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Buying Boxed Games - Important To The Gaming Experience?
Thanks to GameSpot for its 'GuestSpotting' editorial, in which a reader discusses why going to the store and buying a videogame is a vital part of his gaming experience. He argues: "When I hear talk of the future and how broadband-enabled gaming platforms will allow us to download entire games without leaving the comfortable wombs of our homes, I shudder", and sings the praises of "...a place where you can look over your collection [of game boxes] with pride, reminding you of the enemies you have defeated, the points you have scored, the races you have won, and, of course, the money that has been spent." Although the author of the editorial admits he's somewhat of "a fetishist when it comes to the corporeal aspect of the video games", are you happy with buying games that have no related physical artifacts?
So even when (if) HL2 comes out and it launches on store shelves and over Steam, I'd still buy the store version. No questions about it.
And no, the paper sleeves some games are coming in, just aren't cutting it for me. Jewel cases forever!
I usually toss the boxes. I've got no space to spare for huge, over-wrapped game boxes which I will never open again. Unlike books or films, games need to be installed and/or require some time to 'get into' if you haven't played them for a while, so it's not something you take down from the shelf and play for two hours and then put back up.
And this guy seems slightly out of tune. If you start telling your friends that 'this box commemorates the Great War on Kilrah' and 'I lost some good men in that campaign', they should have you committed.
for great justice
Is going to a store vital for me: no. However, I am exceptionally leery about buying any product over the internet that does not come with packaging, but does include some form of protection. This is because I have been burned thanks to RealArcade... I participated in the launch of RealArcade, and brought down about eight games from them. None of them are great, but a few were mildly amusing, and were perfect for my slightly aging machine that I was using at the time.
Fast forward about six months: I get a new computer to replace the aging machine. I transfer the hard drive as a slave to my new computer, and a few weekends in, decided to pull up one of my old games. The game failed to load. I pull down a new copy (onto the new hard drive) and of course it is still in demo mode. So I call Real and ask them to help me get the games running on my new computer... figuring that since I have my old drive in the new machine, I can either relink the keys, or get new ones for the demos I downloaded.
Fast forward a few days of dealing with clueless technical support, with the end result being that I have been told that I can't have new keys in various manners. Some simply said it was impossible to transfer the games to a new computers. Others accused me of being a pirate in no uncertain terms, despite my removal of the old hard drive from the old hardware. My entire real account was cancelled on my behalf (not just the arcade portion, but the premium content for Read Audio as well) and yet they billed me for 3 months subsequent to the cancellation.
In the long run, it just wasn't worth the battle to try to get my purchased content back. I did have my credit card company back out the entire Real subscription (which I had only had for three months prior to RealArcade) as well as the subsequent charges after the cancellation that were incorrectly applied.
So, do I find the store experience important? No in the least. However, physical media is critical to me, simply because it lessons the possibility of not being able to use my purchase due to tech support stupidity.
That said, I have had problems even with my physical purchases. I purchased a copy of The Operation Art of War, Elite Edition. Turns out that it is impossible to run this on any NT based OS, period. So I tried it on my old windows 98 box, but it turns out the old copy protection was incompatible with my drive. Techsupport refused to give any helpful suggestions, and refused to return the product. Of course, the store refuses to return opened product.
I still have the game (and a few others in similar state) that are not games that require any technology to run (how hard are hexes and die rolls?), but have crippling technology attached which prevent me from revisiting them, or in some cases, ever playing them at all. Now, some companies are choosing to do this deliberately: I have refused to update my Macromedia products, because the new versions protection. Any product with software keys that have to come from a vendor is going to be useless when that vendor goes away, and none of the vendors I have talked to have a plan for dealing with buyouts or failure.
Sig under construction since 1998.
If the physical article is more desirable than the download, then people will buy the article after getting the download. This applies just as well to music as to games.
This fetish for the physical article is exactly what the RIAA should be trying to encourage with CDs if they want a business model that will actually work in the 21st century.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Whenever I blow $50 on anything, including a game, I want something physical to "touch." Besides the fact that I also want a way to ensure that if my console's hard drive blows I have a way of getting the data back on the drive without a hassle and waiting for a long download. And I would not believe for a second that the reduction in costs for shipping the game, creating box artwork, printing manuals and all that would be passed on down to me. So in essence, yeah. I like the box. I still miss the big old manuals major programs and hardware used to come with.
Steam gets bogged down horribly every time there's a new 50MB patch out, so bad one can't even join a server after getting the patch. I'd hate to be on that network downloading when the same number of people goes to download 1-3 gigs worth of new game if it were the only form of distribution.
What in God's name am I supposed to do with a paper sleeve with the CD key printed on it? That's a situation that's completely ass and awkward to deal with.
While this may be true for your run of the mill games, Massively Multiplayer games that require a subscription fee are a different animal. I have a hard time justifying to myself why I should pay $50 for a game that I have to pay $12.99 a month to use.
Thankfully, a number of companies have realized this. For example, you can download the demo for "Earth and Beyond" from EA, and play the full game for free for 14 days. Then, if you like it, you can buy a new CD key for $14.99 that will upgrade your demo to the full version (and cover your first month's subscription). No, you don't get a box, or a manual, or a physical CD, but you also don't get to pay $50 for a game that you don't really own in the first place.
The games I really love I want in a box. I have been buying an playing games for twenty years. Had I kept all the boxes, they would have filled two bookcases. Now I have two shelves with boxes, all of games I really enjoyed. Wouldn't want to miss them. I store the manuals of the other games in those boxes too.
Imagine: The original Ultima IV -- in its box! The original System Shock -- in its box! Original Infocom Adventures -- in their boxes! With feelies!
Yes, all on my shelf.
I do too for some games, but I also dislike the idea of having everything in one location. I'm against this in a console settings. As I see it, there are two ways game companies can do this:
1) You download the game onto a hard drive device. Hard drives are a lot different than individual media. If you pay 500 to download 10 games, and your hard drive dies, you lose all of the games. You have to then wait until a replacement drive comes, and even then, whose to say there won't be problems with getting those games back? Currently, with CDs/DVDs, if a CD or DVD gets scratched up, you may have to replace it, but you certainly won't have to replace every disc.
2) The company stores this. In other words, I'm paying for a product that I have access to only over the network. What if the network goes down? What if I have a bad link for whatever reason? What if some asshole launches a DOS attack on my site? I just don't want the media company to have that kind of control. I don't want to pay for 'virtual ownership' and frankly, the bandwidth won't exist for many years.
I would much rather prefer something more along the lines of solid state memory chips or drives before I would consider this sort of technology transferrable. For PCs, this is fine; PC games have worked by this model for a while. But I won't pay 30 bucks for a PC game online if I can get a real physical disc for the game for 10 bucks more, and if it comes with a guide, even better.
"Hundreds of games" in your "collection" and you call that guy a loser?
the whole point of the box is to get the don't panic button or the piece of pocket lint. Infocom was truly the king of game boxes. There wasn't a lot of wasted space in their packaging, simply because they filled it up with fun, enjoyable, extra stuff that just ruled. (I still have the glowing stone from wishbringer somewhere in a drawer).
These days, most boxes are fairly useless. Big bulky empty cartons that often don't even have much in the way of a manual. Blizzard is still nice and usually includes a pad of paper or other such in their boxes to show appreciation, but other than that I don't really want a box. Physical media, absolutely, but the boxes in most cases are disposable...
Discuss:
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
You're absolutely right, and you've also have nailed a very important point about MMOGs.
;)
The physical media for traditional games is important because, no matter what, you will be able to play that game.
In MMOGs the real "game", so to speak, is being provided to you by the company on a way similar to arcades. People don't like to go and buy a CD and then pay for the online content since the online content is the only game. You're tied to the company, and they decide the fate of the game, so there is no point in buying the CD, and more importantly, that's a market where people will be much more likely to pay for downloading bits instead of buying plastic!
I just remembered the "Phantom" console and had a good chuckle
---- Take the Space Quiz!
I don't need a box. What I do want is a install package that I can burn to a CD as an archival copy. I also don't want to lose the right to use the software. My biggest fear is that the market is going to a subscription based market, like what Valve is trying with STEAM. When I purchase a game I want to know that I can access the install file six months down the line and that I will be authorized to play it. I don't want to have to maintain an ongoing subscription and possibly lose access to a game, because the hosting service has gone out of business or they drop the title without unlocking it first. Online distribution I think will work, the developers and publishers just need to accept that we want to buy the right to use the program, not a service that can vanish and leave us with nothing.
how about you let me buy the game online and i get to download it that instant. meanwhile, you go ahead and ship me said game?
oh yeah, piracy, copy protection, the eventual emergence of a DNA Dongle to prove it's really you.
What about used games? There are a lot of games I wouldn't pay $50 for, but might try if I saw in the used bin. I know it doesn't generate any revenue for the studios, but if they're going to claim that they care about their customers, they have to acknowledge that used games are a part of the market. High school kids, for example, can't afford all the new releases.
And what about games for old or discontinued systems? (I loves me some Dreamcast.) How would you manage to resell games for an out-of-date system if they're all stored on the console itself?
Besides, having a physical medium lets me hurl something across the room when I realize what utter crap the game I just bought is.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
Plus, buying a physical thing also allows you to have an actual manual, which is a must. You can have your .pdf and word files for figuring out the game. Give me a nice beefy book anyday. Yes, I know, most books that come with games are usually found inside the jewel case and contain a half-page of useful data, but I can dream, can't I?
"By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth." - George Carlin
Let's look at the advantages of ditching the box.
One, the distribution costs fall through the floor. Less money required to distribute the game means more money to develop it -- or it could give games which might not be blockbusters a chance to appeal to their niche market without having to produce a limited-yet-expensive run of boxed games just for those people who want the game. Online distribution is cheap and the savings are passed on to you in one form or another.
Two, it eliminates the middleman -- the one step that prevents independent game developers from making mad money is that they can't afford to get a box onto the shelves. If you sell content online then you control every aspect from front to back of your game's distribution. Cheaper, more flexible, more suitable for a smaller company. Even if the company contracts out to an 'online distributor', it's still good for independent game developers since you could easily take your hobby and go professional with it via services offered by an online distribution center.
Now, the disadvantages.
One, ensuring that you can re-install the game or transfer it to a new machine. This is solvable by having a key system that makes sense -- allowing you to re-download games, allowing you to burn games to a CD, allowing you to jot down an easily accessible game key for later use. It's a minor, minor hurdle and one that can be surmounted if you're willing to loosen (useless) piracy controls. People who want a physical CD can make one themselves and do it for less money.
Two, you can't include Infocom-esque extras. Except nobody does this anymore. Your average PC game comes with a paper-sleeved CD, a manual (which is duplicated in PDF format on the CD anyway) and a bunch of pack-in glossy paper promotional flyers. When I get home from the store the first thing I do is throw everything but the disc itself and the manual away. I only keep the manual if there's a key printed in it and there's no electronic copy provided, and even then they tend to pile up on my desk in a useless, rarely accessed stack of booklets.
Three, advertising your product can be tricky since people aren't used to seeking things out online yet, and there's no universally known system for doing so. Steam's trying to become that system and failing horribly. This is an area that needs to be focused on, getting people aware of how online content sales works, making it easier for them to work it, and making sure they know your product is available.
Four, people who go "Nyaaah! I'll never buy virtual content! It's evil! Away from me, foul beast!" will not buy your game. There's not much you can do about this, until public attitudes change... no thanks to Steam and Real screwing things up and souring people on what would otherwise be a workable concept.
Imagine a future where you can publish your own games, you own music, your own writing, anything you want -- online for less money than ye traditionale retaile systems, without needing massive industry connections and layer upon layer of production systems. Once the technical details and business models are tested and smoothed out, it can be a reality.
Overall, I would say that there are just as many people out there who want the "instant gratification" of buying it and downloading it immediately, instead of waiting for the boxed version to arrive. We do offer the original manual in a pdf format, but not the CD sleve (which we could, but there really haven't been many requests for it.) We also suggest that people download the ISO version, which has both the linux and windows installer, and burn it to CD, so they will always have it handy (although the download servers will be up for as long as the game survives).
Just my two cents.
Rob
iGames.com
Like an earlier article mentioned, in the early days getting a game box was like getting Cracker Jack prizes. You never knew what was going to be inside. Now it's mostly air and some shrinkwrap. For a smaller title or extra titles, I'm willing to download it. For a triple A title I expect a box, a CD and a manual. I'm willing to pay a premium for those items. Give me something tangible. Is it too hard to ask?
The simple reason for me is that going to my local store is infinitely more reliable, quicker and easier than actually attempting to purchase and download an online game.
There would have to be a significant cost savings for me to justify buying a game online. During the time it would take me to download the normal 1 to 2 CD game, I could go get lunch, run some errands and drop by my game store on the way home and still have it before it was finished downloading.
Not only that, but as other people here have said, you lose your hard drive, you just lost the game, unless online purchases were packaged in a way for easy CD backup. But I doubt that... too easy for pirating in their simple minds, I would think.
Reality for PC Games- publishers have the potential to make more money, and are able to release a more diverse range of games that would otherwise be unprofitable...like EV: Nova. Bigger titles like GalCiv will probably end up selling both ways, but some games will never get published except by direct sales.
I don't think anyone's really complaining about that facet of the matter. I, personally, really enjoy downloadable games now and then, especially for smaller games that I normally wouldn't buy outside of some outrageously large collection with maybe 1 or 2 games I actually want to play. I also like the fact that small developer groups can put out a game online with very little hassle, and possibly bring forward something that otherwise wouldn't have been published.
On the other hand, I'm not going to spend $40-50 on a download-only game. I'd rather have the disc for backup, and I'd rather have the manual and maybe some extras packaged in with it. I'm just as irritated with the increasing practice of reducing what's in the box (smaller to non-existant manuals or manuals on the CD, no extra material, sometimes no jewel cases) as I am with the idea some people (Valve, the makers of the Phantom console, occasionally Microsoft, etc) keep spouting about a future where we don't buy physical media for software and games.
The only major (>$30) purchase of software I've ever made online without having a box sent to me worked out fine, but it eventually came down to having to burn a CD and write the key on the CD itself in order to have a reasonable backup, and eventually the file on the hard drive did become inaccessable due to hardware failure (and an odd combination of hardware that lead to OS corruption when trying to bring my computer back to life).
I won't even buy music online until I can get whatever I want at the same quality as (or better than) the media I would get at the store, and can easily burn that music to CD and convert it to formats of my choosing for other uses. If any of the labels I normally buy music from decides to try to copy protect something I buy in order to prevent me from shifting the media to a format and quality level I choose, I will do my best to get around that protection and strongly reconsider purchasing anything further from them. I wouldn't be surprised if the RIAA wanted me to buy my CDs on cassette to play in my car.
Anyway, this comment sortof went in the wrong direction, but in the end the point is still that for downloads to work the installer needs to be easily shifted to physical media, and even then there's often not much reason, for me, to go that route instead of just buying the physical media.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
One, the distribution costs fall through the floor. Less money required to distribute the game means more money to develop it -- or it could give games which might not be blockbusters a chance to appeal to their niche market without having to produce a limited-yet-expensive run of boxed games just for those people who want the game. Online distribution is cheap and the savings are passed on to you in one form or another.
With the way most of the developers and publishers have gone to 3rd parties to distribute patches and demos, why does anyone still think it's cheap to distribute online? It's cheaper than distributing boxes, but it's not cheap. Some developers currently cut about $5 off the cost for a download-only version, and many of them will allow you to download now and have the box sent for that extra $5. It stacks up, but if the cost savings are really significant they'll find other ways to spend the money than passing it on to consumers. On the good side, they don't eat as much in publishing costs on titles that don't sell as well as expected, because you can always find a way to use the extra bandwidth. You also have to factor in increased tech support costs for your distribution method, because people will have problems downloading your software and, depending on the methods, other problems they wouldn't normally face with a CD-based installation.
Two, it eliminates the middleman -- the one step that prevents independent game developers from making mad money is that they can't afford to get a box onto the shelves. If you sell content online then you control every aspect from front to back of your game's distribution. Cheaper, more flexible, more suitable for a smaller company. Even if the company contracts out to an 'online distributor', it's still good for independent game developers since you could easily take your hobby and go professional with it via services offered by an online distribution center.
This one I actually agree with, but only in the case of small developers. With the bigger developers you're usually dealing with larger downloads and an increased likelihood to be pushed into whatever publishing method your publisher chooses, unless you're a company like Valve that is mostly self-funded.
Now, the disadvantages.
One, ensuring that you can re-install the game or transfer it to a new machine. This is solvable by having a key system that makes sense -- allowing you to re-download games, allowing you to burn games to a CD, allowing you to jot down an easily accessible game key for later use. It's a minor, minor hurdle and one that can be surmounted if you're willing to loosen (useless) piracy controls. People who want a physical CD can make one themselves and do it for less money.
Actually, you don't have to be willing to loosen piracy controls, your consumers just have to be willing to give up a little more privacy. You can lock the key to a specific user based on their ordering information (name, address, credit card number), so they can request a new download at any time, but they can't play without an internet connection because their key will be checked every time they try to play. Or you go the Steam route and download-as-you-play, meaning you never have all of the content to begin with. Of course, I'm not saying this is the ideal method, simply saying it's among the methods currently in use, and is most appealing to the publishers and (some) developers.
Two, you can't include Infocom-esque extras. Except nobody does this anymore. Your average PC game comes with a paper-sleeved CD, a manual (which is duplicated in PDF format on the CD anyway) and a bunch of pack-in glossy paper promotional flyers. When I get home from the store the first thing I do is throw everything but the disc itself and the manual away. I only keep the manual if there's a key printed in it and there's no electronic copy provided, and even then they tend to pile up on my desk in a useless, rarely accessed stack of booklets.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
First person shooter discs go towards the front and adventure/RPG/RTS/etc go towards the rear.
Dividing the two sections are two pages that I have all of the pieces of paper, fragments of jewel cases, and cardboard with the CD keys on them.
Dismantling a jewel case to get at the piece of paper, or artfully breaking a piece of the case off because they glued the CD key to it and stuffing it into a pocket on my CD wallet is a simple chore that I do while I'm installing the game.
The end result is I have at least 5 shelves worth of games in the space of a 3-ring binder, relatively well organized, with my CD-keys easily accessable in case I need to reinstall.
That's my solution, anyways.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
Download should always be an option. Its just plain economical. But hard copies should always be available for either die hard boxers (you know who you are) or gifts or whatever. The boxed copy should reflect a moderate increase in cost plus shipping.
Seems a no-brainer and a win-win. I want the game that I just fell in love with while playing the demo NOW.
As a side note, no screw authentication schemes on my download or I FUCKING kill you. If I can't whip my system and reinstall it from backup media you've ripped me off. Period.
Quack, quack.
If you move from a large house to a small apartment, you'll find out the answer very quickly--you don't need a box. To conserve space, I even threw out all my CD-ROM jewel cases, only keeping the CDs and the CD keys. Once you install a game, you never look at the box again, so why keep them?