The unbearable lightness of Digital Delivery

The rise of digital delivery in the entertainment sphere is a topic widely debated in recent times. It doesn't matter how we look at it: digital delivery is the most economical solution for the video game industry and the cloud-based services are only the tip of the iceberg. With the growth of increasingly high-performance internet connections, new dynamics and phenomena are also emerging, rewriting our way of perceiving everyday life. A good example is how we conceive property, the way we own something, which is becoming less and less linked to the actual presence of a material component.



Ownership has changed from owning a certain content to simply having access to it. In exchange for a certain amount of comfort, we are giving up the value of physically owning something. It might be a good compromise, but the consequence is that we are implicitly renouncing to have direct control over that item. In the case of video game productions, with hardware struggling to keep pace between cyclopic gaming patches and titanic installation files, the prospects of the cloud are becoming increasingly attractive and the recent announcement of Google Stadia clearly shows us a glimpse of next future: no more physical game or console, only the ability to access your library and play remotely. It can be a chance to surpass the concept of exclusivity and console war, but on the other hand, it can cause new problems.

Content integrity: critical issues and recent violations
From a certain point of view, cloud-based solutions undoubtedly help the preservation of historical memory: a digital collection eliminates the need to preserve the hardware, freeing users from the urgency of keeping in optimal conditions the multiple machines needed to play the games. This is true as long as the software houses and publishers decide to invest in restoration, adaptation and redistribution of their oldest content, of course. However what happens if the cost-benefit assessments do not agree with the demand of users? Here's the first critical point: with digital delivery, consumers' interests are further subordinated to producers' interests. The Nintendo case is emblematic: in addition to not having plans to support the Virtual Console service on Switch, last January Nintendo decided to close the Wii Shop Channel, condemning to oblivion titles such as Castlevania The Adventure and Bubble Bobble Plus. At the same time, a legit but ill-timed action has led to the closure of some of the major ROM collection platforms known. Combined together, these actions cut out a substantial chunk of retrogamers whose only alternative, for now, is to fall back on the - partial and in any case decided by the publisher - Nintendo Switch Online offers, or on the physical purchase of titles and vintage consoles. As long as Nintendo doesn't propose compensatory solutions, and until they deem it advantageous, there are no other ways to access those contents legitimately. We are experimenting with this kind of complications even with the most recent contents, albeit in different forms, immersed as we are in this phase of transition made of always-online features.

Literally what remains of P.T. Silent Hills

An example is P.T., the Playable Teaser of Silent Hills created by Hideo Kojima. After the break between the game designer and the publisher, the demo has been subjected to treatment akin to the Persian invasion. The damnatio memoriae cast on Kojima included, besides the removal of his name from his last effort, the cancellation of PT, until then available on the Playstation Store. The demo, which gave a resounding shock to the video game horror scene, became a veritable collector's item after the ban of Konami. The publisher, in addition, to prohibit the download of P.T. for the last-minute curious, blocked the access to the demo from the library of contents already redeemed, making it available only for the few users who had never uninstalled it from their hard disks, a situation that made possible to sell a PS4 console with P.T. installed within for a doubled nominal value. In this case, the publisher intervened invasively, dramatically affecting the thin boundary between consumer rights and the publisher's claims.

Again, at the end of January, Square Enix, thanks to the spread of spoilers caused by the misappropriation of copies before the launch, decided to block the epilogue and the secret movie of Kingdom Hearts 3 until day one. They restored it later via patch, to safeguard the experience of fans. While on the one hand, the intent appears undoubtedly noble, on the other it involves the launch of a product that is incomplete in its essential parts. We can accept to play a game with all the bugs of the great modern productions, but we should never tolerate the missing of founding elements of a title.

The blackout theorem
In the last years, we have progressively abandoned physical supports to enjoy films and music, killing DVDs and iPods in the process. Although prominent figures such as the internet evangelist Vint Cerf warns about entrusting our culture and our memories entirely to the immaterial, the conversion process to digital shores appears now inevitable and irreversible and video games are the next on the list. But is this the right direction to take? The main problem is that we are taking for granted a whole series of conditions that exist between us and the content. In the case of video games, the conditions for enjoying our passion are getting harder to meet, as everything depends primarily on an inserted power plug, a stable internet connection and, last but not least, the license to access (of which there is no guarantee of availability).

But what remains if they switch off everything? And what happens if we don't find what we left after? Here is the second critical point: the vulnerability increases with centralization. Recently MySpace has lost 12 years of video, photos and music during a server migration. The platform that gave us Arctic Monkeys has lost more than a decade of collective memory in a single night. Rebuilding from scratch this slice of existence is practically impossible. There is irony in this: the same instrument that facilitates preservation is also the most dangerous enemy. There is no way to solve the paradox without intervening externally with the old logic: fragmented information, physical and discretionary choices. A scenario that's completely opposite to the direction taken. And finally the third critical point, the one that touches the emotional sphere, the same spheres touched by advertising and market decisions. Are we gamers, as individuals made of stories and experiences, ready to entrust our video game memories to the matrix? It's not a mere opposition between rationality and romanticism but rather a question of self-criticism: are we ready to accept the consequences of decisions not taken by us? Based on how we react to this question, we will be able to understand our position. If you are a collector, what will you collect in the future? Will you continue to do so? If you are an advocate of progress, how did you solve the most instinctive and tribal needs of society? Aren't you afraid to forget what you don't set on physical support?

The answers will come sooner than we imagine, immersed as we are in this world of wonders that run fast. Our passion is one of the most dynamic and it's getting ready to change the balance like all the generational leaps occurred since the Industrial Revolution.

Report translation errors and typos