I had an interesting conversation earlier this week. My S.O. told me he was on a forum with a guy who was complaining about digital games. Apparently this guy had paid a lot of money for a game on iOS, then something happened to his ipod, and he wanted to have the game replaced on the new Android tabloid he had purchased. Of course the company denied his request. Those are two completely different platforms.
With hardcopy games, it’s not likely a company will replace a damaged game at all, but if…by some lucky chance…a customer convinces a company to replace a game they damaged, do you really think they’d replace it with one for a different system? I don’t think so. I can just picture that conversation now, “Uh, yeah…my house caught fire, and my Batman Arkham collection for 360 was destroyed. I still have my receipt.”
“Well, this is unusual. We normally don’t replace damaged items. We can try to make an exception in this case. These were for the Xbox 360?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want it for the 360 this time. I want it for the PS3.”
“Excuse me?”
“I want it on a different system this time.”
“Yeah…that’s not going to happen…”
It seems to me that some people are complaining about digital games simply to complain. Perhaps they are bigoted, perhaps they are intimidated, perhaps they are narrow minded concerning the concept of games without a disk or cartridge. I don’t know. Whatever the issue is, they need to evaluate digital games as they are, and stop trying to force them into inferiority. Digital games will only become “inferior” if people cowering to their own fears continue to claim that they are.
This claim of “inferiority” leads to another issue. Many in the gaming community believe that digital games should have a separate category. It amazes me to find that so many would allow their prejudice and fear to bog down common sense. Separate categories would mean that people searching for a specific game would have have to search two separate, and independent databases, as opposed to simply refining a search within one database to weed out exactly what they want.
Instead of letting fear and prejudice rule, let common sense take over. It’s a far better way to live.
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