This is such a hot topic online. I like poking the bear, but honestly, the people growling on both sides are a bit tiring.
I get both sides, mostly.
It all comes down to three things. Ownership, preservation, and aesthetics.
Ownership and Preservation
Physical game collectors feel like they truly own the game. They feel like they’re not dependent on a digital e-store’s servers to stay active in order to redownload or play the games they purchased. This makes sense.
A physical, tangible collection
I get it. It’s fun and satisfying to have a little plastic case, with fancy artwork, with a disc or tiny sour-tasting cartridge inside, to revel in the fact that yes, you own the game.
The Hustle
Physical collectors like to have the option to barter, trade, and sell their games if they want. This is true freedom. Yes. Sell that game, pookie.
Hard Drive Space / Storage
Ideally, owning a physical game would result in more hard drive space on your console.
Collectors Editions
Many physical releases, especially big titles, have physical Special Collectors Editions. They have fancy steel cases and artwork. They’re really cool.
These are all great points. I wrote them, so of course I agree. If I’m anything, I’m reasonable.
But. BUT. I’ve got my reasons, and all of these points don’t matter to me.
I choose you, Digital Pikachu.
My biggest reason for being a mostly digital gamer?
I’m lazy.
One time I was sitting on my bed watching TV, and I couldn’t find the remote. Granted, I had just woken up from a spontaneous nap. I could have got up and shaken my blanket to find the remote (plot twist: it fell behind my bed), but that is a lot of work. So instead, I downloaded the app for my TV and controlled it from there… for a week.
But I listed some very valid arguments for Physical Collecting. How do I reason with myself?
Rebuttal: Ownership and Preservation & Hard Drive Space
First off, let’s get this straight. Whether you buy physical or digital, if you buy a game, you should own it. If you buy ANYTHING digitally, you should own it. Games, books, movies, feet pics. Full stop. The end.
Also, if you buy a game physically, ideally, it would all be contained on the disc or cartridge. BUT often, that’s not the case anymore. A lot of games only work as a digital key. The disc or cartridge works as a digital key of sorts, and only contains a few MB of data. Then you still end up having to download the game. This is stupid. If I have to download the game anyway, why should I go through an extra step of getting off my big behind and inserting a disc just to be able to play?
Rebuttal: A physical, tangible collection
Your collection might look pretty, and I’d love to have one myself. But physical collections are a chore. For most of my adult life, I’ve moved every year, from apartment to apartment. Carrying around a full collection of my hobbies was a lot. Books, games, CDs, figures — it was all too much to lug around. My life can feel tedious enough as it is. But combined with the maintenance (aka dusting) and moving every year, it was a lot. This, along with my laziness, are my biggest reasons for going digital.
Rebuttal: The Hustle
Physical collectors like to have the option to barter, trade, and sell their games if they want. This is true freedom. Yes. Sell that game, pookie. But me? I don’t want to meet a rando online just to make $10.00 back on a game. Honestly, I would pay that $10.00 to NOT have to meet somebody in person.
Rebuttal: Collectors Editions
You got me. When you buy only digitally, you miss out on the cool doodads, trinkets, and tchotchkes. BUT, recently, a lot of these Collectors Editions don’t even include the game. Just an empty steelbook to match our wallets.
Laziness is a skill
Laziness is often looked down on. But Bill Gates once said he’d give the hardest jobs to the laziest people, because they’ll figure out the easiest way to get it done.
Lazy = efficient. Efficient = smart. And yes, that also = sexy.
It’s not just my Tinder profile, it’s factual facts and data.
Life is hard. Why not make things easier, especially if it isn’t affecting anyone but yourself?
So, just like Steve Jobs did to music, I went all digital.
Yes, that makes me a genius.
Over the years I switched over to nearly everything digital.
Music? When I was younger, I would Limewire MP3s, but as I said, I’m lazy efficient, so I now use Spotify.
Books? I have my Kindles.
Games? Whether it’s PC, Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo, it’s so much easier to just download a game when I want to play it.
But what if they turn off the e-stores?
E-store? Ok, boomer. I kid, I kid.
Ok, I get that’s an issue and possibility. But honestly, the convenience outweighs the risk for me.
Also, if you’ve read my previous post, you’ll know, it’s highly unlikely I’ll play any of my 1400 games.
Don’t get me wrong. I still own some physical games. In fact, I should add a physical section to my GAME COLLECTION list.
But most of my physical collection are Sony exclusives, or old Xbox 360 and One games, and some 2DS/3DS games.
If worse comes to worst, and an “e-store” removes a game I owned? I’ll pirate it. It’s not stealing if I owned it.
There are ways around nearly everything.
So yeah, ownership is nice. It’s great. But in my kingdom, convenience is KING, and my throne is digital.
Future Me:
The nightwalkers showed up without warning. In less than a week, the world felt a quarter of its size. I scavenged by day, hid by night, praying my sleep apnea wouldn’t betray me.
Daylight meant gathering firewood and anything I could convert into biofuel for my generator. I turned an old abandoned basement in the woods into my bunker.
Then one day, jackpot: a house stacked wall to wall with games. I dragged my haul back: a console, a small TV, and whatever discs I could cram into my makeshift bag.
At dusk, I grabbed my red plastic can and filled the generator. One pull and it rumbled to life. I prayed the sound wouldn’t draw them in.
I opened the blue case and slid the disc into the console.
A small whirring. It’s working. It’s actually working!
The PlayStation logo flashed. The screen went black. Then a message filled the screen:
“An update is required. Please download the following update (est size 42gb).”
Fuck. Figures. The only thing that survived the apocalypse was PlayStation servers.
