Well, so says a recent study about video-game sales in the UK.*
Although honestly, my first reaction was, "It's that low?" Because I'm >surprised so many games are still sold in stores. It almost certainly
has to be much higher for PC (other than a tiny number of exclusive
special edition packages, are there _any_ PC games still in retail?). >Similarly, every single mobile game is a digital download too. Are
there that many console users still stuck in the past?
Especially since even if you do buy a console game, the first thing
that is going to happen after you put the game in the machine is that
it's going to download the entirity of the game again anyway thanks to
0-day updates. What's the advantage to buying from retail?
Sure, grandma might do it. "Little Timmy likes video games; I'll swing
by Tesco and buy one for my beloved grandson." (and then inevitably
buys some cheap, poorly-reviewed knock-off of a popular game. Oh,
Grandma!).
Maybe it's just the UK. I wonder what world-wide stats show.
On Mon, 23 Sep 2024 22:36:54 -0500, Altered Beast
<j63480576@gmail.com> wrote:
It sounds to me like the gaming industry makes bank on downloading
versus physical product. They certainly haven't printed a manual in a
few ages.
They barely even make PDF manuals anymore.
In fairness, few games actually need them. Not only have in-game
tutorials become quite good, game design has standardized enough that
there's much less _need_ to teach players how to game anymore.
And game visuals and world-design is complex enough that the secondary purpose of manuals --to flesh out the game-world-- is rarely necessary
too.
So writing manuals is an expensive proposition that serves no purpose
except to make a tiny percentage of gamers happy. After all, even
_were_ a manual necessary, most people _still_ wouldn't RTFM.
I still miss those old-school manuals, though. Whether it was those
giant tomes you'd get in flight simulators, the wonderfully
illustrated manuals in CRPGs, or the manuals in strategy games which
went over every mechanical detail of the game, they were great fun to
read.
On Mon, 23 Sep 2024 22:36:54 -0500, Altered Beast
<j63480576@gmail.com> wrote:
It sounds to me like the gaming industry makes bank on downloading
versus physical product. They certainly haven't printed a manual in a
few ages.
They barely even make PDF manuals anymore.
In fairness, few games actually need them. Not only have in-game
tutorials become quite good, game design has standardized enough that
there's much less _need_ to teach players how to game anymore.
And game visuals and world-design is complex enough that the secondary purpose of manuals --to flesh out the game-world-- is rarely necessary
too.
So writing manuals is an expensive proposition that serves no purpose
except to make a tiny percentage of gamers happy. After all, even
_were_ a manual necessary, most people _still_ wouldn't RTFM.
I still miss those old-school manuals, though. Whether it was those
giant tomes you'd get in flight simulators, the wonderfully
illustrated manuals in CRPGs, or the manuals in strategy games which
went over every mechanical detail of the game, they were great fun to
read.
On Fri, 27 Sep 2024 08:34:25 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:
Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the >>entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:
<snip>
Or the lovely cloth maps from the Ultima games; I used to have them
all mounted above my computers. I only took them down because they >>>started fading from the sunlight, and I loved them too much to watch
them degrade like that. So back into their boxes they went. ;-)
You allow sunlight into the room with the computers?
What kind of barbarian are you? Poor computers.
It's 'cause I tinker. I've found bright sunlight to be the best
illumination when swapping hardware.
Rest assured that when I'm actually using the computers for games and
such, I bring down the shades so that I may lurk in the gloom like a
proper nerd. ;-)
[But honestly, I thought people would complain more
about exposing the _game boxes_ to bright sunlight.
Those are precious treasures!]
On Sat, 28 Sep 2024 08:27:39 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:
Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the >>entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:
[But honestly, I thought people would complain more
about exposing the _game boxes_ to bright sunlight.
Those are precious treasures!]
I just assumed like any normal person playing a single player game you >>would have dl'd a no-cd crack, and the box and it's contents would
remain out of sight and out of reach of the nasty burny sky goblin.
I actually made surprisingly little use of no-CDs with games. It
wasn't that I never used them, but -given the size of my library- most
games I just used the optical disk. It helped that all of them had
been transferred to neatly-organized CD-folios (conveniently within
arm's reach of the PC), and that I tended to play one game at a time,
so swapping wasn't that much of an issue.
Sadly, most of the boxes were discarded shortly after purchase. I just
don't have the space to store them all. It was only for a handful of >favorites (of which the Ultima games predominate) that I kept the
packaging.
And for the longest time, I didn't hide them from Sunny McSunalot, the >aforementioned burny sky-goblin. Fortunately, the boxes weren't in
direct sunlight, so the damage was minimal.
On Sat, 28 Sep 2024 15:18:04 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:
Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the >>entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:
On Sat, 28 Sep 2024 08:27:39 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote: >>>>Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the >>>>entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs >>>>say:
[But honestly, I thought people would complain more
about exposing the _game boxes_ to bright sunlight.
Those are precious treasures!]
I just assumed like any normal person playing a single player game you >>>>would have dl'd a no-cd crack, and the box and it's contents would >>>>remain out of sight and out of reach of the nasty burny sky goblin.
I actually made surprisingly little use of no-CDs with games. It
wasn't that I never used them, but -given the size of my library- most >>>games I just used the optical disk. It helped that all of them had
been transferred to neatly-organized CD-folios (conveniently within
arm's reach of the PC), and that I tended to play one game at a time,
so swapping wasn't that much of an issue.
It wasn't the swapping, it was the constant spinning up of the disc
which sometimes damaged it (not only causing it to misread for dame >>verification but also making future installs impossible.)
Some of those copy protect and verify schemes spun the disc up over an
over and over, with lots of nasty scuffing sounds.
I've never heard of that happening. I'm not saying it didn't, but that
seems very unusual. The usual complaint I've heard was that the
_discs_ would get scuffed because they were left sitting on the desk,
where it was easy to scratch them. Alternately, I've heard tales of
the optical drives themselves (not the discs) getting worn out by all
the excess reads. But the discs themselves getting damaged? That
sounds more a fault of the drive hardware than the DRM.
Certainly in my decades of using CD-ROMs, I never had such an
experience. All my discs (except for the two or three I broke because
of carelessly leaving them on the desk ;-) are still readable.
I've gone through a good number of optical drives, though.
Sadly, most of the boxes were discarded shortly after purchase. I just >>>don't have the space to store them all. It was only for a handful of >>>favorites (of which the Ultima games predominate) that I kept the >>>packaging.
Yeah I have a few games in box, the aforementioned Daggerfall, since it
was one of my favorite games of all time, the City of Heroes boxes, and >>some of the hard plastic clamshell boxes cause they're small and hard
and protect the discs and such well, while taking minimal space.
Daggerfall had a funky box, didn't it? It had a holgram or something
on it, I think. At least some versions did.
I've two "grades" of boxes in my closet. The first are the games I
love the most; the Ultima games in particular, but a few others. Then
there are the 'second tier' boxes; these I keep either because I liked
the game or -more likely- I just liked the box! These, though, get
emptied and flattened so they take up less space.
That said, I've all my original manuals (now stored in six or eight
office boxes neatly stacked in the aforementioned closet). Just
because I don't have room for the boxes doesn't mean I'm tossing the
manuals! ;-)
As have I and some of them wee not the best, and/or slightly warped from
the manufacturer so the disc was not completely clear of the tray when
it spun up.
Or the lovely cloth maps from the Ultima games; I used to have them
all mounted above my computers. I only took them down because they
started fading from the sunlight, and I loved them too much to watch
them degrade like that. So back into their boxes they went. ;-)
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