Dialogue
Readers share their views, with physical-vs-digital on the agenda
Dialogue
Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet.com. Our letter of the month wins a full 12-month, 13-issue subscription to Edge
Let’s get physical
There is a lot of talk about what dematerialisation and ‘gaming as a service’ means for the consumer, most recently due to the failed attempt by Microsoft to double the price of the Xbox Gold subscription. Most commentators interpreted this as a move to make Game Pass a more attractive value proposition, which would have taken us another step closer to the seemingly inevitable demise of the physical copy. Of course, I share the concerns of fellow gamers about what this means for us. I do not worry so much about no longer being able to resell a game after playing it (I don’t think I have ever done that), but about the very real possibility that, after they stop being supported, some beloved titles might completely disappear from my (now virtual) library.
Which brings me to my main topic: what does dematerialisation mean for game (or indeed any content) creators? I am not talking about economics – I am sure that ‘gaming as a service’ is a perfectly viable proposition: whatever the delivery method (cloud-based, burnt on a disc, or anywhere in between), games need to be made in order to be sold. However, there are other implications. The mindset required to create something that lasts potentially forever is very different from that needed to make a consumable, something meant to be used and then discarded. The former stems from a desire to leave one’s mark, to give life to and share one’s idea or aesthetic vision, however weird, niche or downright unpopular. The latter, on the contrary, is pretty much defined by the need to please or fulfil a necessary function, at scale, in the here and now. There is no such thing as an ‘avantgarde’ service or utility for a reason.
The intention of its maker is the difference between a work of art and a product. How many movies would not have been filmed if the sole objective had been to make a splash at the box office? How many books not written if the author had been exclusively seeking praise from his contemporaries? Of course, games, just like cinema and literature, are also a business: content creators need to earn a living too! The question is: should they be only that?
For there is another, easily overlooked consequence of dematerialisation. A physical object can stand the test of time and eventually find relevance long after it was made, whether for historical reasons or because it was ahead of its time. By switching to a service-based model, we remove this possibility, along with any motivation to create content that does not conform to the predominant taste of the day. Something we should all perhaps keep in mind the next time we decide whether to go ‘physical’ or ‘digital’.
Fabrice Saffre
“A physical object can eventually find relevance long after it was made”
Something we often think about in terms of service games is that, the longer they’re around, the stronger the bonds with their players become, and ultimately the more difficult it will become to pull the plug when it’s time to call it a day. Does Blizzard, for example, have a plan for what to do with its players once World Of Warcraft comes to the end of its natural life? Or, having operated the game for 17 years to date, are its development staff simply not even allowed to contemplate a future where it does not exist? But you’re not talking about these games – you’re talking about preserving lower-profile productions that don’t breathe such rarefied air. The good news is that there’s never been a greater number of other people concerned about these things, too – and taking action. That the canned Xbox 360 version of GoldenEye recently ‘emerged’ out of nowhere should give us all hope.
Cloud strife
Ever since E352 explained how the Xbox Series X Quick Resume allows multiple games to be suspended and resumed almost instantaneously, I’ve been wondering who this feature is for. Being able to load a game quickly is a very welcome trick, but do people really switch between games on the fly? And, if they do, doesn’t that affect their sense of immersion, pacing and enjoyment of the story – the same way that, say, switching between books part-way through a chapter would surely break the sense of flow? Imagine pausing Crime And Punishment just before (spoiler for 150-year-old novel) Raskolnikov is about to axe the old lady and switching to one of the excruciatingly long songs in The Lord Of The Rings.
Then again, maybe I’m just grossly out of touch with the way people consume culture (or, if my examples are any evidence, with culture itself). I rarely read more than one book or watch more than one TV series at a time. I even tend to listen to albums rather than individual songs, even though Spotify has basically made sure no one else does that any more.
So, yeah, maybe I’ve answered my own question. Maybe Quick Resume is for people who are not old men shouting at clouds. Leo Tarasov
Quick Resume is a fine feature, but it would certainly be a bit more persuasive against Sony’s approach if PS5 games didn’t load so quickly, which dilutes Microsoft’s message somewhat. Now, if only we could expand our PS5s’ SSDs so that we could actually store a decent number of games on them rather than constantly having to bin stuff in order to make space. When you’re ready, Sony.
Future perfect
Your Look Forward special edition (E355) actually got me a little excited about the future! Ironically, for all the wrong reasons. Most advancements in videogame technology have had me yearning for the past. I grew up on the 2600 and NES, where games were loaded before you released the ‘On’ button. I fear every jump I make in a 3D platformer. I don’t trust a controller unless it’s stuck into the machine, nor the input lag of a plasma screen. And don’t ever ask me to log in the next day for a reward.
But there were two things you mentioned that have made me giddy! Now, Deus Ex was a perfect storm of low-end graphics and highend dreams, and to me, the only thing that’s come close is Breath Of The Wild (for the same reasons). But now there’s a wave of indie immersive sims. Nice! Bring me back to a time when I could quickly abuse save-states to try out every possibility in a world of interconnected systems.
Which brings me to the second thing: will solid-state drives make loading saves instantaneous? Will they let designers feature more elaborate rewind options? Can we jump between characters and places in a flash? I’m asking this because I like my narratives subjunctive. Look, I’m old-school, still dreaming of the kind of game described in the movie Big. I’m still riding that ‘games are an interactive medium’ high horse, but that’s because my favourite games are the ones that let me play with them. So thank you for giving me hope for the future of interactive entertainment I used to dream about.
Robert August de Meijer
In some respects it’s a shame that console SSDs arrived alongside the PS5 DualSense controller and new graphics processing technology across the board, because it spreads developers’ focus across a range of challenges rather than allowing them to pick one and really dig into it. We’ve seen how Insomniac is putting the PS5 hard drive to use in the forthcoming Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, but how many other games have you seen talking up such features? Naturally, we’re keeping an eye out and will showcase such things here in these pages – which you’ll be able to enjoy over the next 12 months on us.
Dot to dot
While reading Comfortably Numb in E353, I was confronted with the thought that games had been playing me at the same time that I played games. I’d not given much notice to these systems previously, but this thought has been prevalent while hacking my way through Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. I’ve barely put the game down in two weeks thanks to the reward structure – it has me firmly fixed within its Viking grip. I’m sure I would have sunk just as many hours into Valhalla regardless of my recognition of the systems at play, but it’s nice to know, late into the night, that it’s not entirely my fault I’m still playing.
Ubisoft’s devs would be rubbing their hands together if they could see the cycle I go through during each play session. It’s a familiar open-world style where I jaunt from dot to dot on the world map. In Valhalla those markers are either Wealth (gold dots), Mysteries (blue dots), or the less exciting Artifacts (white dots). Wealth rewards might be a piece of gear or a new ability. Similar to raid rewards in WOW, it’s the potential of the reward that make these gold markers so enticing. On the other hand, the best Mysteries offer a chance to help a local, or in some cases burn down their home. In one of these I inadvertently invented Worcestershire Sauce. The novel nature of the Mysteries is enough to make me come back for more, but it’s the sheer number of dots on the map that have me chasing through the countryside into the early hours. When tracking these markers gets too repetitive or the rewards don’t stack up a few too many times, there’s the main quest to fall back on. Then, if I need a break from that, I can always go back to chasing dots – and so the cycle repeats.
Zak Evans
Ah, we are all but Pac-People in Ubisoft’s maze, no? Gobbling the fodder laid out in front of us, clearing our plates, and sitting there waiting for the next load. Or perhaps we’ve just been in lockdown for too long. (What day is it? Hello? Who said that?) Q