Game companies continuosly lowering their quality standards.

Ave I covered standard versions in my first paragraph, plus many of the LE criticisms apply, especially with regards to the LE games with no standard version available

Also sort of on topic I guess, I have a stack of PAL Dreamcast games I bought some time ago as disc only, I chucked them into my CD wallet, job done. If I want to play one I just flip through and grab it.

This doesn't bother me too much, because if I buy complete games, I store the games in the wallet anyway and the cases elsewhere, which take up space. I just like to have all of the paperwork intact even if I never see it, but if I never had it to begin with, I certainly wouldn't miss it and I'd welcome the free space so it can be used for other things.

The only time a disc only product would bother me is if I had no CD wallet, no space in my CD wallet, or it was an install disc, or if I bought it in town and then had no manual or cover to read on the bus ride home. Well I think it would also bother me if a disc only release cost the same to buy as a packaged release. If the companies are lowering the cost to keep their profits consistent I'd want a discount, or no paid for DLC bullshit in return.

 

Well believe it or not this actually is because of eco-crap: these days some companies are getting shafted by green NGOs, one infraction and boom! there goes the profit margin of this quarter.

Still when they pull shit like this game companies get a nice tax deduction, so its not like they are the victims either

Its all in the numbers: when they dont ship manuals in 5 million games thats like 100 tons of paper, ink and bleach less

But look at the bright side: people finally realized zynga is complete shit and the company is fucking collapsing as we speak

That alone just increased the overall quality of the entire industry...

 

Hahaha, those evil eco-nazis! You are gonna vote for Romney I suppose?

I do agree that reducing the plastic in game cases to be more eco-friendly is bullshit - look at China and the US, they do crazy shit with their CO2 emissions and don't do a single fuck about it. That's the real problem, not a hole in a DVD-case. But companies who produce cases probably don't really care about eco itself, what they care about is green numbers and how do you get them? With good, excuse me, popular products. If your company acts "green", your company value tends to go up because green companies are considered to be forward-looking, sustainable, modern, fresh - and more often than not, they really are. Investors are attracted by these companies, and high investments enable you to lower your costs, increase your output and so on.
I don't wanna go on about microeconomics that much, but this is really a big part of the story behind all this. I highly doubt that companies were forced by some NGO and accepted the decision with a sad face.

 

I really don't know the ins and outs of it in detail, but on the surface it looks just as much about profit as it does about being eco friendly. At the end of the day if you don't have to spend money on tons of paper, art design, ink, printing, etc you're saving a lot of money on every million games you ship. When you think about it its good for both the company and the environment, the only person it isn't good for is the customer, and unfortunately for us that money is still coming out of our pocket. It doesn't make it any better that software standards are dropping also... The more I think about it the more I feel screwed by it.

 

The fact that we, the customers, have the biggest power to make a change goes by unrealized by most consumers. The majority doesn't care about packaging, never did - look at all the loose carts on ebay. It just shows consistency in consumer behavior and from an economic point of view, it makes perfect sense to lower costs to a minimum by offering downloads if nobody cares about physical media anyways. We are only a tiny fraction of the market, many people forget about that.

If you were to build only one kind of birdhouse and you have been asked to build 10 of them, would you build them in deluxe-style with paint and carvings just because 1 out of your 10 customers wants that? No, you wouldn't. If 8 of 10 would want that, you'd add carvings and paint and it wouldn't look like a piece of shit, but people don't care. It's just for birds.

It's unfortunate because the things we love are slowly vanishing... but I don't think we can stop it. But still, every Steam-purchase posted by someone pisses me off a bit. They help degrading the entire product culture just because they care shit fuck. And it's moving on FAST... don't forget that this development only STARTED happening about 5 years ago and now we're already where we are. Imagine what it's like in 20 years... that's only as far back as to the SNES launch. I think there will be hardly any physical media at all in the games industry.

People may not realize it today, but in 40 years when they remember the good old days, they may be sad that there's nothing to show your grandson but the illustrated memory of a shitty file on a long-gone harddrive. I can still look at my parents' music records from their youth in the 60's and 70's, what do you have to show your children? I think it's a very sad thing that is happening... not only to games, but also to music and movies.

 

I'm glad Japan and Asia still have quality stuff. There's still hope.

It's funny they care about being "eco-friendly" but all game accessories comes in those damn impossible to open plastic cases. By the way, this is almost a standard on computer stuff. Mouses, Headphones, USB drives and flash drives...

Totally agree.

 

You guys realize that the "eco cases" and missing manuals are just greenwashing and have nothing to do with actual environmentalism, right? It's penny-pinching that's done under the guise of being friendly to the environment because that makes it more palatable to the consumer than just saving the company a little bit of money.

Dude, I think you care a little too much about this. There are so many more things in this world worth getting pissed off about than "hypothetical video game preservation scenario".

 

I'm just stating my hypothetical opinion. Personally, I couldn't care less and therefore I'm actually not really pissed off - I'm happy about it. With so many people dismissing physical media and rather wasting their money on intangible crap, collector's have less competition

Imagine everyone would do what a collector does. The market would become totally insane, everyone would try to buy a physical copy of game X if they couldn't download it, game X's price would explode. Besides, I'm not interested in modern games anyway, so I don't care whether or not I can still buy them on disc.
But that's just a personal preference thing, of course it's still a shame and pretty sad that our entire culture goes down the shitty digital drain where it'll eventually be wiped off the hard drives in a few decades and many things will be lost forever - even if it's only certain intermediate versions of games that had been updated and couldn't be downgraded again.

There are many things to be pissed about, but the degradation of media in today's "throwaway culture" is something that is very underestimated I think. As I said, the results of this ignorant treatment of culture may only become noticable in a few decades when people may want to dig out some things from the past and realize that it's not possible.

 

Less than ideal item packaging has been frequent for ages. Any number of reasons. Fragile, too large, too small, annoying to pack/unpack, doesn't secure contents well.
I could go on and on nitpicking what game companies should've done better.

The shift toward digital media should be a compromise. Loosen DRM so people interested in boxed copies are able to make them.

 

love it when extras are thrown into games like a poster or artwork or etc along with the printed manual and disc some xbox 360 games i got did come with things like posters, my C&C Red Alert 3 came with a Poster and a Reversable cover for example.

worst game in recent memory for this imo was half life 2 retail, it was basically a dvd in a cheap ass box, not only did u need to install it it also needed to "decode" and download etc in my opinion a big release like that should have had more quality and thought put into it the game itself was great but everything else felt cheap and nasty

 

Agreed, I bought the Orange Box a few years ago and couldn't have been more disappointed in what was included. That was about the time I gave up PC gaming (with extremely rare exceptions).

 

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lmao you get nothing else?

EA are really trying to flog Origin the future of PC gaming is going to be every company having a different digital content service (eg steam, orogin, etc)

Personally i'd call mine "PypeLyne" because y's make things cooler,

 

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I sold all my modern stuff, this is part of the reason why.

 

To be Green? LOL If it was less "production" and "landfill" why are the games not lowered in price? Manuals are good to flick through... Sure I hardly read them, but it makes it feel complete.
This whole "reduce waste" bullshit is stupid, just plain stupid. It's an excuse to reduce costs for themselves and not pass those savings onto the costumer.

This whole "green" issue never makes sense, companies are wanting and itching to force digital downloads onto every gamer so their is no need for cover art any more etc. Then why are digital downloads the same fucking price let alone sometimes MORE than the retail boxed copy with a case, manual (sometimes) and a BR/DVD?

 

x

 

I was greatly disappointed that Valve basically pushed everyone to buy Orange Box to get HL2:EP2 even if they had HL2 and EP1 like I did. About a year ago it was on sale for about $10 (by this time Portal had been free at one point so I already had it making it\ barely worth it for TF2 and EP2) so I splurged and got it. About 2-3 months later TF2 went free to play making my entire purchase pointless as EP2 was $10 alone. Granted I gifted Portal and HL2:EP1 to a friend so it wasn't a total loss but I felt screwed regardless.

Personally the loss of a manual isn't a big deal. The controls are contained in game these days and so is the majority of the story. Long gone are the days where wasting a few kilobytes on a backstory for a non RPG made no sense. However we are still clearly being asked to pay top dollar for a game that lacks a manual (clearly a pricy item to have put together and printed AND stuffed into the box) and a case that is anywhere near as solid a build as it once was (also reducing costs). With the reduction of costs naturally the reduction of price comes along as anyone who has asked me to mod something knows how much effort I put into finding parts that are of high quality and yet cheaper than the first google hit for a part.

Piracy continues to remain the "best" choice. Truth be told I usually just hold off buying a product until it is on sale for $20 or I buy a used copy for less. But as far as some devs are concerned I may as well be pirating the game if I'm going to buy a used copy.

 

To comment on the current standards alone I have to say that games have taken a severe drop in quality, I don't want to sound like a broken record we all know games are rehashed and repackaged and you get the same crap year after year.

Also I don't like how a lot of games are released broken, then people ''look forward'' to patches.... -_-
Unfinished games should not be released.

The final thing that bugs me is the hype, I get so excited for a game (i dont buy it i read the review) then find out it sucks,
it's happening to too many good series these days

But that's why we have old games



In regards to the manual, I hate games with no manuals, I am a collector so I love my games to have manuals, although with the size of manuals these days they were pretty pointless so I understand about saving on paper, i do see it as being cheap too though but eco friendly nonetheless.

At least i can open up a big box PC game and have this to read

 

I think you guys are forgetting the crap we had in the 16-bit era. The boxes were basically just cardboard (with a few exceptions). Most of the boxes I've seen from that era were thinner than cardboard - almost like thick paper. As late as the GBA they were still using boxes like that. Plastic - even shitty plastic - is still better than cardboard.