Goodbye, Norma-Jean...

We find ourselves smack-dab in the throws of the golden digital age, and I have to wonder when the inevitable will happen: When will boxed games outlive their purpose?

I remember fondly all the old computer games I picked up with goodies stuffed in them: King’s Quest VI with an entire book inside to read, Warcraft 3 with an instruction book containing lore and a stationary pad (I kid you not), Space Quest VI with its crafty copy protection cleverly hidden inside a Space Tabloid insert and the goofily-dimensioned Final Fantasy VII with its sleek disc-holder and thick manual.  Back in the day, that was half the fun of buying a game for me; finding all the goodies stuffed inside the box; it helped me justify the purchase price because you were getting a game AND an art presentation simultaneously.  Online distribution was limited to BBS and archaic draconian services (Lose your download?  Tough break.  Buy it again, please).

Flash forward to today, where high speed internet access is readily available (though not necessarily immediately affordable) to pretty much anyone who wants it, location permitting.  At the speed of a DSL line, we can be served up previews, demos and even stream full games without so much as leaving your seat.  Heck, some games don’t even give you the option: it’s online, or nothing.  Going further, some games won’t even let you play the game offline, regardless of buying it boxed in a store or digitally.

Online play has afforded people a bevy of advantages versus their boxed brethren.  CDs and DVDs may scuff and age with time and use, but that copy of Team Fortress 2 you bought on Steam lasts virtually forever, and you can grab it at your convenience whenever you need it.  Online game libraries can be easily compared with your game-mates and you can gift downloads to friends... as long as your chosen distribution method lasts, at least.

At the same time, however, you lose something vital in the transformation from physical to digital: Personal control.  Buying boxed games was technically still an end-user license purchase: you were buying the right to play the game, but at the same time, there was little control over what publishers could allow or disallow you do with it, as it was a physical medium which left their control the moment it shipped out of the factory.  If you wanted to let Timmy borrow Dungeon Keeper, Bullfrog couldn’t stop you.   Steam can.

When you buy a game digitally, be it on Steam, the Wii Store, Xbox Live Arcade or the PlayStation Network, you are, quite exclusively, purchasing a license to play the game.  You’re licensed to download it and play it, and only you are allowed to use that license.  You might be able to transfer the license to  a third party in a physical sense (like selling your Wii system with all the Wii-ware intact), but doing so is not legally permitted, and if it’s discovered, they are within rights to sever the license from the new “owner” in a final sense, and that’s all she wrote.  Bye-bye, Tetris Splash.  That’s part of the End-User License Agreement you said “Alright” to when you digitally “purchased” the game.

In a sense, the console market keeps the spirit of physical ownership alive: You can do whatever you want with your Halo: Reach game, much to the dismay of Microsoft.  Sell it, trade it, give it away, loan it… that’s your prerogative.  While they can restrict online play in some cases with third-party transfers, by and large when you shell out money for a PS3 game, you’re free to do as you will.

One has to wonder how much further widespread internet access has to become before publishers can take third-party transfers out of the equation and rake in pure profits through digital distribution.  You can’t trade in your Steam copy of Darksiders into Gamestop, and similarly no one can walk into Gamestop and buy your copy of Darksiders, so if they want to have the honors of playing that game, they have to buy it the same way you did.  Publishers get to save on packaging costs as digital distribution is less costly, AND they simultaneously have a higher chance of someone actually buying the game at their own asking price.

Want a good picture of the problem with that right now?  Look no further than the PSP Go.  Here’s a theoretical conversation point.

Sony: Here’s the PSP Go, a sleek, digital-based PlayStation Portable machine, bringing you the thrill of instant game delivery directly to your fingertips!

Sony Customer: That’s great and all, but uh, what am I going to do with this library of UMDs I collected?

*Crickets*

Sony Customer: …Awesome.

Sales of the PSP Go haven’t been super-stellar, with the price of the PSP Go being an obvious problem: For the price of a PSP Go, you can buy… a PlayStation 3 for $50 more.  Couple that with the fact that the consumer saves zero costs downloading the game directly versus buying the UMD in stores right now and you have what Sony wouldn’t dare personally call a “tough sell”, especially if a potential PSP Go customer has to wave goodbye to his collection.  With the PSP 2 development kits currently in the hands of production studios, the question is up in the air as to whether they will continue driving down the Digital-Only road, or take a step back and continue supporting the UMD format they pioneered and attempted to discard.

It’s not all rose thorns and barb-wired fence, though; the online distribution’s actually done some great things for game makers.  Games such as Deathspank, Mega Man 9 and Shadow Complex which would have proved difficult to market physically have found a great home on their respective digital purchase channels.  Indie developers without any realistic means to market their products can put up a website, set up a P2P distribution and start making money without even having to leave their house.

If the PSP 2 ends up being a relative success with a digital-only distribution model, publishers will be one step closer to putting the used games market away as a distant, unhappy memory.  While all of this is undoubtedly inevitable, I can’t help but wish things had turned out differently in some aspects.  When the box dies, I will probably not be the only one showing up to the funeral.

It was a fun ride, cardboard.  You just cost too much.