If you told me a few months ago that I would start donating my DVDs to the library by the hundreds, I would have laughed at you.
But, well, that's what's been happening with me lately. I've been having a purge of sorts, a decluttering if you will. It pained me to get rid of my DVDs, movies that I've accumulated since 1998 when I got my first DVD player, but the logical part of my brain finally took over and said, "Look, you never watch them anymore. All they do is take up dust! Get rid of them!"
So how did this happen? Well, thank LEGO. Of the many things I collect and store and display in my room, LEGO sets are one of them, and I like the big ones. I got lots of architecture sets, the Roller Coaster, Stranger Things, etc. And then, I ended up getting the MASSIVE 9000+ piece Titantic. Once I got it put together, I had a hell of a time finding a place for it. I ended up shuffling a lot of things, but one thing that had to happen was getting rid of my books. I needed that shelf space, and suddenly, I found myself throwing my books in a box and taking them to my library without a second thought. These were books I LOVED, but I only read them once and like the DVDs, only collected dusty. Suddenly, it didn't feel so important to continue to own them anymore. If I could discard my books so easily at a whim, I wondered if I could do that with my DVDs, so that's what ended up happening.
Now, I'm not getting rid of ALL my DVDs. There are classics that I watched all the time as a kid, ones that have my favorite actors, and some that I know I'll get around to watching again when I'm snowed in, but when I went through my collection, it kinda scared me how quickly I was picking out ones to donate. It made me think, "Look at how much money I've spent on theses movies over the years! Why did I feel I had to own everything?" And then, I started to look at my gaming collection.
Before you get your panties in a twist, don't worry. I'm not looking to get rid of any of my games... anytime soon, that is. My game collection has a more personal connection to me than books or DVDs, or even my CDs, which I'm thinking about next. They also are probably worth a lot more, and a few of them continue to increase in value, like Panzer Dragoon Saga. But getting rid of some of my games isn't completely unfathomable as I've done a few massive trade-ins before. Whenever I grabbed a bunch of games and headed down to the local game store to trade in for a new system or new games, I always ended up feeling regret. I know I'll feel it again, but hey... I got over it. If I'm looking at my shelves wanting some of that space back... I'll probably go through another purge. I really don't want to, though.
So I started thinking of what ownership really means in terms of the video game industry and it has changed a lot, and is still changing. PC gamers lost their right to physical ownership years and years ago. Everything is through some launcher now, Steam, Origin, Epic, GOG, etc. Since the days of Xbox Live Arcade and probably the Nintendo DSi and maybe even earlier, we started seeing smaller indie games release strictly on a digital basis. When we buy these digital games, we don't really own the copies themselves. We own the licenses to access the game itself, which the publishers can and have revoked at their leisure. Harddrives can crash. Servers can be taken offline. Games can be delisted. Unlike physical games, digital games can simply disappear forever. At least you can track down a physical game on eBay or something.
So I still heavily appreciate the fact that physical copies exist, and will most likely still buy them when I can, but I'm starting to look at maybe not waiting 8 to 10 months for Limited Run to finally get their shit together and send me my damn orders. I may be fine just buying them off digital store fronts to at least get them cheaper, and then that would be less cases I'd need to make shelf space for. I don't know, though. With Limited Run, it's a different case, because their business model by nature is to press limited numbers of copies to create values for collectible games. That's why I bought a copy of Scott Pilgrim vs the World on Switch and kept it sealed. That game's history is a prefect example of why physical games NEED to continue to exist.
But what happens when you buy a physical copy that needs the internet? Just ask any Switch owner and they'll most likely tell you they bought a game where the entire game wasn't on the card, and the rest of it needed to be downloaded. Five, ten years down the line, the publisher may not want to keep the servers up, and you've got a worthless game on your hands now. There are even "physical" copies of Switch games that have no card in the case; the entire game needs to be downloaded. That's even worse! Does that still feel like ownership to you? We're buying plastic cases with no games in them just to throw it up on our shelves? This even happens with collector's editions of games where you get all these physical goodies, but just a download code. I have the collector's edition of Sonic Mania with the statue of Sonic on the Genesis, and it's just weird to me that I have no physical copy of the game! I don't actually own the game itself! But I bought it anyway, so...
Game ownership just doesn't seem as fulfilling as it used to anymore. Rarely do any games release that are complete these days. Every Xbox One game needs a Smart Delivery patch to bring it up the Xbox Series X|S version, so technically the Xbox Series X|S and have no physical copies at all. Every game needs some kind of patch in general. Switch is so underpowered that for some reason SE won't even let the first two Kingdom Heart games run natively and opted for Cloud Versions. And that's another thing... the Switch is a portable hybrid console. Buying a Cloud version defeats the purpose of playing on the go. Playing it docked, you're better off playing it natively on a better console. You spend money on these streaming games that could some day be delisted or the entire server be shut off. You're essentially paying full price for a rental service.
While we're on the topic of Nintendo, you can see the concept of ownership evaporating before your very eyes with NSO. You are paying monthly or yearly to have access to just a smattering of legacy content, and you lose that access the moment your subscription expires. This was the trade off for the beloved Virtual Console from the Wii/Wii U era. Yeah, they weren't physical, but you could at least play games YOU PURCHASED without having to have an internet connection check every week. Then there's the recently announced Booster Pack for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. You're paying 25 dollars to wait TWO YEARS to receive all 48 tracks, and Nintendo has specifically gone this route to keep people subbed for those two years. Seems more and more like Nintendo is the one who is owning you.
Add-on DLC is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it extends the life of a game, and usually is done as a stopgap for people waiting on the next game (unless it's GTA 5, then who cares about supporting the single player game). On the other, it makes it harder for some people to want to buy games at launch anymore knowing that there's a good chance that a Game of the Year or Collector's Edition will release a year later with the included DLC. For the early adopters, it's weird knowing that you own a physical copy, but not the actual DLC portion of the game. All these DLCs, season passes, microtransactions... and don't even get me started on NFTs... it just complicates matters.
But well, I'm trying to understand why some people just don't care as much about ownership as I do, and it just easily comes down to the fact that they really don't have to care. Some people don't like keeping track of things, and will easily pawn it off or donate the games to someone when they're done. Some people just want to play a game once and never return to it again because they're always moving on to the next game. That's kinda what I'm doing now. Whether it's a DVD or game, I'm always watching or playing something new. I doubt any game that I own I'll go back to playing again, because my focus is trying to eliminate my backlog. If I start to allow myself to stop caring about ownership, I could actually end up saving myself a lot of money.
I used to be a hardcore proponent for ownership, but I know now that I'm fighting an uphill battle, and I won't fight anyone on it anymore. The adoption of digital games on current consoles is only continuing to grow, and Game Pass is showing no signs of slowing down any time soon. It was also weird that I didn't like the idea of paying a subscription fee to play games, but I had no problem watching movies and TV shows on Netflix. Obviously, ownership didn't mean anything to me when I was watching Netflix, so why would I think ownership would mean anything to me on Game Pass. Now that I think about it, I played and enjoyed a few free games on PSN: Falls Guys, Bugsnax and Days Gone. I didn't feel the need to own them when I was playing them, so if I really wanted to go the sub route, I probably could.
There WILL come the time when consoles finally dispense with physical copies and everything is digital through their stores. Both Sony and MS tried it, but there's still some amount of pushback, and I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo tries an all digital version of the Switch 2 to test the waters. It's better that I start changing my mentality now so that it will be easier to deal with when the shift happens several years down the line. So yeah, ownership is losing its importance. Don't kid yourself thinking it isn't, because if it really was that important, it would be important to everyone.
