I think you are romanticizing a piece of plastic, and your only experience seems to stem from consoles and that has left you severely biased. I have been gaming since 1987 too, but the platforms I started on were the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum and Atari 800XL and the Amiga, and my games ran off audio cassettes, and later on they ran off floppy disks, and later still they ran off the hard drive and the medium was never a part of the game, and later systems were backwards compatible so the platform wasn't part of the game either, and I say you are looking at the past from your perspective only and making connections where there are none. The best games have been ported and emulated and are still being played today even though the hardware is no longer around. Games that have had equally as large an impact as (S)NES games, that are played today even though not a single original medium or original box they ran on remains.
The reason games you speak of stayed relevant is because they were good games to begin with, not because the original hardware still works, and most of the people nowadays who play the old games play them on emulators and other machines. Everyone has played Pac-man or Tetris, not because they're bought/borrowed/inherited the original arcade machine, and not because the original hardware is still available, because "it can be found", but because it has been ported everywhere, and because it's fun. Games are not limited to their original hardware or the medium where they were once stored, and if people play them 20 years later it is because of the game, not because they happen to have the tangle of tubes and wiring it used to run on, or the plastic they were distributed on. If a game is bad, the mere fact you can pass it on won't save it from oblivion.
Online-only games get custom and pirate servers while the game is still officially supported, and there are ways of running them long afterwards, until a point in time where it gets a port, re-release or what have you and become supported again one way or the other. If a game fizzles out once support is gone, it wasn't that good of a game in the first place. If a game is good it will be played long after its original era/generation/platform has kicked the bucket (and long after the "mass-produced, poorly made parts" - actually faster, more powerful and more efficient parts that inevitably come with the trade-off of being more sensitive; long after said parts rot away), and 30 years from now games that deserve to be played will still be played, just like old games are (or aren't) played today. True, consoles are harder to crack, have patchy and inconsistent backward compatibility, and it takes longer for them to become emulated well enough to run games, and this is why to someone who plays only consoles it may seem that the only way to be able to play a game is to still own functioning original hardware, readable original storage media and working original online support, but for a large number of games, and a large number of gamers this is not true and never was.
A game's quality and draw has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not someone bothered to stamp out a few disks for someone who wants to caress and/or resell it. How does the fact a game is or isn't "digital-only" affect the gameplay, the design, the story, graphics, interactions, genre, any single part of the game? You don't use the data storage in any way when you play the game, it is no part of the experience. A game's quality has nothing to do with how it got onto your screen.
You may believe games are dropping in quality in recent years, they aren't as good or as fun or as impactful as the games of yesteryear, but even if this weren't just a case of nostalgia goggles, there are other, way more relevant reasons for it than digital distribution.
I do game on my PC (since the late 90s; I was late to enter the computer age), albeit due to my tastes and the inherent issues of PC gaming, I don't do it quite as much. They suffer from even worse problems with regard to digital over physical.
You're right that the quality of a game dictates how long it lasts. But what about DLC? Games that are only ever distributed digitally will eventually become harder to find or be incomplete due to the monetization schemes that the industry is rife with these days. Older PC games are much like older console games in that emulation is indeed possible and can be better than the original experience. Worst case scenario for an old game like Diablo 1 or 2 is you need to find a second download for the expansions and install them. How does that work with DLC, especially with games that require a server to be contacted at all times? You're looking at cracks, patches, workarounds, etc. It's a hassle. (I'm a tech-savvy person so it's not that I'm inept, just lazy when I want to game) Part of it is a lack of physical media, but also the practices of the industry itself. I heard about MGSV on PC being little more than a Steam code in a text file. That is completely ridiculous. They spent the time and resources to press the disc but didn't include the actual game. People on slower connections will take *days* to download it. Cutting out physical media is just another shitty decision being made by the industry that will kill the longevity and playability of games -- at least without the work of homebrewers. As much as I enjoy the homebrew scene and the people who make cracks to make games playable years after they go away, I don't trust that there will always be a person or a group willing (or able) to crack games. I generally prefer a legal alternative where available, and will turn to modding only when I have to (e.g. an online-only game's servers die).
What will happen to games like Borderlands 2, for example? Good game, plenty of people like it. It'll probably be sought after later on. But it has tons of DLC. Will hackers figure out how to package the DLC altogether and host a torrent? Will they include an installer or just a set of files to drop into C:\Program Files\? What if they can't get all the DLC? There goes part of a game -- a game that people like -- gone forever due to industry practices. How about games where the game logic is on the servers (e.g. Diablo 3). What will happen when Blizzard shuts down Diablo 3 support and/or goes under? Diablo 3 will be dead unless a ton of work is done *now* to determine what all the algorithms, item IDs, etc are to reverse engineer the server. We've already had MMOs come and go; a handful have gotten fanmade servers: WoW, I think Everquest, maybe Guild Wars.
Modern gaming has some benefits (the ability to fix bugs, add extra content, lower distribution costs) but it comes at the cost of the game losing its value, both monetarily and culturally as time passes. Buying a new game isn't an experience anymore. It's buy or download, load up, start playing. Most games don't come with a physical manual anymore. Good for the environment, I guess, but they were already printing on recycled paper to begin with.
Further, what's stopping companies from remotely disabling games you've paid money for? According to their Terms, *nothing*. Each and every digital distribution platform has a clause that allows them to revoke your access to games at any time, for any reason. (If you really want citations, I can get them. It may take me a bit though) On one hand, that's fair since they own the servers. But on the other, you the customer *paid for those games* and you deserve to be able to play them. That should be your right. For them to accept your money and then have the ability to take back what they sold you should be considered illegal.
So I guess you're right that it goes beyond just physical media. There's a host of issues going on in gaming over the past decade or so. Eschewing physical media is just one of the problems, and it wouldn't be a problem if the digital method was modelled better and pricing were fairer to make up for the fact that customers get nothing physical out of it (and thus they don't have to pay to manufacture anything). I'm aware of rose-colored glasses, and I go out of my way to be sure I'm not talking about anything from a nostalgic perspective. I honestly think today's game market is worse than 20+ years ago. The biggest advancement the market's made is expansion, allowing for broader genres and encouraging indie development. Everything else -- microtransactions, free-to-play, shipping games with on-disc DLC or day-one DLC, shipping buggy games that aren't totally complete or fixed until 6 months out -- is a disgrace and has killed a lot of interest I have in games, because I refuse to purchase an incomplete product at full price. I'm not paying to be a beta tester.
EDIT: More replies below.
I love physical copies as much as all of you, but lets face it - it's not what it used to be. Games anymore are coming pre-packed as installer or license files that allow digital content to be downloaded. This is backed by cheaper operation costs and overhead by the gaming companies allowing them to put capitol elsewhere in their companies. It won't be too long until as the OP said, consoles go full digital.
What makes you think companies aren't doing that deliberately, to get you to switch to digital?
It always continues to surprise me on the stance that people take on physical games versus digital games.
Just to play devils advocate and throw a scenario at you, do you just as many of you that preferred the physical copy of games also prefer the physicality of movies and music? Do you still continue to purchase CDs to this day and do you still continue to purchase Blu-rays and DVDs? Does the physicality of that media matter to you as much as the physicality of the gaming media?
It is not that I don't understand the mentality of having a physical library. I also like to look at my little collection of games that I have assembled over the years but even I can understand that eventually much like music, that medium will most likely go away in the coming years.
Granted I know that the physical media of movies still exists so I know that it won't die out completely. But I do believe there is an inevitability that gaming will soon continue to move towards a more digital space and the physical copy will eventually either cease to exist or be the afterthought.
Honestly, movies and music are generally transient experiences. You passively sit there and consume the media. Games are interactive. They (used to) come with manuals, stories, and have nice looking box art. Consuming a game is enjoying art in a way that's different and, imo, more meaningful than music or movies because you're part of the experience. Your input matters.
I don't mind digital music or movies because ultimately it wouldn't upset me if I lost them. I'd just download them again, probably in a better format or bitrate. I also can't have them taken away from me forcibly without law enforcement getting involved. That is not true of video games. If I lose games, my ability to have that interactive experience is gone. My save file is likely gone, too. And unlike digital music and movies, game distributors can take back the games that they sell me. That's complete bullshit.
If you're referring to Steam, Valve has made it clear that they'll remove the DRM from all Steam games if Steam ever shuts down.
The only "evidence" I've seen of that was a screenshot of a forum post. Also, what a corporation says can be and often is different from what they actually do when said situation arises. I have no reason to believe that Valve won't delete my Steam games if they were to ever leave the industry. My purchases are not protected in the terms of use, Valve has not placed a clause in the terms to allow for that, and those same terms are the only binding thing I have to go on to make an informed decision. There's no mention of removing DRM anywhere in the terms.
If you're able to find an authoritative source for that claim, I may reconsider. But given the information I and many other customers have, there's no reason to believe that will happen.
