Oh, so easy to say. Really, standard blame shuffling and philosophical clap-trap. Such fine eulogising to say nothing that encourages has-been games some additional pressure to be kept alive. Work-arounds and unlikely options as a substitute for positive action.
Perhaps?
Or?
Computer games are not media like we know it?
If I buy a book, I can own that book my entire life. The book will never change. If looked after well, the book may well last long after my lifetime. The written word can change over milleniums, via problems of translation (book-patches), but the original text is always available in its original form.
Likewise, film and television has the means by which it is easily transferred from one technology to the next. Small changes are noticed and identifiable (film/tv-patches), but the core product will never really change that much. It is quite feasible to ensure you can have access to your favourite film/tv throughout your entire life.
But for some reason we don't have any human desire to apply this concept to computer games. As if there is no form of 'community preservation' when it comes to computer games. Computer games are treated like penny dreadfuls that had no sales. They are treated like soap opera episodes.
Computer games have no sense of 'the original', continually altered and perma-patched beyond recognition until their time of natural death somewhere in the cycle of 5/10 year technological upgrades. Out with the old, in with the new. Like philistines marching through an ancient city of wonders, tearing down masterpieces to build military bunkers and grain barns.
If Steven King was told his books would become technologically unviable, he would find a way to make his products viable again - because he has pride in his canon. Steven Kings fan's would apply social pressure to make King's work available in their original form. Like-wise, Spielburg and Spielburg's fans would do the same for all his products.
But computer gaming does not have this core human sense of continued access? That suggesting such a desire for such an access is somehow… idiotic? Stupid? Unreasonable? Where content creators are not expected to 'care' for their own product and where fans are not 'expected' to continue their access desires?
I would say that this is a very unusual and 'unexpected' state to suggest humanity be 'meekly accepting' of…
I completely agree with these statements. I'm glad that I seem to finally have found a like-minded person in these forums.
"Total Cost Of Ownership" (TCO) is only regarded for business software. That's why Windows 7 has an XP "emulation" built in in the first place. It was never about gmes.
I have once met a similar mentality with an security software representative on the CeBit fair in Hannover, Germany.
The result from this discussion was that
- business data is considered worthy to be protected
- private data is not considered worthy to be protected.
We already live in a 2-class society : Everything business related is worthy to be protected - private life and everything belkonging to it is not.
Why is this so ? Because everything business represents so much more of an value - in money, mostly - than private ownership ever is able to.
That's why if a company gets out of business, OF COURSE the business Creditor gets paid FIRST - because, as an infamous German "Deutsche Bank" boss once put it : Craftsman's bills are only "peanuts" (see here for that :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilmar_Kopper#Controversy ).
This is - in my view - a direct result of Capitalism :
Capitalism ALWAYS favours wealth before anything else - and the more wealth a firm or an individual possesses, the more it pwns.
And that's why Lobby Groups are so effective : Because they argue that busines wealth has to be protected.
Private wealth is totally forgettable by their standards. Peanuts, so to say.
In fact, games are one "fire and forget" thing - even MMOs to some extend.
They are considered "bread and games" (after the ancient Roman motto).
Cynically put,
Games are meant to please the customer for a while, draw the money out from the purse, and then ... well, nothing is added to lengthen the TCO of games.
If a game was business software instead, any Lobby Group would get throufgh an emulating feature in the next Windows OS
within a few minutes.
The Economy View considers customers as nothing but "cash cows", as tools to generate profits. As soon as the product life span has reached its end, it is dropped, because it doesn't generate any revenue anymore.
And that's so great about GOG : They don't care about any end of an product life cycle.
Okay, I admit it, this is quite an left-wing view of these things, but it's just the way I thought it through.
