An Open Letter to Gamers

I am sending this out into the ether for whatever it's worth. I've been a gamer almost my entire life. I remember playing Atari 2600 games as a young child, and received an NES for my 6th birthday. I was firmly on Team Nintendo throughout my childhood and early teens, and spent countless hours playing Super Mario Brothers (1, 2, and 3), The Legend Of Zelda, Bad Dudes, Kung Fu, Contra (still one of the best games of all time), and the list goes on. When the Super NES was released, it was top of my Christmas list that year, and I was lucky enough to get one. My young teenage mind was blown away by the graphical and audio quality upgrades of the 16 bit console generation. My time spent playing OG NES games was soon replaced by countless additional hours with Super Mario World, Starfox, Pilot Wings, F-Zero, Final Fight, and Street Fighter 2, all of which I enjoy to this day. I also remember some of the controversies of that era, including Nintendo's decision to censor the blood in the Super NES port of Mortal Kombat (still jealous of my Genesis owning friends over that), and pricing of some of the top tier games of the day (IIRC Super Street Fighter 2 for the SNES was either $75 or $80 at launch back in the 90's). I never did upgrade from the SNES, although I did have some minor forays into the PC gaming space in my teens (where all my OG Wolfenstein and Doom shareware peeps at??)

By the time of the N64, late teen and young adult responsibilities ate up all of the time that I would have had for gaming. But my hard work during those years rewarded me with enough disposable income and leisure time by my early 20's that I was able to get myself a PS1. That purchase rekindled a love of gaming that has persisted to this day, and was the beginning of over 20 years of Playstation gaming that has been one of the most consistently enjoyable and rewarding hobbies of my adult life. I have, and still have, every generation of Playstation console. The childhood and teenage days of having a blast with old school NES and SNES games have been replaced by games with characters, stories, and gameplay that are not only thoroughly fun and entertaining, but thought provoking. Characters that I've been with, for 20 years or more in some cases, have prompted me to not only think about and solve the challenge of the gameplay on the screen, but to think about and try to better myself as a man, husband, and father. It's not an exaggeration to say that Kratos, Joel Miller, Bruce Wayne, Aloy, the Chosen Undead, and the Good Hunter, among many, many others, have reached me in ways that few people in my life have. Gaming is and always has been a solitary activity for me, a time where I can set everything else aside and have an experience that is for me and me alone. I have no desire to join a raid with friends on a live service game. That is, and always has been, my choice, which, unfortunately, brings me to the point of this diatribe.

What is happening across the gaming industry is not a Sony problem. Nor is it a Microsoft problem. It isn't even an industry specific problem. It is but a symptom of the unfortunate reality of the current state of the world. More and more, corporations across the board have shown that shareholder value and profit margins are their primary motivating factors, with consumer value and satisfaction maybe coming in as an afterthought. Now, I'm nowhere near naive enough to think that hasn't always been the case. Maybe it's just more blatant and right in our faces now than ever before. I am naive enough to believe, however, that there was a time when many, if not most, companies understood that delivering a high quality product at a good value to customers was the way to success, and by extension, higher stock prices. Look no further back in time than to 2013, to the launch of the PS4 and XBox One. XBox One launched with onerous DRM requirements, which meant you couldn't easily share games with friends, and got owned by Sony as a result. I was never more proud to be Team PS than when seeing that infamous Playstation ad describing how to share a PS game with a friend. One other tidbit from that era I haven't heard discussed much in the current conversation is a comment made by XBox leadership regarding the always-on internet requirement for the XBox One. When asked what choices existed for gamers who didn't want to be online while gaming, Don Mattrick, then head of all things gaming for Microsoft, stated "We have a console for those that don't always want to be online, it's called XBox 360". 13 years later, I fear a very similar statement may be coming for the PS6. Except this time, the quote will be, "We have a console for those that want to play physical games, it's called PS5".

I don't dislike digital only games. I dislike the fact that the term "purchase" has been conflated with the term "license" right under our noses. I dislike the fact that when I plunk down $70 for a digital game, by clicking a button that says "Purchase Now", I really have no way of knowing how long that license that I'm actually purchasing will be good for. And yes, I realize that this could just as easily apply to a physical game disc that requires a connection to an external server to function. But unless that game disc says that it requires an always on internet connection, I can be reasonably certain that game will work just fine with or without it. So I choose to buy physical copies of the vast majority of the games I play. But that's my choice. I know there are those who have said they don't understand the outrage over Sony killing off physical discs, and I can only assume that they choose to buy most of their games digitally. That's their choice, and I respect it. And that's kind of the point.

There will always be those who repeat the mantra of "If you don't like it, don't buy it". To them I will simply say, you got it. I have no plans to abandon gaming. But nor do I have any plans to purchase any gaming console ever again. I have a large of collection of games for all 5 of the Playstation consoles in my house. Those games have kept me entertained for thousands of hours, and will undoubtedly keep me entertained for thousands more. And I'm looking forward to a couple new games on the horizon as well. But when this current console generation is over, it's time for me to vote with my wallet, and by extension, my conscience.