: You're only four years younger than me. You had to have started buying games
: at least a few years before digital distribution really hit consoles
: (meaning full retail-release titles, as opposed to little $5 XBLA or
: Virtual Console games). In terms of your relationship to the product as a
: consumer, how did you view games growing up and in younger adulthood?

: As for me, I've viewed video games just like I view everything else I bought
: or received as a gift. They're my property, no different from books or
: magazines or records or cassettes or CDs or VHS tapes or DVDs or Blu-ray
: discs or furniture or toys or clothes or automobiles or electronic items
: (including consoles). That's my shit. It belongs to me. I don't like
: people messing with it without my permission, and if someone takes it
: without asking then that's theft. I'm a HUGE believer in private property.
: And that's why I'm not going to invest money into a "product"
: that I don't even own. $60 for a glorified long-term rental? Hell. No. $60
: for something I can't sell, lend, or trade without the express permission
: of the copyright holder? Hell. No. $60 for something that can be lost
: permanently because a hard drive crashes after the console is no longer
: supported? Hell. No. $60 for something that can be yanked from my console
: by the copyright holder for any reason or no reason at all? Hell. No.
: Given both the law, historical precedent, and my general attitude towards
: the concept of property, I don't consider digital distribution anything
: worth investing in, and I don't think anyone else should invest in it,
: either, because I consider it an affront to consumer rights. It gives game
: publishers and other content creators ideas, none of them good for the
: consumer. The only thing it provides is the illusion of convenience.

: PT wasn't so much a game as it was a demo. But Silent Hills was cancelled
: (#FUCKONAMI) and now PT is the last remaining vestige of that
: highly-anticipated project. That makes it worth something to people who
: are fans of Kojima and/or Silent Hill. But it got pulled from PSN and if
: you accidentally delete it, it's gone forever, and it'll never come back.
: And if you didn't get it before it got pulled, well, you're shit outta
: luck. And it was just a demo. There's been actual full games pulled with
: no notification or anything. Dozens of titles, simply vanishing into the
: ether, perhaps never to be seen again. Want to buy them second-hand? Too
: bad. There is no used game market with digital distribution.

I'm currently standing next to a bookcase filled with an Edge magazine collection and all of my 360 games, I definitely had a long history of buying games starting in high school. If I could send all of these discs in to get whatever digital license microsoft could revoke at any time I would still take the deal. That is because the convenience you believe is an illusion are conveniences I happily enjoy given the risks. Your value in property is just something I don't have, I prioritize my life in a drastically different way. I'd rather work towards having more consumer friendly licenses, whether that's through laws or market forces.

Like really, I do not see things that don't have to be physical, as property. This desk I have, that's property. I think it's weird to take something that could be copied so easily, with so little effort, and tie it to a physical disk and declare it's property. It's an illusion of the physical nature of things. That's probably why we can't see eye to eye mate.