APPRECIATING PHYSICAL MEDIA

Digital media is becoming evermore ubiquitous. Will Stead explores digital games as the future, passionately defending his “preservationist” tendencies of collecting physical versions.

On my 13th birthday, my parents got me the collector’s edition of Assassin’s Creed 3. It came with a whole range of fantastic gizmos and clutter. I loved it. I then played the game, and it was a honking, buggy mess. I share no love for the game. However, I have held dear the trinkets that came with the present. It’s difficult to explain my love for physical media - I have all my old Nintendo and PlayStation games still in their original boxes standing next to their respective consoles on a shelf. My friend Ross calls me a hoarder, but I see myself more as a preservationist. And now in 2023 I, along with many other ‘preservationists’, have become vindicated in the abysmal landscape of digital ownership. It has been reported that 94.2% of video games are bought digitally, and while that may be a blessing for our bruised and battered planet, it has never been clearer that consumer rights are at risk. It has been seen within the streaming industry; Netflix is removing even their own original content and licensing lawsuits leave media in limbo. It may be the paranoid hoarder (sorry, preservationist) within me that fears one day the gaming industry may follow suit.

For those who share this fear, physical media comes to the rescue. While backwards compatibility exists on both Microsoft and Sony’s flagship consoles, if those titles are owned digitally there is nothing, technically, stopping both companies from removing the games from your account. This, to me, is where the superiority of physical media lies. Only the most avid of cat burglars can stop me playing Fallout: New Vegas. Sorry Billy Gates but the game ismine, sod off. One only needs to look back to 2013 and the release of Activision’s Deadpool game. 6 months after it hit the shelves, Activision lost the licensing for Marvel characters resulting in the game being pulled from all digital stores. A couple of years later this was rectified, and the game is easily attainable today - but it does go to show the fragility of digital media.

But enough of all this “the end is nigh” talk. What does this actually mean for the future of consoles and gaming alike? The case for digital-only consoles being the future is strong, and is definitely apparent based on the raw statistics mentioned previously, but I don’t think it accounts for the crossover between the gaming industry and the streaming industry. As the streaming industry becomes more and more diluted by competing businesses, and streaming services start losing their licences, more and more people will return to buying blu-rays. I say this as if it’s speculative. It’s not. It’s already happening. 4K blu-rays had their best-selling year in 2022, something I believe is directly attributed to the capabilities of the disc drives found in the Series X and PS5. People may be turning to all digital libraries for their gaming, but modern consoles are serving as entertainment systems used by the entire family.

Mind you, Steam on PC has thrived for years, and doesn’t seem to be stopping - maybe I’m wrong. You’d struggle today to find a PC with a disc drive, so this could just be the way that consoles will go: all digital. But I hold out hope. Game discs stand as not just a form of media, but as a collectible, and what are gamers if not big nerds who love collecting pointless stuff in digital worlds?

Will Stead