Nostalgia for Hard Limits on Video Games

I think that gaming in the ’80s, ’90s, and even 2000s had a massive advantage over gaming today: When a game was out, it was out.

In those days, downloadable content was not yet practical, even if it was technologically possible. One couldn’t just buy a game from the living room — you had to go out and purchase a physical cartridge or disc. The game you had was the definitive version of that game, no questions asked, no do-overs.

These hard limits meant that any game released to the public had to be thoroughly tested and feature-complete. No rushed releases that used customers as unpaid testers. No adding new content forever in DLC. No microtransactions. Nothing but the game. While not every game released in those eras was high-quality, these hard limits ensured that the games you got had care and craft put into them, especially since all those physical cartridges and discs needed to be manufactured and distributed, and that cost a pretty penny. Any shovelware would sink like a stone as stores failed to restock poorly-selling games.

Today? Always-on internet has spoiled developers. Content can just be added forever and ever. No more discipline is needed in design, for the base game doesn’t have to be perfect since it can always be patched later — and all these patches and DLC render cartridge or disc-based games utterly meaningless, since the additional content is not saved on the base cartridge.

The video game crash of 1983 happened at a time when the game industry was smaller and there were only a few ways to get video games. Now, so many people play globally that a crash like the 1983 crash doesn’t even seem possible, though a downturn certainly is. All I ask is that developers act as if the release copy of a game will be the definitive version, with patches and DLC being rare.

But I hear that the economics of modern AAA game development don’t allow that.