The rise of the internet and connectivity over the past decade has fundamentally changed the way consumers absorb and acquire video games.
The 1980s were a time of eight- and 16-bit side scrollers, arcades and video game cartridges. The video games of yesterday were a complete, if messy, package with rampant glitches, secret paths and hours of blistering difficulty.
Unconnected to the Wi-Fi cloud, they remained the same experience as they did 30 years before. The developers’ work was as finite as the print upon this page. I could fire up “Sonic the Hedgehog” in the aging, dusty Sega Genesis, and it would be the same experience as when my parents first bought it.
My children will have a different experience if they try to play one of the games of today in the distant future. Video games are no longer sold as singular packages. The video game industry is increasingly moving toward a subscription and episodic format, where you buy your games in increments.
Developers worry less about the finished product in such a climate because there is no finished product. Video games receive updates like computer software adding features, removing others and balancing out issues. It isn’t uncommon for a video game to need a day-one update as soon as it’s taken out of the box.
First-person shooter series like “Call of Duty” and “Battlefield” have popularized the notion of spending extra money for increased playability through additional levels, weapons and modes. Some video game series, including the aforementioned series, have promoted themselves as annual installments, to be upgraded like smartphones.
Not that this change in the industry is necessarily bad. Telltale’s “The Walking Dead” video game, which received rave reviews last year, utilized episodic format to tell the story of the zombie apocalypse in shorter bursts.
Other developers such as Rockstar and Irrational Games have used such connectivity to offer an episodic format that twists and bends the conventions of the main game, as in the case of Rockstar adding zombies to the Old West in “Red Dead Redemption,” or add meaning to the original game, as in the case of Irrational’s upcoming DLC for “Bioshock Infinite.”
Connectivity of the modern era is a double-edged sword in that it can be used to push the industry and innovate with fresh ideas, or, as is the case with micro-transaction games, it can be seen as a cash grab with little effort going into the product being sold.
As the video game industry pushes toward a digital format, such issues will continue to crop up as publishers and consumers clash over conflicting points. While innovation and change is crucial to society, it also safeguards that this generation of people won’t have a box of dusty old games to share with their children.
