Why day 1 updates and patches will ruin video game collecting
When you buy a new game, bring it home and pop it into your console, you can't wait to jump into your new game.
But before you can play the game, you have to sit through the inevitable 'day 1 update'. What used to be a rare annoyance has become the new normal. While its sucks that we have to sit through an update that might take a few minutes to over an hour before you can play a new game, it's going to be a catastrophe for the game collecting community once the current generation of games becomes retro.
The rise of the day 1 patch
Before the rise of Internet-connected game consoles, when you bought a game and popped it in, it was ready to go. Developers and publishers shipped complete games (usually) that didn't need additional support after they were pressed, packaged and shipped to stores.
Today, publishers can ship a buggy, broken or incomplete game to stores and fix it between the manufacturing date and the release date with a day 1 update. This will eventually ruin many games in the future as the systems of distributing those patches breaks down.
High and dry
In the coming years, game collectors will eventually turn their eyes to the current generation of games, which may end up being the last generation to get physical releases on discs or carts. Unfortunately, once the servers for these systems are eventually shut down, there will be no way to access the day 1 patches for modern games.
Imagine that you're finally getting into PS4 games fifteen years from now. You have the console and you've started to pick up all the games you missed out on. Once the support servers for that console are taken offline, there will be no way to get the day 1 patches for all of the games that were released with game breaking bugs or other problems. They might still be playable, but glitchy. Some games however, might have bugs so bad that the games are unplayable or unable to be completed without that patch.
Is there a solution?
There's a chance that services or groups form to create new servers where game patches are stored, so you can find a way to get the day 1 patches either automatically or manually through hacked consoles. Its hardly a great solution though.
I think it something we're just going to have to come to terms with. As games become more and more dependent on being Internet connected, publishers will keep releasing games before they're completed and lean on the day 1 patch to fix games that are rushed to market. Hopefully some solutions are put in place, but I fear that once this generation becomes 'retro', there's going to be a lot of problems getting these games to run properly.
What do you think? Will there be a solution for distributing day 1 patches for obsolete consoles or will we have to live with playing permanently buggy and broken games from this generation? Let's discuss!
I think the move to digital-only release will signal the death knell to video games (on the whole) as a collectible medium. From about the PS2/Xbox/GameCube era on back, we'll be fine, but the explosion in game sizes with the introduction of the Blu-Ray drive and mandatory hard disk installation for virtually all games from around 2007 and beyond is making archival far more difficult, and nearly impossible when it comes to multiple patches, bug fixes, and other stuff that doesn't ship on the disc.
I imagine what it will come down to are image rips of the digital install files + patch data for people who are truly intent on playing older games, but without people running whole servers for, say, defunct online interactions for older EA games, it may become truly impossible to experience the game as it was originally intended, even if it can be played to completion.
MMOs have already shown us what happens when they close down and players lose not only their characters but all the time and money invested into the game and its community. I was very active in the MUD scene back in high school/college, but the ones I played on are now defunct with no means to even virtually emulate/recreate their environs without access to the source code.
This is one of the reasons I've largely given up gaming in the modern generation. I'm a collector, and have been for three decades now, but while emulation and ROM hacking have enabled me to experience games I never got to from when I was younger, I see no real alternative when it comes to the PS3/360 era and beyond since, as you pointed out, even a physical copy will be lacking the patches, updates, and DLC enjoyed by a current player of the "full" version. Some titles can get around this (think Game of the Year re-releases of Fallout 3 and Skyrim with their built-in DLC and more up-to-date code), but it won't surprise me in the least if future gamers can still play Heavy Rain, but lack the PlayStation Move support introduced by a multi-gigabyte patch months after its original release, and Madison's extra DLC chapter which came free for those who pre-ordered the game. Maybe this isn't a big deal to most people, but it's content the developers created which could be forever locked away to most users in a future scenario.
Future historians may be able to note the existence of gameplay elements or enhancements (the weapon and suit DLC for the original Dead Space, for instance), but never experience it for themselves. It sucks. I don't like it. But it is what it is.
Excellent points and I'm right there with ya. The Wii/PS3/360 era is probably the last generation that you will be able to pick up and play a more or less complete, bug-free game without depending on patches that you can't get anymore.
Many people are speculating that this will be the last generation of consoles to have physical media. PC gamers more or less have been without it for years. Nintendo might hold out and hang on to their carts for one more generation (and I really hope they do), but once the day comes that I can't put my new games on my game shelf, I'll start gaming 'backwards' to pick up the hundreds if not thousands of games that have been released that I haven't touched yet. I can name plenty of old games off the top of my head that I have yet to experience.
Once gaming goes all digital, I'll likely not be going with it. Except maybe just Nintendo. We'll see.
I think it might be more likely, at least for emulation purposes, that people will figure out how to rip patched versions of the games and create images of those. Once the images exist, they could be written back to a physical disk, game system hard drive or whatever media. As downloadable games become the norm, I think this will have to ultimately be the solution if these games are to be preserved.
I think what you spelled out will be pretty much what we'll have to do, though its going to make physical game discs and carts practically worthless if the 'fixed' versions of these games are floating around the Internet. What value is there in the game disc if there's no way to play the patched/fixed version on real hardware?
Thanks for the input.
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