The gaming industry is in transition, one as important as dedicated machines to removable cartridges or black and white to color.  I believe that once a decade has passed, gaming insiders and outsiders will point to this transition of gaming hardware and use it as the reference point for how the industry changed going forward, the 'Napster' moment of gaming if you will.  Where even though the signs already pointed where the momentum was heading, here we have the objects designed to capitalize on the inertia.

It was, future analysts may say, this time period that solidified the cultural insignificance of video games.

After making such a fatalistic, even crass statement, let me first say that I look forward to the game experiences of the future.  Only the first few months of 2013 brought me Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, Etrian Odyssey IV and Gears of War: Judgment's addictive Overrun mode, and the rest of the year includes many excellent looking games I am very much looking forward to.  I'm certainly not against playing modern games.  And no matter my critiques of the new hardware, I'm a gamer; one day I'll buy the newer shiny box to play on.

But now that the 'Big Three' have launched their initial salvo into the upcoming console war, the landscape of the battlefield has become visible, as well as the target areas that will be hit hardest.  And, much like real war, by the time the dust settles, the victors will be forced to wonder about the prices paid.

My opinions on these giant corporations contain no real loyalty; I've been called a fanboy, but if anything I'm overly critical on each.  I have no illusions that these companies exist to satisfy my entertainment desires.  Even the artists, writers, and content creators behind the indie scene have to eat, and are forced into Byzantine restrictions on their creations.  Not to say the inspiration doesn't come through, but without PR figureheads, interviews with game developers often highlight challenges during the creative process that had little to do with the actual artistic creation and more with the difficulties of creating a game in the modern market.

Still, what artist has not had to deal with money and politics?  And so many of us involved with gaming want it to be recognized as a medium of artistic worth, of cultural significance, on par with other media considered to posses real value.  For as many books, movies, and recorded music produced that seem to have little significance, no one questions the value of these forms of media.  As the relatively new kid, video games have had an uphill battle to show importance beyond, at best, 'kids toy,' or worse, 'murder simulator.'  With more focus on narrative and abstract storytelling, and easier-to-use tools that have taken game creation outside of the laboratory or office and into the living room, the medium of video games has never been in a better position to take its place alongside other forms of culturally significant forms of media.

Which is why this new generation of gaming consoles can be so very dangerous to achieving that end.

Not because of sequel-itis, out-of-control budgets, or immature content.  These issues are rampant in other media and they have not been diminished to cultural insignificance.  The problem facing modern video gaming is one of philosophy.  Games are, more and more, developed as a consumable and not as a product.

We are no longer buying a video game, we are leasing an entertainment experience.

Movies, music, and literature are also following this trend, of course.  But they are established, the culture universally accepts them, and while their distribution methods are following a parallel path to video games, their individual product permanence is much more assured.  Vinyl warps, cassettes wear out, CDs deteriorate, even digital media can be wiped out, but we find enough worth in the original creations to continue copying the material as newer storage methods develop. 

In the last decade, a growing realization has emerged in gaming culture, an awareness that we are losing history every day.  This has lead to a groundswell among collectors to preserve our heritage, and even big publishers have capitalized on the trend by releasing retro compilations.  Emulation, much as it can be reviled in game collector mentality, has been crucial in preserving gaming experiences that would otherwise be lost.  Now, anyone who witnessed a 70's Pink Floyd concert will tell you that listening to a CD is a far cry from the original experience, and it is much the same in classic gaming.  From the original Star Wars sit-down arcade cab, to spinning a real steering wheel while slamming the pedals in Crazy Taxi, to wielding an assault rifle in Space Gun,  some games will admittedly never reproduce the original experience on a different platform.  But if the gaming industry wants to be held upon the same ground as other culturally significant media, some level of tangible reference has to be available for both shared and personal experience.  The video game providers' transition from producing an item to developing a service effectively puts a sharper timetable on the total lifespan of each video game produced.

It is impossible and perhaps undesirable to capture every gaming experience for anyone to see, for all time.  But that's not really the point; as video games continue the trend of requiring online activation for single player games, content only stored 'on the cloud,' and gaming data pieced out and paid for individually, we are paying for a service, not an object.  And, one day that service will discontinue.  Servers will be permanently shut off, even for single player activation.  Some will have workarounds, often developed by a passionate community, but not all.  Some won't be worth the effort, and some just won't be possible.

So what?  Why does it matter that there are arcade games that cannot be MAME'd because of coded batteries that run out, or that in a few years the complete Mass Effect Trilogy will be impossible to experience because some of the DLC stories were on servers and not discs.  There will be new games!  Games on phones, tablets, contact lenses and refrigerators.  Our gaming content will not be tied to slow, clunky physical media.  Good riddance!

Games won't go away.  But their significance will dwindle, and so too their ability to have artful, cultural significance.

Say what you want about the original Star Wars trilogy.  Love it or... love it less than others, the cultural significance of it is undeniable.  Same with iconic music from, say the Doors, or Mozart.  Now, imagine that these were developed on ethereal media that shut down forever after a few years.  There will be memories of them for awhile, perhaps spiritual successors later, but if they were preserved at all, it is only by a small, niche, dedicated community.  Would these champions of their media be as loved and appreciated by millions of people if they were allowed to just fade away, replaced by the new, 'better' thing?  It is not that all we want is more Star Wars; we want Star Wars to hang around long enough to impact and inspire other content creators; not to be simply consumed as the next thing is coming.  We want these things to co-exist in the same space; Game of Thrones only exists because Lord of the Rings existed long enough to inspire it.

We are cutting off gaming's ability to stay culturally significant because we are moving away from the ability to produce a stored thing to be appreciated for generations, and instead moving toward a temporary fix to be consumed and then replaced.

But isn't this also true for movies, books, and music?  Who even buys a CD anymore?  The move to digital hasn't killed the ability to keep a song forever or rendered music as culturally insignificant.  But the difference is twofold.  First, books (literature), music, and movies are much more entrenched as universally accepted media of value, while much of the population could still care less about the cultural aspect of video games.  Second, barring a few examples, the content in music, literature, and movies are perpetually copied and passed down.  Modern video games are moving away from that, onto services that will eventually lock everyone out of experiencing games that were once digital-only or required server-based DRM certification.  These techniques are so obtrusive and slowly becoming so quickly and widely accepted that in a decade, while we'll likely still have access to the majority of literature, music, and movies created in that time, many video games made in the same era will be completely inaccessible.  Not just MMOs or the multiplayer of Call of Duty, but the new Shadow of the Colossus, Portal, Bioshock, or Super Mario.  Once that DRM server or Download is gone, so is the game, likely forever.  Those assuming that there will always be services like the Virtual Console and Steam to relive those memories only have to remember how many excellent old games we're still waiting on, likely to never arrive.

Some say its no real loss; we need to forget the past and play new games.  Hey, most of those games weren't nearly as good as our modern ones; worse graphics, control, awkward mechanics, etc.  But to those of us that truly desire to see video games treated as relevant as other media, our past and present (and the ability to experience it) is as importance as our future.

Video games won't go away; even during the Great Crash of '83, there was never a real danger that video games would just completely disappear.  The greater threat, and possibility, is that video games are here to stay, but no-one really cares.

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