Buying Games Ain't What It Used to Be

This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.

I'd like to kick off this piece by admitting I'm a hypocrite. I love buying games digitally. I love acquiring hot titles at the stroke of midnight without having to leave my couch, put on pants, and stand in line. I love buying games on a whim at the start of a workday, leaving them to download over the course of the day, then picking them up as soon as work's done.

But every time I tap that little gift box icon Nintendo hands off to you as soon as a 3DS game download is done (and it's more than what most game systems do to feed the illusion you're buying a tangible product), I feel my heart flicker and go dark for an instant. Games are still fun. Buying games, not so much.

Sure, you feel a small pang of satisfaction when you pick up a title at GameStop, or even when you unzip the cardboard on an Amazon delivery. But purchasing a game is no longer the solemn, ritual-filled undertaking it once was.

I weep not for myself, for I am old. It is the children I think of, the children who build their game library by watching a streamer play a title (a pastime that comes with its own set of problems), then prodding their parents until a credit card number is relinquished for a purchase on PSN, Xbox Live, Nintendo eShop, or Steam. There is no joy in the hunt. Just the immediate, empty thrill of acquisition.

O children. O my children. How long before you forget the chase entirely? Forget the curse-filled search for a parking space? Forget the long trek from the back of the parkade to the game store? Forget the triumphant grab for the last copy of Super Mario Whatever? Forget the celebratory meal at McDonalds or the Food Court afterwards, where you feast upon bad food and daydream plugging your game into your system? Your generation has everything, and yet it has nothing.

OK, that's enough of that.

I suppose the gradual change of game distribution is a topic that interests me because I've purchased games for seven generations of systems. I accompanied my parents as they bought our Atari 2600 games at a catalogue store. What merriment. You browsed a catalogue, you filled out your request on a form, you brought the form up to the clerk, your purchase was rolled out on a conveyer belt, and voila, you had a copy of the Atari 2600's surprisingly good adaptation of Commando.

Catalogue stores lost ground to big-box retail, but buying video games was still an event through the '80s and into the '90s. Toys R Us was my game merchant of choice for most of the NES era: It's where I picked up Castlevania III, Zelda II, and, eventually, my SNES. Back then, Toys R Us shamelessly dressed itself in shades of brown and orange. Harsh florescent light rained down from high ceilings, and tall shelves were piled with wares.

The establishment even had a faint warehouse smell that disappeared as Toys R Us gradually re-invented itself for the new millennium. Something else that disappeared: Having to take tags up to a person in a glass booth to buy your video games.

See, instead of plucking a game straight off a shelf or waiting for someone to open a glass case, you browsed a long line of game "boxes" (actually laminated pictures of said boxes), made your choice, and took a numbered tag out of a plastic pouch placed under the box. You brought the tag up to a clerk in a little glass booth peppered with courtesy air holes, and they gave you your game.

Looking back, grabbing a tag for a game and then bringing it to a boxed-up person who transformed that slip into an actual Nintendo game was a weirdly military exchange – kind of like buying items from a prison commissary. Nevertheless, I have fond memories of the process. If kids today have to deal with Cold War-style paranoia of nuclear war, I think it's fair to bring back the tiny but satisfying journey that was part of the video game-buying process in the late '80s–

What? "Toys R Us in massive debt? Possible bankruptcy?"

Oh.

I guess it doesn't do much good to complain about the deteriorating fun-ness of buying video games. For me, the act became a little less special when game chain stores became commonplace. I've been riding this slide for a long time. And any game is going to feel a lot more magical when it's a rare present from a loving relative instead of something that got scooped into your cart during a Humble Bundle sale. I still think kids are missing out, but they'll manage. They always do.

As for myself, I'll just scratch my itch for the physical game-buying experience by attending system launches. I buy my systems at stores, since online retail isn't always timely with its deliveries of high-demand electronics up here. Yeah, waiting hours for the Switch sucked a little, but in hindsight, it was kind of fun–

Eesh, I hate myself sometimes.

Ys VIII -Lacrimosa of DANA- [BGM RIP] - Sunshine Coastline

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Nadia's Note Block Beat Box: Nameless Coast from Ys VIII

I'll be sharing my impressions of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana this week, but I'll say this much: It's what you'd expect from an Ys game. That's good, because it means you can expect good graphics, a fun story, tons of monster-killing, and a soundtrack that doesn't know when to quit.

I'm still a bit of an Ys newbie, but I've seen more than a few of the fandom's old fish declare "Nameless Coast" ("Sunshine Coastline" in Japanese) from Ys VIII is one of the series' very best songs. I offer up no argument. I mean, listen to it. It's not a hard sell.

I assure you it's even better when you listen to it with context. The series' hero, Adol, washes up on a mysterious island (like he does) that appears to be devoid of human life. What kind of music is appropriate for such a scenario? Something lonely? Something tropical, but still sweetly melancholy? Nah, boy. Not Ys VIII. Break out that electric guitar. Bash those drums. Turn the volume up to 11. Adol found a sword on a dead body, so we're good to go.

Mike's Media Minute

Whew, lad. Stephen King is having a weird couple of months at the movies. While an adaptation of The Dark Tower bombed out at the movies with $101 million on a budget of $60 million, it seems It is moving in a different direction. The adaptation of King's coming-of-age horror novel made $123 million in the United States alone on its first weekend.

Sure, It didn't have much against it, but those are damn good numbers. In fact, they're record-breaking number, with It being the strongest opening weekend for an R-rated horror film ever. (The last holder of the record was Paranormal Activity 3 at $52.5 million.) A couple million more and it would've beat the all-time R-rated record holder, Deadpool, which sits at $132.4 million. All told, It made $189 million worldwide, far ahead of its production budget of $35 million.

In other really odd news, no one's talking about Spider-Man: Homecoming, but it still continues to perform. Ten weekends in, Homecoming is still in the Top 10, netting a total of $327 million domestically. That makes it the #4 film domestically for 2017 so far, thought Star Wars: The Last Jedi will likely push that down a spot.

Further, Spider-Man: Homecoming finally launched in China, pushing the film up to $823 million worldwide. It's unlikely that the run will continue that strongly, but if it does, Homecoming could end up ahead of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. It's already ahead of Wonder Woman, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and Logan. Homecoming is also firmly the second highest grossing Spider-Man film, behind Spider-Man 3 with $890 million.

Caty’s AltGame Corner

I wasn't kidding when I said FMV games are making a comeback. Morph Girl, an indie FMV game from developer Jordan Doyle, is the latest in the trend. Morph Girl is an eerie horror game inspired by lo-fi Japanese horror movies of the 1990s and 2000s. It's not your typical, pristinely shot FMV game, instead it's constantly distorted; scanlines bleed across the screen always.

The game itself follows a grieving widow as she wrestles with a supernatural being who has embedded itself into her life. Depending on the player's actions, they must decide to either accept the haunting creature, or reject them. Morph Girl is available on itch.io and Steam for $3.99, playable on PC.

Matt’s Monday Mornings

Nothing but Destiny 2 on the mind this weekend. Bungie's space opera sequel blasted plast a million concurrent users and I'm one of them. Unfortunately as I've said previously, it's a bit harder for me to run through the campaign because this is essentially my second time playing through the game.

I'm still formulating my final thoughts, and of course I'm nowhere near end game, but my thoughts so far echo plenty of others. Destiny 2 is good, better than Destiny 1, but it also feels more targeted. There's a part of the design that feels market tested to get the most out of players' time based on research from the first Destiny. Like the consumable Shaders for example. It's a crappy way of extracting player's time and money.

I'm not sure how I feel about this and whether this is something we should expect from massive studios with data harvesting resources but maybe that's just how gaming will adapt in the century of big data.

This Week's News and Notes

• Ready to raid in Destiny 2 this week? Whoa there, parder – make sure you're strong enough.
• Our Mike thinks Campo Santo shouldn't use DMCA takedowns to retaliate against PewDiePie using a racial slur. Hot take. You may agree. You may disagree. Here's another hot take: I'm not in the business of telling people what to let their kids watch, but maybe don't let your kids watch PewDiePie.
• Nintendo is hosting a Nintendo Direct on Wednesday, right at the end of my workday. It's because Nintendo hates me. I have a piece of paper confirming it and everything.
• Fear not: There will be SNES Classic Editions for all! And Reggie Fils-Aime will also buy each and every one of us a fat Christmas goose!
• Did you listen to Axe of the Blood God last week? Kat and I talked about Final Fantasy VII, and then she and Obsidian's Josh Sawyer did some talking about Fallout: New Vegas. Please introduce your friends to our show, then introduce your cats and dogs.