cannot be changed after it was pressed. The only instance of games being printed on rewritable media that i know of is with the Famicom Disc system and some older PCs.
I also think that reading a digital book vs a physical book isn't that much different as playing a physical game vs a digital one. In both cases you are still accessing and consuming the exact same information. The only thing that is different is the things surrounding you consuming the information, like you having to turn a page in a physical book or you having to insert a disc to play a physical game.
On another note I also personally think that collectors talking about "preserving" games to be stupid as hell. Since all physical medium degrade over time, that means that only way to preserve the information in that medium is to copy it. I do collect games myself, however just by having my games sitting on a shelf i am not preserving jack shit. This goes just as much for collectors of books or anything else. Unless you are actively making copies of what you own, nothing is being preserved.
Hot take, preserving them both digitally and physically is the best outcome for everyone :D
Facts
As long as you get to stick it to the communist "ownership bad" fuh - hag - ggots and the identity politics moralists when they suddenly decide entertainment is "problematic" since it doesn't fit their warped worldview.
yes except there is no such thing as preserving them physically is my point. It's all digital. A licensed DVD is no more physical than an iso on a hard drive. Both are just digital information stored in the memory of media. Also if you really want to preserve a game, an m-disc is absolutely going to outlast the retail disc. So ripping or downloading games (either one) and putting them on multiple m-discs is much better for preservation than just having the basic retail discs sitting in plastic cases.
@@TheElectricUndergroundTrue, but there is value in preserving the original hardware, the artwork, manuals, is still an important thing to preserve!
@@TheElectricUnderground You hardly see M-Discs being made because you hardly see people with blu ray disc drives in their computers.
It’s true they are all digital. The physical preservation comes from preserving the artwork and packaging more than the game itself I think? It’s more about the idea of holding something and enjoying the box, manual, packaging and the game cart as much as it is playing the game itself. For me it’s about the physical embodiment of people’s hard work and effort.
I think physical media can help us understand design choices and improve game design. A lot of design choices that gamers just take for granted were solutions to hardware limitations, storage limitations, or played to the hardware in some way that only becomes apparent when you play the physical game on its original hardware.
Levels facilitate bank-switching, which mitigates RAM bottlenecks; dithering creates a sfumato effect on CRT TVs; still-image dialogue sequences play to the graphical strengths of older Japanese computers; preventing players from returning to old areas reduces disc-swapping; etc. If we understand the reasons for these choices, I think we can better understand whether and to what extent these design choices make sense for newer games going forward. For example, a lot of newer retro games try to recreate the appearance of old Genesis games using dithering, but dithering doesn't create a sfumato effect on modern flat-screen displays and a scan-line filter doesn't fix the problem.
Another example: Ys I & II Chronicles prevents players from returning to Esteria after they enter Darm Tower because the original Ys also prevented players from doing that. But the original did that because the graphical data for Esteria was on a different disc than the graphical data for Darm Tower. Ys I & II Chronicles is all on one disc. So why not let players go back? Just design inertia?
Yes but I think you are missing the point about the original hardware being digital as well. Yes, older hardware had limitations that influenced the design of the games, but that doesn't make the games analog or "physical." Starcraft Brood War was made to run on windows 98 (which I love), but it doesn't make the game any less digital than starcraft 2 running on windows 7? So don't confusing what I am saying about media storage with playing games on original hardware. You can absolutely play Brood War on an old windows 98 computer if you want, but you don't have to actually use the licensed gamedisc at all. And if you want to preserve starcraft brood war into the future, just hoping the cheap original discs hold out won't work. In fact as time goes on and these licenses run out, you will need to play pirated copies on the original hardware. Original hardware is also digital.
I think you make some interesting points but I would clarify that “analog” and “physical” are not synonyms. Analog refers to storing information in a continuous manner (e.g., the groove of a vinyl record) and digital refers to storing information in a discrete manner (e.g., the microscopic pits of a CD). Analog signals can be transmitted non-physically (e.g., A/V signals transmitted over RCA cables) or stored physically (e.g., on the groove of a vinyl record). Similarly digital signals can be transmitted non-physically (e.g., over HDMI) or stored physically (e.g., on the microscopic pits of a CD).
As a bit of a physical media “purist” you’ve offered some good food for thought here. I think for me, apart from all the nostalgic rituals involved, i just place a lot of value on being able to physically own a tangible object that represents a piece of media that I enjoy. I feel a greater sense of ownership and control over that object, even if at the end of the day it is just a container for digital content.
Plus you can sell or trade your physical games to get something back from your original investment.
Isn't being a physical media purist kinda inherently hostile to smaller studios who can't afford to release their games that way?
@@hahasamian8010 I’ll still buy digital if physical isnt an option, or stupid rare/expensive, but physical is always going to be my preference
Agreed, i feel the same. The Video might be right theoretically, but still the tangible games are just so much different than the official digital buys experience (Am not speaking of pirating)
Yeah but you just explain why YOU enjoy collecting not how it would work to preserve the media.
I think there's something to be said for having a small, curated physical collection of personal favorites, or buying physical when it's reasonable to do so. Let's not kid ourselves about "preservation" though. Very little of this is manufactured to last in the first place. Optical discs have a shelf life. Circuit boards wear down, malfunction, and break. At the risk of sounding way bleaker than I intend, everything will wear down and out just as a raw function of time. Digital archival is the only way a lot of this stuff is going to have any chance to survive at all, and a lot of it still probably won't. Fifty years from now someone will eventually scrap that last stray hard drive or server that some ancient nerd kept a ton of obscure doujin games on or whatever, and that will be that for a whole swathe of hard work and art that probably deserved better.
Preservation is absolutely a noble thing to strive for, but we can only do what we can do, and what happens past our time is out of our hands.
Very true for many console games, but arcade games are often a marriage of software and hardware. Boards were built sometimes just for a single game, and controls can be tailored
I think it's sad hardware is all PC based now, and everything is just built using unity/unreal engine now. And access to unlimited storage has led to many developers scoring their games like generic Hollywood movies.
Replicating the unique sound chips is often the hardest thing to do via emulation
u seem fun
Oh arcade pcbs are a very special interest of mine. So yes, absolutely, many arcade games, including my favorite, were built in harmony with the hardware limitations of the games. And accuracy to this hardware has been a massive selling point for pcb collectors for years. However, both FPGA technology and software emulation are becoming so accurate and powerful (even with stuff like input lag) that it's impossible to tell the difference. I played a bunch of extremely expensive CAVE pcbs in spain and while some of them still stood out as unique from emulation, the vast majority are pretty much matched perfectly. Then there comes the question of future preservation and supply and demand. There are only so many DDP boards in the world and they are extremely fragile and expensive to repair. So you are going to get to a point where arcade PCB are 1, incredibly expensive, and 2. extremely niche. That begs the question, in the future and even right now, if 99% of the player base use the emulated version, is the original hardware even relevant anymore? A good example is the m2 port of Garegga. in so many ways, that port is an outright improvement over the arcade board: in features, in performance, in popularity, in graphics, and in competition. So now, ironically, the original arcade board is a straight up downgrade. So that begs the question of if you believe a game should be shackled to its original hardware forever, or if the game can have life after the death of the arcades? I obviously think the latter.
@@TheElectricUnderground Game versions are a real challenging sea to navigate when it comes to discussing game preservation. Like, the Switch versions of many games are undoubtedly way behind in terms of performance but they may also offer alternate controls (touch screen, gyro) that might set them apart from their more conventional console/PC counterparts.
I think in regards to arcade games specifically, preserving the form factor/presentation is also a concern to some people. You could see it as the difference between experiencing a movie in a cinema or in your living room, or like you briefly discussed in your video, the difference between reading a physical book and on an e-reader. It's less pertinent to home console/PC games since the developer has less agency in how the player experiences something but for arcade games the physical presentation can be a lot more bespoke. There's parallels here with handheld games too. Whether that's relevant to preserving /the game/ is one thing, but there's a lot of angles to the preservation discussion.
@@TheElectricUnderground I totally agree that the trend is inevitable and you are describing the reality of the situation well. I just think the mindset that games are purely digital has been harmful to the art form.
We used to have companies like SEGA sourcing hardware from defense contractors to compete with Namco, and they both had very unique aesthetic styles as a result of the different hardware. Maybe the artists were just trying to strive for photorealism or replicate real instruments, but in striving they often ended up making art that was even better than reality. And when a company didn't have the resources to compete with bleeding edge tech, they would compensate with gorgeous pixel art and musical arrangements. And even low resource teams could compete if they racked their brains to think of a genius mechanic for a puzzle game that would pry people away from the latter.
I agree we can preserve the art of the past well, as M2 has done with DDP, but sadly the incentive structure is gone to create future games. We will never see the sheer resources and grit being thrown at game development as we did when arcades were the tip of the spear, and I think a lot of that success came from an intimate relationship with the hardware.
Love the channel! Nobody has a better grasp of game mechanics on CZcams
If there’s a physical version, I’ll always prefer it over a digital download. But that’s just me. Holding a great game in my hands is a fun experience for me. Not to mention, the value will likely rise with physical versions as time goes on.
I would agree if physical hadn't gotten shit near the end of the 360/ps3/Wii era. Nowadays it's just a flimsy case with a disc or cartridge that requires patches and collectors editions often don't have the disc anymore.
@@stevenbishop1782 this is why i was glad the switch had almost no internal memory. There are still patches, but it limits how broken they ship games a lot
@@robbyrobot3303 That's really only true for Nintendo 1st party games though. Damn near every Turd party is cheap as hell & only puts 4gb worth of game on the card, forcing you to download the rest of the game lol. Switch games are worth tons of money though since it's the actual game on the card, & not just a security check like xbox & playstation games. Overall, I think it's better to just move to Steamdeck for 3rd party & only buy Nintendo games for Switch.
A rotten disk is worth $0.
@@etymonlegomenon931 so is the burnt out motherboard on a gaming PC.
If it’s damaged you buy it again, just as you would for your $1000 PC. Putting the original disk or cartridge into the original hardware, enhances MY gaming experience.
I own some physical games that most will never get to touch or see in person, in their lifetime. That is a fun experience for me.
And I promise you, they’re worth a lot more than $0 😆
I just love collecting physical media in general. Whether it's video games, comic/manga books, novels, movies, TV shows, etc. I still buy physical games, but my main issue with modern games is that they don't put as much effort in their physical versions (excluding special editions) as they used to. The covers usually suck and they don't even include booklets most of the time.
oh i know it's a huge bummer. That's one of the points I made. Where you spend extra money on the disc version (which in the end is the exact same thing as the digital version) and you only get a cheap plastic case and a disc? Where's the instruction manual? The extra art? Yeah the disc releases of games these days are really lame. Remember how awesome the game manual for starcraft was? it was practically a book. I used to take it to class and read it ha, now that's some analog media right there.
Honestly, I think if we stop making it about physical vs. digital and start talking about “permanent copies”/“permanent access” vs. always-on-DRM or mandatory patches that we get to the real heart of the matter. Because what a lot of people really want is to keep being able to play their games whether the developer/publisher changes their mind or not later on. I can still boot up my copy of Final Fantasy 3 (6J) from the 90s without having to resort to emulation or getting copies of the ROM through unofficchannels. If my Super Nintendo breaks, I still have the game and if I get a new system, I don’t have to do anything to keep playing it.
On my Wii U I have tons of games that I’d lose access to if my drive goes down. I’d have to use unofficial means to get them back. But at least most of them run fine without an Internet connection.
Contrast that with Gran Turismo 7. Whenever Sony’s servers aren’t working, I lose access to almost the entire game - even if I play using a physical copy. In other words, the physical media does nothing to help me and I hate the always-on DRM equally either way.
In other words, I don’t mind digital over physical - I mind restrictions on access and online requirements for games I just want to play locally.
It's one of the things I like about doujin soft. A lot of them have no DRM so I can play them on or offline.
It's also why I'm critical of buying games on Steam. It's a guessing game as to which games will run fine if I open their exe files directly to bypass Steam and which ones will just say "no".
And even though Steam DRM is one of the less invasive and less damaging types, its still DRM. It can still decide you cannot play a game you want, because your internet crapped out on you and you didn't have the foresight to activate offline mode beforehand - as happened frequently during my uni days when the campus wifi was down and I just wanted to play games I bought on Steam between classes.
The value of preserving games isn't necessarily JUST in preserving the digital code representing the game itself, it's in preserving the whole experience of the game, as the developers originally intended it to be seen, heard and played. Some aspects of the overall game experience are easier to preserve than others.
Preserving the actual physical bits on a floppy disk, optical media, cartridges and digital downloads is the easiest thing to preserve. We've been doing this as long as digital media has existed.
Replicating the subtle timings of the game running on its original hardware is harder to accomplish, but still possible to achieve and important in preserving the original intent of the developers. This is being accomplished very well via emulation, and will get better over time, as modern hardware and emulation techniques improve.
Preserving certain games running on CRT monitors is the hardest thing to fully preserve at this point, and essentially a futile endeavor as the technology is no longer being produced.
But yes, at the end of the day all things are destined to break down and fade away into the sands of time. We can do our best to preserve the things that are important to us as individuals and to culture in general, for future generations to enjoy and learn from. But that is all we can do, as someday all of this stuff will disappear.
So there are physical limitations on cartridges in terms of space. Also carts are not just containers any super fx chips had processors and different ram amounts on the cart. Also I think you aren’t considering controlling the game via controller from that console we are just fortunate enough to have modern replicas and software to emulate the hardware. Some games require certain controller features and extreme example of this is steel battalion.
As Matthew once said, the best way to preserve a game video game is by handing out the source codes and letting talented people work on them. Aka, we are all screwed.
I think the more accurate way to talk about preservation, is local vs cloud instead of physical vs digital since it is not the time but the publishers are our biggest enemies. Skullgirls seems like a perfect example of how the publishers/developers spit into the faces of their customers. Back then, a physical copy meant that this version of the game could be played and shared without us monitoring you from Steam, you could just put it in the console and play. We couldn't update your CD or cartridge without your consent because you actually owned the copy. The same thing can't be said about all the cloud copies you rent from Steam.
For modern games, it actually can be analogue. You convert a long play, or sometimes just the cutscenes into film and it plays basically the same
lol
ha yes, or another funny idea would be to print out the source code into like a giant book or something. It would be a true analog version of the game, but good luck playing it XD
Some modern games do have more involved gameplay at least.
@@austinreed7343 that really depends on where. Most of Sony’s big hitters for example are basically movies with breaks of gameplay
Around 19:00, you mentioned "books and vinyl records" as one group but CDs, DVDs and etc as another. What, specifically makes a vinyl record different from a CD? They both contain data, that data is physically ingrained in the object, and you need special equipment to actually use them. The only "real" difference is that CDs practically necessitate electricity/electronics, but records don't, even though the period of record players NOT using them was relatively brief. It can't just be electronics then, so where specifically is the line drawn? To me, the argument that physical games are, for the end consumer, any different than CD or vinyl doesn't make any sense
This video's argument suggests that somewhere between books, vinyl records, and game discs, there exists an arbitrary point of complexity that stops something from being categorized as "physical" anymore, which is pointless when all of them can be represented digitally anyway. It just requires varying levels of complexity to do so. Physical audio/video formats and physical video games are really no different, and even if you take hardware into consideration, they are still conceptually identical. The difference between an NES cartridge and an SNES cartridge is not unlike the difference between betamax and VHS; you need special hardware to decode them one way or another, audio formats are just a lot more standardized and universally more generally useful than video game formats are. Lately "digital" seems to get conflated with meaning "non-physical", when that really has nothing to do with it. _Everything_ is physical, even digital data. "Digital" really only means the storage medium is entirely predictable and lossless. That's the only meaningful difference between real books and a PDF, vinyl and CD, VHS and DVD, or any other analog/digital format
From the title I was expecting this to be a discussion about what actually constitutes preservation, but this is much more aimed at consumers as an argument against physical games, which I think is significantly less interesting or important. The description mentions "a wave of talk about the need to "buy physical" and "physically" preserving games" - when people talk about this, I get the impression what they're really saying is that if you're a casual consumer of console video games, it's going to work out much better for you in the long run to collect physically than to go all digital. I'm talking casual-casual; Joe Schmoe isn't going to know how to set up an emulator or where to find roms, and he shouldn't have to, assuming he even has the hardware for it. But he sure knows how to slap a cartridge into a slot or put a disc into a tray, and for most that's good enough. If you've gone out of your way to do PC emulation, you are no longer Joe Schmoe. Real preservation is almost entirely carried entirely by emulator developers, those who rip games from their physical media and store the data long term, and veteran developers going out of their way to archive what little they can. Big corporations and casual consumers buying discs aren't even in the discussion to begin with
(First time commenting on the channel, love all your solo discussion videos like this, you're really great at digging into the stuff people are unwilling or even unable to discuss)
Cartridges are/were a true physical format, up until the disc era came in - carts often had custom hardware from custom sound chips in Castlevania 3, extra RAM in SMB 3, the super fx chip in Starfox and Yoshi's Island (which were difficult to emulate). There's way more examples, but it's more sad that time is over as I felt it definitely prolonged the lifetime of the hardware, but it was very difficult for developers who were platform licensees because they had to order carts in advance from the 1st party with no refunds in the case of unsold inventory
Carts are really cool and for a while what your are describing was true, but at this point pretty much all the cart consoles have extremely robust flash drives that not only can replicate the special chips and everything, but also add in additional features like save states! Also on flash carts you can play really cool romhacks of the games on the original hardware like the project base version of super metroid :-) Also reminder, don't confuse original hardware with being "physical." a licensed game cart is no more "physical" than a flash cart. Both are just containers for digital information.
Old-school cartridges are an interesting curiosity. Instead of putting in a disk full of files, you're putting in _an entire ISA card!_ And make no mistake, they really _are_ a lot like an ISA card. The ISA bus is just an extension of the Intel 8088's address and data bus. Old-school cartridges slot right into the processor's address and data bus, too. The ROM chips on the cartridge are visible to the CPU in the same way the BIOS extension ROM on a PC's ISA card is. This ISA-like nature is why old-school cartridges can have additional hardware on them. Newer systems just use a tweaked SD card instead, and as the interface for that is designed solely with storage in mind, that's all they can do.
@@Roxor128 I know man (RE: modern carts/cards are just memory, more or less), it makes me a little sad that none of the pins can allow for something interesting. There's a great discussion with Dylan Cuthbert on some podcast talking about being in a room, as a teenager, with a bunch of Nintendo engineers and obvs designer like Miyamoto talking through an interpreter about possibility of 3d hardware on the yet-unreleased SNES. They phoned an engineer in the uk to talk about the pins on SNES cartridges there and then so he could confirm that they could add a 3d chip to cartridges of specific games!
@@ls.c.5682 That's an amazing little story!
I can think of one way to do a hardware-containing cartridge for a new system: USB. We've had USB storage for ages. Make the cartridge essentially contain the same contents as a USB3 flash drive as the basic form, and allow containing a hub and additional hardware if desired. Sure, it's not as tightly integrated as an old-school cartridge, but it'd be relatively easy to implement (at least by modern standards).
Physical games are good for sharing between places easily, but we should be able to theoretically do this already by burning discs of our digital copies. Bam , physical backup
@@baysidejr for modern games we'll need dual layered blu ray, so i'm gonna get that setup soon (internal bluray drives are cool)
My entire 5th and 4th generation of consoles was stolen from my house when I Was 13. My mom sold my Genesis and games when I was a kid without my knowledge. When I think about it its heart breaking.
The fight for the availability of physical games translates into the certainty that your game license is tied to the cartridge/CD and it is more complicated for the rights holders to take it away from you.
From a preservation point of view, everything is on some type of physical medium, even if it is someone else's computer (i.e. the cloud). The important thing is to be able to transfer that data from one physical medium to another, and what makes this possible is to have DRM-free games available, that they are not contained in some type of proprietary medium, etc.
One reason I like physical games is that they are often on sale for much cheaper than the digital versions. Waiting for them to (hopefully) go on sale or getting a cheap key off a resale website isn’t always guaranteed.
As seen with all the closures of Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo’s digital storefronts, digital piracy truly is the only way to preserve these games for the future.
That sounds like a perfectly reasonable approach to buying physical games, but I've noticed that the digital versions of games are often significantly cheaper than the physical versions. When a game launches, they are typically around the same price (not to count shipping costs), but after a short amount of time the digital versions often get DEEP discounts during flash sales. For example, a few weeks ago I bought resident evil 5 for xbox 1 for only $5. Whereas the physical version sells around $15 on ebay without shipping. That being said though, if you find cheaper versions of phsyical games, then absolutely go for it, finding deals is a much more solid reason to buy physical games than the notion of somehow preserving them ha.
The ds and 3ds eshop closed. Those games are just lost now digitally. Either you buy a cartridge which lasts forever or download a rom. Discs suck but cartridges are pretty good about holding up over time.
@@Nostalgiaforinfi cartridges nowadays contain some form of flash memory, not mask roms like in the older days. Either way they will not last anything close to forever. Even if they did your console probably wouldnt. Just play , enjoy and don't give it too much thought
I want a guarantee I can always play my games. With physical, I have that.
No, my discs aren't going to degrade. It's been 25 years and they're as good as new. It's called taking care of your things.
Agreed. Enjoyed the video, but having a tangible copy of something I can play will always override a faceless corporation being able to remote delete your access to something already purchased.
discs do degrade over time... look up disc rot. the only way to guarantee you always have access to your games is to have backups that you can play without needing an internet connection.
Some newer physical games you don't really have a guarantee as they require a server
People have been saying that crap for years now!!!! "All your game discs are gonna degrade and all your carts are gonna wear out,"
That's bull crap!! All you have to do is take care of your stuff and you'll be fine!!
@@wargameboy72 have backups and youll be even more fine lol
Do you know where I can get a legal digital copy of Marvel Vs Capcom 2?
I lost a physical collection enough to fill two large boxes in a move overseas. Needless to say, I learned how easily the "future-proof" physical titles can be taken from you.
For me, physical preservation is more about being able to continue playing something indefinitely even if I cut my internet service off completely. I'm a big fan of Everdrives and such, and for me, that counts as physical preservation. If I want an update or patch for a game, I can download it and patch the rom file myself. I can add or delete things and curate my library to be exactly how I want it.
I love digital, and I've spent a small fortune on huge digital libraries for PS4, Xbox One & Switch. I like being able to hop in and out of different games instantly without getting off the couch to change the disc. The Everdrive brings this same convenience to retro consoles though.
I've had several huge issues with PS4 particularly, where my account was suddenly corrupted and I had to do a bunch of troubleshooting to get it working again. Each and every time, I had to go re-download every single license for every game I owned, and just pray my saves were still on their cloud. It really drives home how little real control you have over digital games. If you couldn't re-download the licenses, for instance if Sony's servers ever go away, your games are gone -- even if you own the disc in a lot of cases.
I didn't have the same level of constant issues with Xbox, but several times I let Xbox Gold lapse, and suddenly even games I owned physically would no longer work without an internet connection, even if all I wanted was single player story mode stuff. Not all of them became this way, but many of my games simply stopped launching, even with the disc in the tray.
This is why an Everdrive feels so much more secure to me -- my roms aren't going to suddenly stop working if I get rid of the internet, or if my service is out. I can play them "off-grid" with zero issue. I don't have to constantly prove that I own them. It's weird, especially with many homebrew roms, I feel like I own them more than AAA games I've paid 60 bucks for.
All you're really buying with digital games is the license, which can quite easily become corrupted or lost, and then you'd just better hope that you can still re-download it in the future. I would never count on that, with the way companies phase out their old consoles' digital libraries and de-list stuff for legal reasons. The de-listing is another huge issue for getting the license back if you lose it.
I was into digital before - during Xbox 360. Now many of my games got delisted (MvsC 2, MGS2&3 etc...) or I can't download (80% error) them on 360, because Microsoft does not care about supporting 'old console' - they tell you to buy Xbox One or Series instead. This BS put me off so much from digital, that I will never buy digital game ever again.
Now, let's see if you will still "love digital" when 'PS4, Xbox One & Switch' support will near it's end - then you will see how much it's really worth and how big of a scam it is.
When buying digital you basically tie your right to play the game to some custodian, third party like: Steam, MS, Sony.
Basically trusting, that they will not mess it up.
Well, Im past that - I don't need any middle-man to play my games. I went full-on Retro and I'm loving it.
Now I'm sitting on a really nice physical games collection and it's amazing how much freedom it gives.
Physical only.
I'm still a "physical media" guy and will remain so. If my apartment building were to burn down, I'd get a good deal of it back because I have a media rider on my insurance policy, have it all well cataloged and documented, and it's all on camera on my YT channel XD
I get what you're saying, though. I do still think the preservation aspect is important, though perhaps not in the way you might think. If the physical version is still available in some manner while it still works, and the hardware still works, at least we can archive that digitally in a way that precludes DRM so that it can be used with emulators, hacked consoles, FPGA devices, etc. While that still requires the other pieces of the puzzle to work, it's still worth exploring.
I like Cartridges. They can physically be in my hand and I don’t have to be online to play them. There is a difference. Nintendo has a big history since the 1800’s. You may want to look into that if you haven’t yet. I have to gracefully disagree with you if you’re saying there is no difference from online only and cartridges.
He never said anything about online only games.
Having a way to install/start the games without relying on the servers of the console is really important in my opinion. Also, digital purchases strip the customer of their ownership rights, such as selling the game.
Games with DRM or important patches not included on the medium are useless though, it's frustrating to sort out those bad apples.
Interesting about your brother. I lost my old collection in a fire back in 2007 as well. It was a few hundred great games across 11 systems going back to the 80's, and I had a lot of pristine gems that really sell for a lot now. A lot of music CD's too. I've dabbled a bit in collecting again over the years and currently collect movies, but I'm pretty much an entirely digital gamer these days. I've had to move a lot too, and it's honestly a lot of hassle.
Totally get what you're saying and have thought similarly. A lot of "muh physical" and "preservation" talk is just thrifty people doing the Gamestop trade in churn, youtube hoarders with more money than self-control, piracy talking points and marketing spiel for limited print boutique release retailers. It rarely really gets into lost media, prototype discoveries, perpetuity, emulation accuracy, conversion competency etc or even consumer choice of where they want to play something. Some people do great work and documentation in that sphere though.
I also think digital distribution made tons of games possible that either weren't viable in the traditional retail model anymore, or never would have been. Whether it's mid 2000's indie games bringing back 2D, or all the crazy experimental and experiential genres we get now. Couldn't imagine not playing some of my favorite games from the last 15 or so years just because there wasn't a physical copy available.
Coming from a more art history background for me the whole "preservation" talk you see the vast majority of youtubers engage in are either purely talking about maintenance of access to the digital content of the game. With the "physical" side being mainly just thrifters with niche or resellers cosplaying as collectors. If you go into the more niche platforms you tend to end up with people that are very keen on documenting everything and within that you have the die hard group of people that are actually trying to preserve the games. (they also exist in popular platforms but there is a lot of overlap with the niche platforms and are vastly outnumbered).
Because the physical is part of the game.
Simply preserving a ROM/ISO/Etc. alone is akin to taking a picture of a painting or retyping a book and calling it preserved. Sure some of the content is preserved but not the actual item. Which, especially with games is even more important than a book or painting as games are inherently interactive.
There is genuine archival scholarship at the core of preservation, but I think the vernacular has spread far beyond that out to supplant it as shorthand for some of the things I described.
Even film, there's only one original negative, and interpositive, then prints were derived from it. The technology required to display film reels as they were originally projected has become exceedingly uncommon, and was never even really a mass market consumer product. Still, efforts are made to restore, scan and digitally preserve and distribute films, which still can't fully replicate the original experience and technology.
There is definitely something to be said for people who bypass corporate control to do things like Star Wars 4K77, and the enthusiasts who cultivate the demand and appreciation for such endeavors. Or those who do something as simple as overcoming region locking... but I just don't know how much dudes who refuse to watch anything on Netflix, pirate movies just because they can etc would really be doing to "preserve" film. Or what some guy buying mostly used DVD's at a Gamestop equivalent would have been contributing to anything, beyond being the 1 in 1 million guy who's shelves survived through the end times. At some point, for the vast majority of people, it's just posing, posturing and marketing.
Hi everyone. I think the argument is hollow, because a physical release was way more than the software, which of course is digital data. The physical release contains the box artwork, the manual and other items like maps and of course OST music in some cases. So getting and maintaining physical versions has added value, compared to data on a hard drive.
Another thing is the hardware involved in case of cartridges, which by itself is a human genius product.
Very good point. Thats why we see video games as an independent medium today. On PC or mobile a game is just a software file/app, just a program. Thats why I think video game consoles are still very important.
Modern Physical releases don't hold that expectation anymore though, manuals are no longer being made and all you get for your $60/70 is a filmsy case with just a disk in it, a disk that most likely needs an internet connection to allow access to the full game, it's like buying a book that only has chapter 1 readable. I remember getting a copy of Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii and being genuinely shocked that it had a hefty manual that was in full colour, you just don't get that treatment anymore unless you want to shill out for a collectors edition and get ripped off.
@@1shoryuken I agree that the current threshold of expectations is in an all time low. Companies that simply put a small poster in the case make a difference nowdays.
The only difference I see between the two versions is that you have the unlock key with you for the physical version, but need an internet connection to play your digital game on a non-primary console. Last holidays, I was locked out of most of my Nintendo Switch games due to missing WiFi. Luckily I had a couple of cartridges with me.
Oh yes good point. I think currently that is a bit of the difference between the two, but as time goes on you'll either be playing your digital backups drm free (like on the ps3 and xbox 360 now), or you'll be emulating the games in some manner ha. It seems to be a trend that once a company stops making money on a console, like the ps3, it's pretty much abandoned and becomes a sitting duck for jail breaking. This fate will happen to the ps4 soon enough and has already happened to the launch switch (which is funny).
You could probably get onto Accursed Farms and talk with Ross about this stuff.
The necessity of intermediaries is something I've thought about as well. I don't think people appreciate how fragile digital media is, particularly pure digital media like games or demos. More than just data rot from the plastic the games are stored on degrading over time, you have to make sure the game can run on modern hardware and modern operating systems, and if there's a networked component you have to emulate that too. If you don't have the hardware, you have to spend the time to create an emulation layer that can run at sufficient speed to play the game. Microsoft's commitment to backwards compatibility is a saving grace that helps keep PC games running long into the future.
The gold standard for game preservation is the source code getting released, since that means a native version can be created for whatever hardware and operating system you want. But a lot of stuff has to go right for that to happen.
But all of this takes effort. The games that will be preserved the longest are the ones that people view as important enough to copy between drives, like the Christian monks copying the bible in their monasteries.
Yeah that’s a big one Mark missed. I remember trying to play that game I think it’s called Claw and it runs like absolute garbage on modern systems.
4k bluray is great simply because online high bitrate options have a lot of issues still, or have an insane entrance fee for some proprietary hardware, higher than a standard 4k bluray player
I love playing Run & Guns, Shoot'em ups, Platformers, Arcade style games = when those are not getting released physical anymore = I'M OUT. It's a simple as that.
While the “game preservation” argument is usually overblown it still has certain merit when it comes to topics such as censorship and licensing. Buying physical versions of games helps offset the possibility that content owners change the original artistic vision of the game. Want to play sonic 3 with the original music? Better have the original cart. Want to play an older game that was made at a time when sensibilities were a little different? Hopefully the digital version hasn’t been stealth edited to remove that objectionable content. Original versions of games will likely always exist somewhere, but that doesn’t mean they will be easily accessible for most people. For that reason preserving your own physical copy can be useful. But for me the more compelling reason to buy physical games is because, for me, it is fun to collect physical games in a way that watching a digital library grow is not.
First of all, you are right. Best way to preserve games is dumping it onto a hard drive and keep it safe and accessible. No company can do a better job than enthusiasts around the world.
However, it also makes no difference whether pay for a digital copy or "yarr harr" it (for pc). On switch I save a ton of space by keeping 90% of my games physically. By keeping them physically I have the best ornament for my room a gamer can have. A nice lookong set of games. If the price is the same why would I buy digitally.
To be fair, game manuals peaked in the NES era with the first final fantasy. It came with a "player's guide" that was close to a 100 pages of information on the setting, items, characters, and even contained a walkthrough for early parts of the game. (it was more similar to a tabletop book than a game manual.)
I also want to print out some of my favorite game manuals because it would be funny and kind of cool.
Oh yeah game manuals have really fallen off in the ps4 and ps3 era. Do you remember how amazing they were back in the old school PC games days? The starcraft manual is my fav of all time. Not only does it have a lot of really useful info on how to play the game, but it also came with a full on story printed and really cool art and everything. i actually used to take the game manual to school with me and read it in class inside my textbooks ha.
@@TheElectricUnderground I was regrettably born too late to experience the pre-Steam era of PC gaming. I only had the manuals to a few old console and handheld games as a kid, and even then I got most of my games secondhand.
Digital is not the problem. DRM is. And it's a huge problem.
I completely disagree with you, physical games are part of gaming history and preserving that history is valid. Not even talking about the ownership issues with digital media which are loans only unless you go the illegal way and I hate hacking with a passion.
💯%. He is just so wrong about this. I also hate piracy with a passion😎
I think that there should be a distinction between collecting cartridges/discs and preserving them. There aren't many practical reasons for collecting those anymore outside of sentimental or nostalgic value. It does make some sense for preservation purposes, in addition to digital preservation. Those internet archives might not always be there, and when a game is digital, there's no guarantee that you'll get the same thing tomorrow that you had today. Take for instance, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on Genesis. The copy of the cartridge that I own has several music tracks composed by Michael Jackson, where the current official Sega version doesn't anymore. If those bootleg and archive sites go down, dumping the rom from those physical cartridges will be the only way to get them back. Better not to rely too much on a single method of preservation.
Those archive sites are good for distribution, and people should be grabbing copies as much as they can, in case somebody has to restore/redistribute something that has become scarce/unavailable online.
Right, but don't forget about the main point I am getting at, which is that cartridges and discs ARE digital backups to begin with. There is no distinction between them from hard drives or external servers, other than the type of hardware they interact with. A rom is a rom. Whether you put it on a cart and license it, or put it on a flashcart, both are digital versions. The point I'm making is that having an analogue backup of a video games doesn't exist, unless you print the game's source code on paper or something crazy like that ha. So yes, I agree, having multiple copies of a game is good. But having a licensed version of a game doesn't make it somehow more preservable or analog. If i download all of the ps2 library in iso form and store it on multiple hard drives (or better yet, M-Discs), it's got just as much or more of a chance to survive than the guy who buys all the licensed discs and keeps them in his gaming room.
@@TheElectricUnderground Why have sex when you can just masturbate?
Rare Electric Underground L tbh. No collector is so deluded that they actually think they might end up being the custodian of the last surviving copy of G-Darius or something. The point is that as long as I own it, *I* can always play it. I don’t have to hunt down a copy, I don’t have to wait for a torrent to become available in 2040. I don’t have to hunt down a manual scan to make sure I’m not missing something without being spoiled (manuals are a very important part of the intended experience of some games). I don’t have to subscribe to an online service that could axe the game at any time leaving me out of pocket with nothing to show for it. I don’t have to jump through hoops of perfectly configured emulation and low latency controller adapters. I don’t have to resist the temptation to switch to a different game in 2 seconds flat every time I die and get remotely frustrated.
Don’t get me wrong, you still talk the most sense on this entire site, but I think you’re too quick to dismiss the physical game + original hardware experience which has a lot of advantages, and for a lot of people is a big part of the hobby.
Lol after “Nintendo catches you emulating” segment there was a Nintendo Switch ad
This is a topic where the technicalities don’t trump the practicalities for a lot of people. There are barriers between us and the interaction of the games but electricity etc. is so readily available it doesn’t feel like it’s much different than something like a book. Maybe once a year when there’s a bad storm I might stop and think about the fact my game system is inaccessible.
@TheElectricUnderground: Not going to lie, this make me rethink of my 'High Roller's Club' shumup physical collection to an extent. Still pre-ordered that physical limited DoDonpachi DaiOuJou M2 ShotTriggers Port right? Right??
Ha I'm glad I've got you thinking about these matters in a new way :-) So I went to pre order the physical version of DOJ and the damn thing is sold out lol. I'm going to buy the digital copy for now and if I feel like getting the extra swag, the artbooks and so forth, I'll get the special edition. It's just so damn expensive though.
When will your DDP3 video go up? It was released a few days ago in Japan (PS4/Switch).
This mostly only applies to Nintendo, but there are some games where the experience is tied to the specific hardware too. Like DS or Wii games where physically holding the console or controller and moving it is part of the charm. That aspect needs to be preserved too beyond just the hardware too. Interesting topic.
Bro, stop sucking up to the greedy cashcows and giving them a good reason to push for the consumer to pay for a subscription model every month. This is ruining the gaming industry, and you dont own any of this stuff anymore as it's just like Netflix, disposable media that isnt yours
“Later we’ll all die said the gator to the fly” - Amy Squirrel.
Play those games now, move on to the next thing.
Can’t take it with you, and your kids kids kids kids kids in 2097 aren’t gonna care about Magnavox Odyssey games, other than being an obtuse curiosity for 20 secs. The carts and systems will be corroded and useless anyway.
It's more about creating false scarcity so that they can inflate prices.
I've always had the take that collecting arcade cabinets, JAMMA PCBs, and just other physical media is essentially just interactive furniture. As someone who has owned a New Astro City and various PCBs, that cab would just sit in my room looping attract mode looking cool.
Battle Garegga, for example, is better played on the PS4 port due to all the advanced features and the lack of a sprite limit. There's a really clear example of the sprite limit ending Eaglet's run during the Stunfest 2018 demo.
I'll still hold onto the PCB for collection's sake, but it would be better if I could just somehow hook up a MISTER to JAMMA and play a shit ton of games off that.
Physical games are Physical DRM. I think a better way to put it is the physical cart is the DRM vs an online server. Think physical vs download. They are both still technically digital, yes.
Bought the Physical version of Samba De Amigo on Switch because it was $20 on Amazon. It came in a full-sized Switch Case and only the game card was inside. At this point they need to make an SD card plastic snap case for them and let stores stack them on metal hooks to save space.
A huge plus for "physical" is that an internet connection is not a requirement. Not everyone in the world has high speed internet or unlimited data caps. This extends to the consoles themselves. The new "slim" PS5 requires an internet connection to activate (due to detachable disc drive). Don't get me started on games getting delisted on online store fronts. If it weren't for stores reprinting games (shoutout to VGP), everyone would be forced to pay exorbitant prices or resort to piracy. Some people can't risk resorting to piracy, if one was caught in Japan using a bootleg Nintendo game, they would get tossed in the slammer.
I honestly, care less about the physical "extras" that come with games. I just want the game itself on the disc. Miss me with the Deluxe Edition Steelbook.
Love ya Mark, but this is definitely a "hot" take.
Interesting perspective!
Does the physical manga feel better to read than screen?
I'm considering buying a lot of game case replicas to display on my wall for nostalgia sake.
I really think so! I have been reading berserk as physical manga and on my tablet (because the manga is super long and expensive) and I really enjoy when I can read the manga physically the best. In a way, I think physical manga is even more satisfying than physical books because of the quality of the paper and ink, it just feels really nice in the hands and has a gorgeous glossy quality.
@@TheElectricUnderground thank you!
@@TheElectricUnderground You could have just read it online for free. Omg... IMAGINE THEN SHIPPING COSTS OMGGGGGGG YOU'RE NOT PRESERVING THE MANGA YOU JUST HAVE A LOW QUALITY COMIC
The true reason on the argument between "physical" or digital games, for me, really comes down to ownership. As demonstrated multiple times with delisting, digital marketplaces and repositories shutting down or as we've seen recently with Sony/Discovery, flat out removal of media from your device in your possession. This is why ROMS/DRM free (or stripped) games is the only 'real' preservation of media.
True, physical media is not inherently "preservation". It is protection from digital storefront closure, to a very limited degree, but I agree it's not singularly capable of preserving a game. But that's because preserving retail machine code in is not sufficient to be called preservation. And that's where I have to push back on the rest of your premise, because I don't see games as inherently digital. As I see it, games are physical first and foremost. They came up through mechanical experiences like pinball and gradually adopted more digital aspects as technology facilitated it. It was such an organic transition that it's difficult to definitively declare what the "first videogame" even was.
Code is little more than instructions for hardware -- the compiled logic that brings every other part of the experience together. Just because digital means are being used to preserve parts of our gaming history, through things such as emulation, doesn't mean that's all that a game is. It's just the colossal effort and compromise our community has chosen to make to preserve what we can in the face of the reality that hardware can't last forever. When we've lost all of the hardware for vector graphics screens, sit-down cabinets, motion controls, light guns, Gameboy Cameras, and whatever that holographic thing was that Time Traveler did... part of what those games were will simply cease to be. But it doesn't mean the code left behind is all they ever were. It's just what we managed to save. (And of course there's even more to preservation than the games themselves, but I already wrote a book here.)
But for real though, Nintendo closes storefronts like they're porn tabs when their mom just walked in. Ain't no way the Switch eShop will outlive the majority of physical carts.
This is what I call a Based Take.
I agree but honestly I just find digital games more convenient and find that piracy is better preservation than discs like you said.
Exactly! It is so funny and a bit ironic when you see people who are very strict about only buying licensed discs of games suddenly finding themselves having to use digital piracy to play their own games. A common example are collectors who spend thousands of dollars on disc games, and so, in order not to scratch the discs, they just play off a flashcart or burned copies lol. It makes total sense, but it's also pretty ironic.
@@TheElectricUndergroundpersonally, if I drop that amount on a physical copy, you’d best believe I’m using it. If not now, when? It’s there to be played, not to be encased and preserved for someone in the future to theoretically play it, especially since as time passes it becomes gradually more irreplaceable and the risk+anxiety increases, so if you’re not going to, why would future you/future generations? What are those guys waiting for, fuckin judgement day?
@@ChrisStoneinatorexactly, I'm a pretty avid collector and I always use my expensive discs/carts. I just take good care of them, store them in a proper way and keep them clean. We are all adults who can handle their stuff, not 5 year olds. Lol
Physical can be good when my digital storage is full (N Switch). It's also easier to pop in a cartridge and get to playing the game than having to download it first (ofc this rarely matters).
Interesting thoughts, good video as per usual. I recently got a ps5 and have gotten back into buying physical games again. It’s nice to have something tangible to hold again.
I definitely get where you're coming from on this topic. It honestly makes a lot of sense. Like, when I played for example, Sega Ages 2600 Complete Hack via CDRomance and used PCSX2 Nightly I got a really good experience outta it even though I don't have the discs,manual,or aethestics items.
Genuinely I believe emulation is preservation. Maybe for some games that have more unique schemes like Akari Warriors it may be hard to preserve elements of that without an accessory but I believe these things will be resolved by buying said accessories.
To a certain degree, me playing Contra 3 on an Xbox One controller it is still preserving that game experience even without not having the original cartridge or console it was made for.
And even there is digital software on emulators or Reshade to recreate certain CRT filters even though the monitor.
I do appreciate that you made the video and I feel like I get something to think about while playing games.
Yes game "piracy" and emulation are equal to preservation. Because of how crazy video game business practices and copyright laws are, there is no way games can be preserved into the future other than through drm-free digital backups. It's the only way and so far this is exactly how things have played out. Relying on original hardware will fail because the original hardware will fail or become scarce over time. Relying on retail discs will fail because they are tied to the original hardware and they're not going to escape disc rot, supply issues, or simple physical damage. Mass DRM-free digital copies that are accessed via "hacking" or emulation is the only viable answer.
Video games are naturally digital yes, but same can be said with any format that can be converted into digital media , thing is with physical release we get to have the game in our hands faster and it is much less hassle to keep them safe and even when online services are not there it is easier to put in a disc and play than go through isos and also disc are a physical format that is unique in itself
Well the same can't exactly be said for other analog based artforms because video games literally cannot exist in an analog format. There is no way to create an analog video game. The closest you could come is maybe printing out the game's source code or something ha, but even then if you preserve the game physically, you'd still need to enter that information back into a digital system in order to consume it. Film and music are kind of weird because they are analog, but they require special amplification tech (reels and records), but that tech doesn't involve any computer interpretation of the media. So if you think about it in a scale of analog-ness, printed media that you read and look at is the most analog, because the art and the media are one in the same. Then you have film and records in sort of a middle ground where the art is physically present on the media, but it requires analog amplification to consume. Then you have video games which are a purely digital format, because in order to be a video game in the first place, the process requires computer interpretation.
You took the words out of my mouth with this video.
Although one thing you've missed are the games that DO use analogue stuff to progress. Take Metal Gear Solid for example, there are like a few instances where the game will tell you to do something outside the game such as taking a look at the back of the game case and connect your controller to the second controller port, the closest way to have those experiences without owning a PlayStation 1 would be emulation through a VR-powered environment.
I don't like to collect plastic so I'm with you in what you are saying in this video Mark.
But there is one thing that it was better for videogames when physical supports were the only way: the game release was a complete release, a complete job. I mean, if there is something throwing me off about "modern" gaming is the constant release of half-made, half-tested, half-balanced games. That's why I stick playing older things and slowly playing new stuff few years later-
But when I bought MGS or RE2 I knew that it was the "real" deal, carefully crafted, complete game.
I buy physical video games because i want to own them. It's that simple. People on the internet always bring up this weird counterargument that "you don't own your video games, it's just a licence"... complete nonsense, my Blu-ray's contain the whole game on disc and i can instal them onto any PS4/PS5 thanks to backwards compatibility. I inform myself before i purchase any game. My games will still work in 30 years just like snes cartridges do. I don't care about preservation because you can't preserve modern video games anymore. If Bloodborne won't get a PC port it will be forever lost since even in 20 years nobody will be able to emulate it. Even nowadays despite our giant technological leap most PS2 games run like crap on PC and have major problems. If i can't buy a physical copy, i will pirate. I will never pay 60€ for something that i don't have control over NEVER
I buy physical video games, I pirate, I emuate, I care only about myself and all humans are like that
There have been speed tests on Switch games that show some surprising discrepancies between load times and frame rates between playing on the cart, the internal memory, or an SD card.
i was thinking about how different is it if i have all of my games saved on my computer and one or two back up drives, fully playable. i don't think it's that different. it's almost like a cartridge at that point.
All I know is when I pay $50 for something I want something in my hands to show for it.
Great presentation and points. I was a pretty early adopter of emulation and though it was early stages, I was fucking around with it in 96 I believe. It blew me away to see some NES games and Sega System 16 arcade games running on my shitty pc, sometimes very slow or without sound, using a gravis PC pad which was shit, or the keyboard. By around 1999 I started selling all my retro games and consoles to embrace an emulation machine with video out, so I could play these on my CRT tv, stereo. My friend was also making controller adapters by soddering and that allowed me to use SNES controllers and similiar on the PC for those games as well. This was before launchbox and hyperspin interfaces, so it was basically folder surfing on a pixelated CRT to launch games. I had also modded my PS1 with a mod chip and burned Dreamcast games as well. By this point I really didnt regret selling those games too much. I got over that roadblock of not wanting to sell the physical games for nostalgia reasons. Later when PS2 was emulated to my standard as well as GC , I sold those as well, along with some other "newer" consoles. Emulation is an all consuming beast and eventually I will sell everything that is emulated up to my standard. Switch is already there. The ability to use any controller, graphics filters and save states for much more efficient practice are some of the big advantages over owning the games (forget storage, disc rot, maintenance).
Games are not the first digital art form: their parent medium of software is. After all, software in general gets copyright protection, and anyone who's serious about programming considers certain examples of code to be beautiful.
Also, with regards to instruction manuals, I really wish there was some option for piracy that would get you PDF copies of the manuals as well as the game itself. Many, many old games are hopelessly opaque without the manual, so even if you do get a copy of the game, it's a huge headache figuring out how to play it.
I think people don’t want to have their game cut off at the whim of a game company. Least with physical they can’t do that.
They can disappear digital games like Konami did with Kojimas P.T
Do you have a physical copy of Lawbreakers? Try playing that disc. Or try putting in a disc of Dark Spore in your PC and playing that.
@TherinThimble-rs3se
Little bit different with the online focused games you mentioned
While I know what you are saying, and there is technical truth in what is being said, I like have the physical memeto of buying something that is generally quite expensive (£30+), I like that I can easily sell it on when I am done, and it will work (hopefully) many years after I first got it. It isn't that difficult to understand really.
I don't want to pay subscriptions to play digital games so i own PhYSical video games xD
I'm not a fan of subscription models either, believe me. But that's not exactly related to the point of the video because playing games digitally really has nothing to do with how the games are monetized. For example, you could buy a "physical" disc (like the old physical discs for World or Warcraft) and still need to pay for a subscription to play. In fact you ALREADY do have to pay for a subscription for "physical" games. Like lets say you own Tekken 7 for playstation 4, right. And you have the physical Tekken disc. Having that physical disc does you nothing to protect you from needing to pay for a subscription to play online. And if the PSN online play goes down in the future, that disc is basically worthless anyway. So saying buying discs sounds like a simple solution to the issue, but it's really not. You are still going to run up against DRM protection in all kinds of different ways, because there is always that digital layer between the game and playing the game, even on a disc.
@@TheElectricUnderground Up to 6th generation of consoles (Dreamcast, OG XBOX, GC and PS2) there is none of that. All games on disc play without any DRM whatsoever. 7th Gen it started going downhill, but still 360 and PS3 are good machines to collect games for. PCBs also are good to go - so here's your solution, just buy Retro.
PC went downhill since introduction of Steam, before that it was amazing - during Quake II and Quake III: Arena days. Original PC games were awesome back then - I played tons of Quake III on LAN back then, good times.
Discs are a simple solution, gaming publishers became too greedy. I buy Audio-CDs and DVD new till this day.
If music and film companies can provide the goods - there is no excuse for lazy game companies to not do it.
Gamers need to stop agreeing to this stuff - like that Tekken 7 example, why would you agree to buy this??
Also, that game sucks anyway, like its not bad, but way worse in every way than Tekken 2 or Tekken 3.
They should just buy themselves T2 or T3 and a PS1, get a CRT and have a blast. Buying shitty and undercooked game releases that provide no value back to the buyer, like that 'Tekken 7' disc is not very smart.
Don't get me wrong, that game in itself is not ultra garbage, but it's not great either. I played it a bit in Japanese arcades when it was new, but then I realized that there is Akuma, Power Crushes, Rage Arts and I just stopped playing that game - it's not even a good Tekken game, T5 and T5:DR were the last good ones.
@@TheElectricUnderground If you own the game (Tekken 7) digitally or physically it is worth a lot given the idea of being a single player that I am. Fuck online play anyway.
That Baten Kaitos background music was a cool choice. That game soundtrack is really good.
I haven't bought a physical game for the Ps4 / Ps5 generation
I have digital games on Ps3 an started collecting physical copies for certain games as backups incase something ever happens to my digital versions
So in summary I collect physical for Ps1, Ps2 an somewhat Ps3 as backups and ownership purposes while I use Digital
What's the game you're playing to show how little difference there is between CD and digital?
The game looks really interesting
Looked like Dead to Rights
There is a component of digital that many people want to avoid and i wouldn't blame them. Wouldn't you rather in the long run have previous versions of a title available if the later ones are faulty or you hate them? Also having the flexibility to modify physical media yourself and to discourage companies from implementing forced internet access or other forms of restricting drm.
Preservation is a good case since the old physical console and physical media can run without being forced on the internet and avoid being potentially be bricked after its generation through updates. Its something to consider if you're serious about keeping your stuff.
Ah, a Baten Kaitos enjoyer. Great taste as always.
Yup, Ive long argued similarly. Just having possession of an outdated storage container that may or may not be playable on a modern device does nothing for preservation. its what so many get wrong about game preservation. its why for example, whenever i buy Audible or Amazon ebooks or audiobooks, the first thing i do is strip the DRM and backup the newly generated unencrypted epub and m4b files to a Blu Ray Rom or other container multiple times. even if amazon provided their own physical format for audiobooks it would have its own DRM. so having a physical format from the company itself is useless from a preservation point of view. you can only preserve when the user has raw access to the unencrypted files that they can control/backup/convert for themselves.
On a strict 'preservation' argument, in the relatively short term yes roms are the best. But in terms of the market going digital, unless you can transfer a licence (with block chain this could be facilitated very securely, but the publishers are not willing to sell any consumer one copy of a game).... Then physical (which acts as a transferable licence even if half the code is on disc) is wholly superior and anyone thinking otherwise is dim. DRM free roms however, yes that's perfect. In due course the industry will figure out some kind of block chain truly secure wrapper around game code. And when they do they will be in full control (and as noted you will not be buying one digital copy of their code from them as they have no interest in that). An individual won't be backing up anything then. The days of our boy Alvro from Brazil backing up the good stuff is limited. The non physical future will be grim. Fun (and true) fact: There is already game-pass exclusive content in existence, i am not aware it can be backed up (would wager it cannot). On the advantage of physical Mark it is that the licence is transferable between hardware. If you think the games industry will not figure out non fungible / copyable games, I think that you'll be proved very wrong indeed. Hopefully there will always be roms, but I'm not aware of anyone defeating these distributed legers (if they did crypto would collapse overnight). Microsoft already has a secure platform, and as noted good luck backing up the gamepass exclusive game code already in existence and certainly not backed up or preserved anywhere. Anyone who is a consumer needs to hold onto physical if they can. Piracy is awesome and hopefully forever but I think not. In the future piracy will be fake ids or logins being generated to access content and not copy able content, because they probably already have figured that out (implement next gen). As of today your view is spot on but that won't last. If your looking at legit gaming, then physical clearly has more consumer rights and effective ownership. We've gotta keep it going as long as possible imo.
Physical media answers to the human ritualistic needs. And ritual gives meaning to things. To kill the physical in favor of digital only vulgarizes art, making it lose some of its impact.
If things go digital only, lol, no company will ever see the color of my money.
If you buy a physical version it holds value as you can resell it whereas a digital copy only has value to you and becomes worthless the day you stop playing.
IMO it's misleading to say "video games are always purely digital" when cartridge and arcade roms are not necessarily dumped correctly which can cause graphical glitching and other possible issues not present with the original medium. Preserving the original games is really important in these cases
yes bad sound emulation (Sega Genesis) and weird quirks (many) that aren't reproduce correctly leading to games not playing like the originals, also not so much software as it is hardware but emulating Nintendo DS/3DS, on PC is just weird, lots of empty space and using a mouse to replicate touch controls isn't the same, you could use a phone, I guess but that adds another problem.
This was a nice listen. I'm pretty much with you on all of it. The future of preservation is always going to be digital. I do collect physical games, but I also buy them digitally when it makes more sense. I do like having the case art and the ease of just uninstalling/installing whatever ps4/5 game i feel like playing, but even then you have to keep in mind patches and updates that often don't even make the physical version of your game the "finished product" especially with newer games. I don't really care for the limited run style of digital only game gets a limited physical release for 3x the price so I don't bother with that.
Though one thing that is very important for physical media in the present is distribution. If you can only get the game digitally from one storefront like the PSstore or Eshop, then your options for prices are going to be worse. Having physical games that are sent out to multiple retailers is going to give you a lot more options as a consumer with discounts, deals, and used copies. Roms are the future for games in the present, but they aren't viable in the present. So if (when) console games become digital storefront only, that is going to be rough for the consumer.
I feel like digital games/ music/ films is kind of decreasing the value of the Art..
Remember when we actually bought albums on CD?.. we would really take our time to listen to the full album, even the songs we didnt like we would give them a 2nd chance and a 3rd chance, until they eventually grew on us...
When u DL an album, its just a cheap/free alternative where u delete half the songs u dont like, quickly replace them, dont give it the attention it deserves, until it becomes out of sight out of mind..
I feel like its not doing justice to the Art.. I like giving an Artform the time and money and effort it deserves...
The same with collecting physical games.. especially physical Shmups on switch.. its an expensive hobby i have :) But the games i own physically i play them way more in depth and dedicated :))
I have some shmups digitally, like Project Starship X.. which is a great game, but i really dont play it that much, because its basically just an 'invisible' file thats floating somewhere.. It kinda doesnt hold any value to me.. sometimes i even forget i actually have it...
While the preservation aspect is a moot point as you so eloquently put it, I do sympathize with those concerned with the ownership issue of physical vs digital.
The Physical edition is different because once installed, you have to have that disk in to run the game. A slight inconvenience, but I like having the physical because Im oldish school
I'm a physical release defender for all media. Ownership is the main reason as once you have it, it's yours to do whatever you want with it. You can sell it when you need money, trade it with someone for another game, play it over 40 years later(Atari is almost 50!) & trade in to save money on your next game.
When it comes to video games... it's advantage of being a digital media allows it to edited to be released over & over again till the end of time, which thanks to licensing & console manufacturers apathy... is a double edged sword. Editing games also means that core things from the original release can be changed like music, initial difficulty(Super Mario RPG's difficulty is WAY to easy!), & graphical effects like blood & gore.
Backwards compatibility is something there is no excuse to not have, especially with the digital push. Being able to play all the PlayStation & Xbox libraries should be a no brainer as they are on discs & you still have to download a digital version with the Series X compatible games.
True preservation would be all console manufacturers & publishers having full digital backward compatibility on all consoles going forward & allowing you to use your physical release games as the DRM with a $5 unlock fee for a digital only version if you're too lazy to change a disc(the main reason so many have moved to digital over physical for all media). Preservation shouldn't be left to enthusiasts because the companies don't care as all the lost movies are due to apathy & they still do it today like the removed shows & movies from streaming on Disney+ & Netflix.
I get where you're coming from, but I think the argument isn't quite there. Again, I get what you mean and your point...
It's not so much of an argument as an observation, if that helps. Like i personally don't care if people want to spend money on retail discs or limited prints or anything, but I think this whole preservation marketing angle is very misleading. I also think it's kind of funny how little ironies will pop up with game collecting. Like a lot of game collectors will spend hundreds to potentially thousands of dollars buying some kind of special print or retail release of a game, but then hack their consoles anyway to play backup copies as to not damage their expensive copy. Outside of the label though, that copy is not special or different from the digital backup on the flash cart, and in some ways inferior since flash carts are now having extra features and stuff.
Absolutely right. Ive been buying a load of Mega Drive rom-hacks on cartridge that come in cool little slip-cases. I aim to make game overview inserts with some choice tips & tricks for them as that becomes the main reason to have the individual items instead of an Everdrive. Not even going into emulation software and all the fluffyness that can be built into that. U just cant beat being able to check some stats or look at a map when the game is playing. Of course multiple screens and tablets can offer this too.... Just being able to get something off the shelf is golden: main importance is the cover, and written content but the simple action of pick game put it in console press button go is key being the completion of the analogue experience ;()
I would add that we are already screwed to an extent with modern games and physical copies because since the PS3 console gen (and PCs before that), game are increasingly released incomplete and buggy, so you need all the patches and update which are never available as a physical copy.
There was a short time where they would put out a set of discs with the "ultimate" final version of the game, but that stopped long ago as well.
It does appear in the emulator scene that people are able to obtain backups of patches to modern games, but we'll see. It's a bit of Sisyphus's boulder situation at the moment.
I agree with you about games and code vs. the container - I remembered arguing your side with other people back in the 90s and 2000s. :) In regards to the closing arguments about paper and vinyl, it isn’t as simple as your present, however, based on my experience on working with computer graphics since the 90s and working as a professional audio engineer since college. The printing resolution increased over time as we found ways to treat paper differently - I remember having to buy specific paper just to use certain resolutions on certain printers back in the 90s. As far as vinyl, you’re dealing with “encoding” just like you would with a digital recording (the same song is put on the vinyl a different way even if it takes up the same location and space on the innermost part of a 33/45/78) and you’re again limited by the specific of the media, etc. Not all vinyl that look the same are manufactured with the same fidelity.
So with both vinyl and analog film, a big part of the question is how much of the original fidelity makes it into the final pressing print. If someone really wants the full analog fidelity, they aren’t getting it with the vinyl - the original reel-to-reel captures detail that gets lost during the vinyl transfer.
In other words, if we really wanted to get as “analog” as possible (in terms of preserving the original material) we’d be buying and selling reel-to-reel tape.
When it comes to vinyl and cassette tapes, what people generally think of as the “analog sound” is often a less accurate representation of the original analog waveform being recorded (compare just about any vinyl to a 384 KHz DXD recording, a decent 192 KHz 24-bit transfer from the reel-to-reel tape - heck even a 96 KHz 24-bit in some cases - or compare either to original performance) but rather difference in frequency emphasis and other things of that nature that result from the information that is lost. When people talk about analog vs. digital they often compare early 90s recordings delivered on CDs at 44.1 KHz in 16-bit with aliasing artifacts approaching the Nyquist limit and other shortcomings of the converters at the time, saying how much was lost compared to vinyl. Yet today a huge number of people have computers capable of 96 KHz 24-bit playback or higher, able to playback recordings that have none of those issues. Then you have a lot of people that love the lo-fi sound of early digital gear (especially low resolution samplers from Akai or the like) that have tons of digital artifacts that early hip-hop artists used… to sample vinyl. And lots of people loved that sound without complaining about how digital it sounded.
Yet the CDs that were made of hip-hop artists sampling vinyl into a digital sampler and the ones that people complained sounded “too digital” were all delivered as 44.1 KHz 16-bit Redbook audio. It wasn’t the CD or the file format that was the problem for many of them - it was issues with how the artists and engineers used that media or file format. That plus a lot of analog to digital and digital to analog converters took a while to get better at playing back the content that was actually there in the first place. The difference between a mediocre converter from that era and even a decent one from today (let alone a great one) is almost like the difference between outputting the image from a Dreamcast with a composite cable vs a VGA one. In both cases, we started with digital but one way of outputting it loses a ton of information.
Anyway, I figure leaving tons of comments helps you with the algorithm so please don’t mind the rambling.
physical game preservation is about the physcial cartdridge/dics, book and manual, etxra's. you could also scan these to get digital images
Video Game Preservation is about the digital code of the game.
Are there people who are confusing the two?
Fine subject to discuss but what people are talking about generally in this arena is physical copies or backups to protect and preserve control over the media bt the consumer. Digital only means if the seller decides to stop offering it, it will no longer exist in any for, and there are also issues of changing of content as well (think Lucas and SW special editions).
Also the discussion around this (whether music, art movie, VG) needs to include preserving the MEANS to play them, as access to a "player" can go away over time as well.
A lot of this is semantics. The real world implications are dire, for one thing mini games just don’t play very well unless played on original hardware. So that code is designed for a specific machine, and without that machine, the experience is sometimes degraded or lost. Not all the time, I think emulation and FPGA alternatives are great for probably the vast majority of games out there. But it is a factor.
Another issue is the inability to buy a cell, the games themselves, which will lead to the death of retro video game shops. That’s not some thing essential to gaming, it’s just sad. It takes away a big part of gaming culture and it’s sad to see that fade away. Much like we watched arcades fade away. Hopefully , we will see them continue regardless, much of the way arcades have had a renaissance lately.
But the really devastating part of digital only games comes from the fact that mini games don’t work at all, unless patched with up-to-date fixes, and even more importantly, some games won’t work at all without connection to a server. So there are games that are in danger of just disappearing forever if we don’t reserve them. the more we move to digital only medium, the more it will be up to the community defined ways to preserve the code, collect and update the code, and even in some cases create entire alternate servers, that will somehow interface with abandonware. That’s what we’re really concerned about when we talk about physical game preservation going away.
I get the overall sentiment but there’s a technical detail with the intro: just like there were analog computers in the early days there were also analog video games, like Tennis for Two in 1958. So between analog computers and electromechanical games, it wasn’t entirely unlike some of the other media you mentioned in its early days. ButI think that if you move the argument from analog/physical vs. digital to “physical pressing of the code” to “the code itself” the overall argument you make translates pretty well, though.
It’s about the code, not the physical container. :)
After the nightmare of Scott Pilgrim on digital store fronts, I make it a point to grab physical when I can to *know* it's available to enjoy whenever I want.
Having to coddle a 360 for years knowing that game could just vanish at any moment was ridiculous as emulation for the title was a problem.
It was on the cusp of becoming entirely vaporware despite being so beloved until they pushed out a new port and got the licensing issues sorted with all parties involved.
And tbh, knowing that anything you paid for access to can just be snatched up or hoarded away at any moment is pretty dooky.
See: WB and streaming recently.