Memes

I generally agree with the idea that some amount of piracy is, will always, and should exist as motivation to improve the market, but I don't like that everybody is taking this quote out of context for outrage bait. The context is incredibly important. When asked about whether subscription based gaming could be successful, he said that it couldn't be successful until people became comfortable with not owning their games. He's effectively on your side with that statement. He is saying that you guys want to own your games, therefore that model cannot succeed unless your ideals change.

I am not trying to persuade anybody one way or the other, but I personally don't need to own my games. Most of the time, I buy a game, play it through once (if I even finish it), and then it collects dust. Digital games skip the manufacturing process and the dust collection step, but there's no resale possibility. Ever since upgrading PS+ like 2 years ago, I'm pretty sure I haven't bought a game. I'm actually happier to see a catalog of games that has good enough quality titles, gets updated frequently enough, and is cheap enough vs shelling out $70 on a game I might not even like. I don't feel obligated to get my money's worth out of something on the catalog, just my time's worth. So I delete games before finishing them more often than I finish, mostly because most games today overstay their welcome. I don't want to mindlessly grind for xp or gear or consumables just to get to the next road block. I don't want 100+ hour adventures on a 40+ square mile plot of land full of padding. I want Celeste. I want The Forgotten City. I want Portal and Portal 2. I want Uncharted Lost Legacy. These games are shorter and finite and satisfying. I got to the last parts of Elden Ring and Ghost of Tsushima and realized that I just wasn't really having fun anymore. They became a slog. Ghost of Tsushima was pretty easy to just delete and not really look back on because it was part of that subscription, but I felt some guilt deleting Elden Ring because I paid full price for it. That made me realize that the subscription gaming isn't just paying for the games available, but it's paying for the ability to play games with no real stakes. It's cheap enough that as long as I enjoy 2 or 3 games per year, it's worth it, and I probably enjoy 10+. I'm not gaming because I want to own a game; I want to experience the feelings that these games were artistically designed to elicit. I'm more interested in memories and experiences than material goods. I have enough (or too much) stuff as it is. As I get older, my time is becoming more valuable to me because I'm terribly, morbidly aware that it is a nonrenewable, real resource that is trickling away through my fingers and becoming more scarce with every second that passes. I enjoy a game more if I feel free to quit before wasting time not enjoying it. That freedom is what I'm really paying for. And it probably isn't the popular opinion here, but that's my perspective for anybody wondering why in the fuck anybody would ever pay for something and not even own it.

Also, fuck ubisoft, fuck sony, fuck every AAA company, this is not a bullshit astroturf ad. I just wanted to disrupt the circlejerk long enough for reality to permeate through. There's obviously a market for this or it wouldn't be offered, and it wouldn't be offered unless it were popular enough and profitable enough. One day, it might be more popular than buying games, but as I look at the hundred shitty movie/TV streaming services, maybe now is the best this could ever be. Soon it could be subscriptions for publishers or even just individual franchises. That is the logical future step that will either vastly increase piracy or kill the popularity of gaming altogether. That and/or intrusive ads. I fucking hate capitalism.