Define "devalue"...

In the past production and distribution of physical media was a limiting factor. Boxes and disks had to produced, distributed and sold, with each part of the chain taking their share of the revenue. If you wanted to make and sell a game you needed to take this initial overhead into account. To make real money you needed to get your game boxes into the shelves of the big stores. Only a few of the bigger shareware companies like Apogee or Epic Games managed to bypass this way somewhat.

As you wrote digital distribution lead to a "democratization" since production and storage of copies so longer is a limiting issue. Storage space and download traffic costs are negligible. So effectively this lead to the creation of more games, including more niche and more artistic games (which in turn inspire the AAA production too). At the same time production costs for AAA titles have skyrocketed due to the large teams needed to create the amazing amount of detailed content compared to earlier games. But, on the other hand, games have become mainstream and player numbers skyrocketed especially when you count in mobile and social platform games.

From the customer POV of course, having a HDD full of installers or (with DRM) just some remote account with a few pictures can't compare to holding a nice box in your hand, esp. if the latter comes with a fat manual, a novella and a cloth map. And at the same time the sheer flood of new releases makes it impossible to even keep track. Back in the day we were looking forward to any new release, it was possible to know and even have played every "important" game (ok, I also had more time back then... lots).
You could call that "devaluation".

But on the other hand the game industry has become a billion dollar business - and at the same time with becoming mainstream the "art" in the genre also started to flourish. So as a medium, games have become more valuable to the people in general.

You could compare the situation to books and the invention of the printing press. The single hand-copied book was of course extremely valuable. But books as a medium became valuable to the "people" when printing made then affordable and more people were literate - catapulting reading into the mainstream and allowing many people to share their thoughts by the written word at the same time.

First, Yes! We're thinking along the same lines.

In my general argument price is what a storefront charges for a product. Value is a level of importance, want, or need ascribed to that same product by a consumer.

For example:

A new release game might be on GOG for the price of $59.99, but the value of that game to a consumer could be greater than the price or lesser.

I remember back when MP3's were new and a friend was constantly downloading from Limewire. He had thousands upon thousands upon thousands of songs, but his relationship with them was solely through a searchable list of titles. He didn't have to search long and hard through brick and mortars for years to find them, all were free or extremely inexpensive, and they all sat in a drive (actually in a few drives).

A few years passed and I asked "Hey, do you still listen to the songs on those drives?" He hardly listened to them at all.... whereas he still often played his much older vinyl collection.

At the end of the day, the ubiquitous availability of digital product -- and often extreme sales on that product -- plays right into a hoarding mentality, but most hoarders don't value most of what they hoard. I'll kindly call hoarders in gaming "collectors," and I think one of digital distribution's aims is to manipulate collectors.

Sorry, it's very late and I'm too tired to even put a thought together. But, I do appreciate all of the thoughts on this subject. Being an artist, how people value media (or don't) is important to me.

I have to say, I don't quite follow your logic here. amok said the promise was that digital distribution would lower the cost of games, then you said that the promise didn't work out, then he pointed out that the costs did in fact drop, then you said that's just the price, not value - which essentally translates to "lower cost", just as in the promise that amok mentioned at the start. He didn't say anything about the concept of an idealistic value.

Your definition of value seems a very personal one, and I guess that's often the case if you define the value of goods as more than their price. And that's perfectly fine, but then you have to find common denominators, values that others share with you. For me personally, being able to look at some plastic discs and casing doesn't have a superior value over having a download link in my account. In fact, I see it as a gain that digital goods take up no space in my living quarters, and the value of a game for me is in the game itself, not its packaging. And I appreciate the greater choice and availability over having to buy what a gatekeeper chose for me.

Of course, if you can get something easily, at low cost and in great quantities, chances are you value it less than something rare, expensive and hard to find that you can only afford a little of. The choice we have noawadays can be intimidating and overwhelming and at times prevent us from cherishing the individual thing. But I wouldn't want to go back to the old times where the value was artificially increased by inconvenience either.

Yep, as simple as that. I wouldn't buy a new PC game digitally for 45€, I would, however, definitely pay that much for a physical version (DRM-free of course). Heck, I've even paid ~80€ a couple of times for a new PC game in the last couple of months.

Haven't game prices been trending down since the 1990s? The recommended price of Nintendo systems, for example, was consistently US$199.99 from the SNES through the Gamecube; adjusting for inflation, the Gamecube was actually cheaper than its predecessors. Even now, the Switch is roughly the same price the SNES would have been (adjusted for inflation), despite the much more advanced technology.

Agreed with both of you. Been shelling out pretty big amounts of money for some physical games lately.

I never buy a digital game for full price.

Economies of scale for the win! ;) As much as some people like to bemoan the "dumbing down" and mainstreaming of video games, across the board it also made the entire hobby much more affordable than it used to be.

Exactly. I used to trawl pawn shops for GameCube games when I was in high school. Now I can get new games digitally for less than I paid back then.

And more explicitly linked to the OP's question... With digital distribution, I can bring my whole library with me when I travel internationally, which wasn't the case back then. When I moved from Canada to Indonesia, I left my GC to my brothers, who sold the system and pretty much all the games I had acquired for $100 or so (including some games that are worth like $100 now, like Eternal Darkness).

If anything, I'd say the lack of portability devalued those games for me more than the frequent sale prices and digital distribution. Now I may not need to think as long and hard about buying a new game as before, but I also don't mind if I end up buying a game that doesn't impress me all that much. That's win-win... developers get more money, and I get to experience more games.

Directly no, indirectly yes.

"Indirectly" meaning that digital distribution has made it much easier to release games (and movies and music and whatever) worldwide, meaning that nowadays there are MUCH more game developer and publisher companies and teams than back when the only option to buy a game was to go to a store and pick up a physical CD.

So the amount of games on the market has exploded (also considering that older games also stay in the digital stores and don't vanish to make room for newer games), which means much more competition between games, which means cheaper prices. Of course the smaller costs to the publisher also help to keep the prices down.

Supply and demand worked here. But in a different way.

Everyone has x amount of extra income. X can be negative or zero.

The market is flooded with every genre, type, cost, source, requirements, etc.

The money that goes into the industry can only go into the industry if it entices those extra dollars to be spent. That is done by selling at multiple price points, multiple genres, sources, requirements, etc. So there's something for everyone. Quite literally everyone, almost. If someone can afford a device, even a device that isn't being purchased with excess dollars, there's something free for it.

That sum of money is divided up to the studios, people, storefronts, ISPs, hardware vendors, advertising firms, etc, as their marketable value allows.

Gaming has attracted a lot more people, which draws more of the excess liquid purchasing power into the industry. And that attraction is due to there being something for everyone, ease of access, and multiple price points.

Folks are spending thousands of dollars into space simulators and candy crush. People are spend 99c for hours of fun. Some are spending advertising time.

I don't see a devaluation of games. I see competition and market reaction.

I agree, though if kai2 is talking about personal valuation of individual titles, then yes the great supply has caused devaluation.

By which I mean this: back in the day, games and hardware were more expensive, you'd have relatively few games (and correspondingly more time for any given title), and you'd value these games perhaps somewhat analogously to how someone who's got little money for food would value all the food they can get.

Now there's so many cheap games and too little time to play them all so you can say fuckit and simply abandon a game that you would've regarded highly back in the day. Just like someone who can afford to buy too much cheap food, overstock, let things spoil, and throw away something else just because it doesn't taste good enough.

prob the most succinct and true statement ive heard in awhile. and with all the analytics and marketing research im pretty positive its true. I recently mused on why i played a much small collection of games on another site rather than play my huge library here on gog. same with watching streaming services, i rarely watch prime due to the huge content, and even netflix is getting on my tits with having to search long times in order to find something. i often end up just watching my dvd collection or some tried and true rerun.

as someone who has a big box collection of games as well as digital... im tired of hoarding. most of those were bought as impulse 'flash deals to good to miss!' hype bs. id like to think this revelation curbed my hoarding but i just recently bought over 10 games ill prob never play.

ffs.

It's almost poetic, beautiful really. The diversity, adaptability, and affordable quality that capitalism provides in abundance make me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Great summary.

I'm in Croatia. Sure, I pay regional price, but here tax is 25%, 27% depending on thing you buy. Digital market has given me a chance for own large collection of games I wouldn't be able to afford or even buy due to import & export sheningans.

Cloth map, actual game box feels good on touch even dusty, but so do new books. It has nothing to do with physical, and lot to do with brain farts.

Did the absurd discounts start with Steam? I didn't actually recall them before it.
Maybe the devaluing trend has been caused by the increased availability & accessibility (and so competition) of digital goods.
I don't remember if it was due to some choice by Valve.

From a player's point of view such prices are great, but for a dev an early 50-80% sale must feel terrible..