If owning games forever is important for you, then buy the hardcopy. For me, being able to play games now on the devices I already own is a huge win.
I guess people who play chess or soccer are "curators" and "collectors" considering how old those "game" concepts are?
Some people may only see video games as a replacement for popcorn movies, a vapid session of watching characters talk about meaningless things and occasionally press a button or two as an illusion of interactivity with something.
But some of us get attached when there's something actually -good- out of it and time memorable beyond the technology used to build it. Thoughtful set of rules that allow a person to either challenge themselves or others. Some of us will always continue to play Starcraft, Counter Strike, Street Fighter or arcade shmups. They don't need a "revision" much like Chess doesn't need to be modified into a game that isn't Chess and soccer doesn't need to become handegg.
Stadia is to gaming what MTV is to music.
Please let others enjoy games the way they like to, also.
I mostly play the same three or four games and have for about a decade. Stuff like KSP and ARMA where save state and modding are extremely important.
I keep going back to these games:
- Knights of the Old Republic (2003)
- Jade Empire (2005)
- Shadow of the Colossus (2005)
- Game Dev Tycoon (2012)
- Long Live The Queen (2012)
- Banished (2014)
Source?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/04/17/nearly-37-o...
>Nearly 37% Of All Registered Steam Games Have Never Been Played
Steam's most played games list tend to change very slowly over time, with a few slots occasionally taken by mediocre "throw away" titles that people consume once and then forget after a few months : https://store.steampowered.com/stats/ In the current month's list, almost all the games most launched on steam are games that are old and have high replay value. Counter Strike, Dota, PUBG, GTA5, PoE, Rocket League.
Outside of steam, one of the most played game of the world is League of Legends. It currently has a 115 million monthly player count, and a 50 millions peak daily logins. Yes, that little competitive PC game has seen more people playing it than the playstation 4 has seen buyers in its lifetime.
The best selling game console by the way only ever saw a few of its titles ever reaching a large player base : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Wii_video.... This is known as the Wii's tragedy. The best selling console in the world, but games barely ever sold on it, with people mostly sticking to a few Nintendo's first party games. You could say it's a tiny subgroup that kept financing literally every other games on the platform.
People tend to stick to a few game they consider worth their value and replay them. The people who keep buying new things over and over at $60+ and forget about them after they're ""done"" are a minority among gamers. They're a very attractive archetype for game developers as they tend to be a failsafe for when their games just can't appeal beyond very superficial characteristics but they're not the majority of gamers by far. Most games sold on the market don't sell that many millions and it's always the same group who keeps buying the new shiny thing. The average AAA game tries hard to become an experience akin to movies with their many cutscenes, dialogue and visuals because devs are trying to get the attention of that guy who just keeps buying new shit over and over and throws it away once done.
And that's without counting "casual" type of gamers who also tend to focus on their one or two game and forget about the rest. Of the casuals, the wealthier types who are willing to spend irrationally are what every single mobile game developers wish they had, because the ''whale'' archetype will spend countless grands on just the one game they always play. All the ""free"" video games that have paid for options rely on these people who show extreme loyalty toward the one game. The modern incarnation of Counter Strike subsists from people willing to keep spending insane money just to get a skin that says that they spent hundreds or grands on something that doesn't even give them a competitive advantage.