1. Strategy Guides. The same way that free internet news is slowly strangling print, the heyday of strategy guides is far passed. Why would I pay roughly half the price of the game itself for maps and pointers on how to beat a boss when I can simply check GameFAQS.com? Why waste physical space when the digital space for my walkthroughs is infinite? In a world where the internet holds the sum total of all mankind’s knowledge, paying for public information is dumb. Of course, like every dying industry, the world of paid strategy guides isn’t going down without a fight. Not long ago, Steam started selling Prima Strategy Guides for upwards of $9.99.
Not pictured, how all of the information in these books is freely available online or how much of a sucker you would be for buying this. Ever.
I ask you, with Steam’s built in game overlay and web browser, how much longer can this model survive? To be honest, in the digital space, I believe they’ll be around forever. I can go to a free walkthrough on GameFAQs that’s got typos and may not be very well written, or I can buy a professionally edited, printed, and written guide with pictures and good production value. Additionally, many strategy guides come in collector’s editions, massive hardcover tomes that feel more like nerd cred than being a primary use for game hints. Sadly, the premium price has kept me from buying any, except one I found at a going-out-of-business sale.
2. Brick-and-Mortar video/game rental shops. Netflix and Redbox are doing a pretty good job of burying the few remaining nation rental chains, but video games have always been an important part of the equation. Of course, Gamefly is swooping in to fill that specific niche, but it just isn’t the same. As a child of the 90’s, there was a magical feeling to visiting a Video Update or a Hollywood Video knowing you’d be walking out with a new video game for the next three days. Of course it was expensive and the selection weak, but it was cheap enough that my parents preferred it.
Blockbuster is too big to fail and Netflix is a fad. Also, late fees.
Back in the day, there was even the option for you to rent an entire video game system. Can you imagine that? Going to a Blockbuster to rent an entire game system without having to invest hundreds of dollars sounded like a dream. Does a new release catch your eye, but is platform exclusive? Just rent a PS3 and play inFAMOUS 2! The death of rental shops is heralded as great progress by some, a nationwide tragedy by others, but feels like the next logical step to me.
3. Cheat devices. No, not the client you run while you play Counter Strike to blink around the map (you asshole) or the hack you use to see where everyone is in Call of Duty (you piece of shit). Old school cheat devices, specifically the GameShark, Game Genie and Action Replay, were key parts of the past. As a kid, knowing someone with a GameShark meant I could get Mew without having to go to an official event. With Game Genie I could do all the Sonic 2 cheats without writing down or trying to memorize what sound effects to trigger. Of course, these also needed a physical book which held all of the cheats, released every so often with all the new game’s codes. It was the “sell them the razor so they can buy the blade for years” strategy, and worked. Until the internet came in and shit all over any sense of propriety. For more details of the internet ruining things, see entry number one, and then slap yourself for having already forgotten about it.
Thanks, GameShark! You made my 11 year-old self’s day.
The way these old cheat devices worked, generally, by getting between the game and your console and then changing data as it passed between them. In the modern age, and even last generation, the movement towards optical storage keeps any sharks or genies from modifying any data. Still, some kept going through the 2000’s, like with Action Replay, which would modify save games on memory cards, but even those are on the way out. Instead, I see the future of cheating/game modifying being done through software means.
4. Our Nostalgia. This comes from a few different directions. The easiest target is Sega, who asks people around the world “Hey, remember Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis? Well now you can play it on [LATEST CONSOLE HERE]!” Some games are annualized, like Madden, but I think the Sonic games on the genesis are the only games to be annualized without ever actually changing. Taking a cue from Sega, Nintendo has been flexing their download muscle in recent years, releasing many classic titles on their Virtual Console service.
Do you guys remember playing this as a child, and last year, and the year before that, and every year going back to 2001? DO YOU?
Even for more recent games, like anything worthwhile from the PS2, we’re starting to see HD collections popping up all over. Can you have nostalgia for a mere five years ago? If you did, Sony will happily murder it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as sometimes nostalgia blinds us from how god-awful our childhoods were. I remember, like many, that Sonic Adventure was super great, but without our nostalgia glasses I can see that there is a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Thankfully, Sega is around to re-release anything that’s been even almost successful to remind us that it wasn’t that good; it was just the brightest bulb in a box of shattered lights.
5. Stereotypes. As a large man with a thick, luscious beard I may not be the best to speak on this. Then again, by virtue of having existed for so many decades, video game stereotypes are starting to evaporate. Does the fratboy Madden/Call of Duty/Halo fiend get called a nerd because he’s prestige’d four times? Is the normal, productive, married couple shunned because they like to run heroic dungeons together? Times are changing, and owning two out of three game systems doesn’t make you a massive nerd any more than having two computers in your house makes you a programmer.
Or owning a punctuation suit guarantees you’ll always be yelling forever.
Of course, as with any other stereotypes, those who fit them will always exist, but the world will slowly become less aware of them. If everybody plays games, yet a portion of people who play are, coincidentally, basement dwelling creatures, so what? A few people who collect stamps are sure to be serial killers, but that doesn’t mean they’re related. Similarly, someone can be a below-ground mole-person without having any interest in video games at all.
What we know today has destroyed and overwritten what we knew yesterday, and what we’ll learn tomorrow will crush whatever we did today. In the name of progress, all of these things are going to either have to die or evolve. In the case of rentals, they changed with the times, and those who didn’t are dead and dying. Top-quality strategy guides will always have a place for those who want the best, even digitally. Cheating no longer takes a hunk of plastic, but digital knowhow instead. What is a nerd? Tomorrow, it won’t be someone who games, but just someone who is obsessed and driven by something, be it football or art or math. Tomorrow is yesterday, and today is a bulldozer.
