Posts
I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer
back from that. To that end
I have found a 30-day blog challenge and will be writing out entries, hopefully
I can get all thirty days without any breaks, and if I manage to do that (since
August has 31 days) I will think of an additional entry to write about. I have done a 30-day
challenge before, it for movies, but that was a
while back, feel free to read those too if you like.
Today is
day 4 and the topic is “My Gaming System of Choice”.
I currently
have a Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360 hooked into my TV; I also use
my phone for quick little things like Bejeweled; and I have a Nintendo DS which
I have had since 2007. All of these
things together make up about 5% of my gaming activities. I am very much a PC oriented game player at
this point in my life because of one particular goliath of gaming.
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| Bwaaaah! |
Behold, oh
glorious garbage peddling monster. Soul
sucking abomination of the online world.
Shiller of shit I do not need and may never touch again. Breath deep and feel your lungs burned by the
Steam.
The number
of games old and new is ocean deep on this service. It has allowed me to play dozens of games for
dollars that in previous generations of renting shit at Blockbuster would have
cost bricks of gold. Which is fine by
me. I spend less on games every year and
yet I still have access to everything I want to play (that my computer can
handle, it was top of the line 7 years ago, not so much now). I have 7 games waiting for me to play them
and dozens more that I got in value packs waiting to be downloaded.
Really at
this point I am more starting to just hate the concept of how consoles
function. Individual units with variable
power and certain walled off fiefdoms of games that they won’t let the others
play with. Forcing consumers to buy more
of these units to gain access to each of the fiefdoms. WHY IS THIS ALLOWED?
When movie studios began to buy uptheater chains they were hit with antitrust legislation but game companies
continue to horde these things. Imagine
a world in which a particular movie wouldn’t play on certain brands of movie
player, only on the players of the company who owned the movie as an IP. Imagine if TV operated that way, only
Universal brand TV’s can play NBC and related networks. People would be pissed (and so would advertising
firms) as no one would want to have three screens in their living rooms to
watch the three big networks, to say nothing of all the independent content
that would have never been produced because of the prohibitive barriers to
entering the market.
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| And esoteric shit like this needs no more prohibitions to entry. It is hard enough as is. |
In eras past they wouldn’t bother
producing a video game unless you can guarantee 2 million units sold, otherwise
it wouldn’t be worth the shelf space it takes up (this is also true of the
music industry and CD’s, independent artists in the music world floundered for
so long, and why they are booming now because of PC music, allowing people to
sell the music they want without having to put disks on shelves). Steam removes that. Sure there is a tidal wave of sewage, but
there is also a lot of good content that would have NEVER existed with this
means to distribute it. Could you
imagine selling “Papers Please”, “Invisible Inc”, “This War of Mine”, or even
something with some horror elements that are unmarketable like “Sunless Sea” or
“Darkest Dungeon”? No, because no one
would think they would sell.
Steam, and the PC culture in
general has created what is called in marketing “The long tail effect”, that
the more esoteric something becomes the thinner the audience for it becomes, so
sales drop off to a flat line, or a “Long Tail”. Things in the long tail would not be catered
to because the distribution of hard media is too expensive for something that
won’t sell, look back at something like “Psychonauts” and how that game’s
strangeness left it sitting on shelves, but now it is considered a classic
because it was able to find its part of the long tail, sell to those who wanted
it, and then sell to others who grew curious of it, a curiosity spurred by the
ease of access and low price.
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| This blog will better explain the concept. |
What is more, Steam and services
like it are competing with both each other and piracy, consoles don’t have that
difficulty, the cost of buying a console means you are invested, and they have
complete control over their market place, no Steam sales for you, this is how
much XBLA wants to charge for this game, if you want it that is how much you
will have to pay.
I like PC’s because they are so pro
consumer, because they are so full of Choice.
(Hey, look at that, I tied this back to my talk about my favorite game
genre. Aren’t I cute?)
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