Examining the Decline of PC Game Collecting (& the PC game industry as well)
So, as the title said, why did PC gaming decline, and why has PC game collecting not taken off? I will mostly focus on the second question here, but will also mention some of my thoughts on the first one. For more on the decline of PC gaming in specific though see the thread linked at the bottom.
I have a good-sized collection of PC games from the '90s, and while I've bought lots of console games over the past ~8.5 years since I started buying lots of old videogames, computer games? Not so much. Sure, I've gotten plenty of on-sale digital stuff, but actual physical games... I have some for sure, dozens of games that I found at Goodwill or Salvation Army, but it's not all that many compared to the number of console games I've gotten.
Anyway, I think that there are several factors at work here. I'm sure they've been mentioned, but here are my thoughts:
1. The rise of digital has led fewer people to be interested in having the actual original physical releases. It's often easier and cheaper to buy stuff that has digital re-releases that way. However, on consoles this has not happened as much -- SNES prices have gone way up even while Virtual Console made many of those games re-purchaseable again in digital form -- but on the PC, that hasn't happened. Why? I'm not entirely sure, but the other reasons below might be some of the answers.
2. GOG and Steam re-releases of '90s PC games are usually easier to get running on your computer than the actual original game would be. In some cases, GOG has even fixed bugs or compatibility issues, and those fixes are exclusive to the GOG release. Better compatibility is a factor for sure.
3. Most PC games from the '80s to early '90s are on either 5.25" disks or 3.5" disks. Many people may have an older computer with a 3.5" drive, but those numbers are dropping steadily over time. You can get USB 3.5" drives, but most people don't have them and they aren't all reliable. 5.25" drives are much harder to find and require an older computer with floppy drive compatibility. The medium the games are on is an issue. Most games from the mid '90s on are on CDs or DVDs, so people can use those still (except for the few people with driveless PCs, but that's a minority), but earlier games aren't on discs.
4. Floppy disks are unreliable and fail often! This is a HUGE problem for all old computers, and also consoles that use floppy disks such as the Famicom Disk System. Floppy disks are a terrible thing to store data on long-term. They don't last, and are very likely to fail. I've gotten several games at Goodwill with one disk out of a 4 or 8 disk set that doesn't work. And of course, if one disk doesn't work, the whole game doesn't work. You can still look at and appreciate the box and manual, but for the actual game you'll have to download the game for that. CDs can be scratched too, but when well cared for last much longer than your average floppy does.
5. Floppy disk games on the PC didn't require you to keep the disk after the game was installed. As a result, many people surely just tossed the disks at some point, because they were just pointlessly sitting around and had no purpose once the game had been installed. CD games often have disc checks, so you see those discs frequently at thrift stores, but floppies didn't, so you don't.
6. PC games came in larger boxes than console games, and people often didn't keep the boxes after taking out the game disks or jewelcase and the manual. Sure, I have shelves full of empty PC game boxes in my basement, but most people wouldn't keep them, they are huge and serve little purpose beyond decoration. And once a game is out of its box, it's easy to lose the disks/discs, give them to someone else, damage them and throw them away sometime, what have you.
7. Because of compatibility issues, titles with one-time-use codes you have to register online, games with codewheels that went missing, etc. lots of stores don't want to deal with used PC games. Gamestop/EB sold used PC games for a couple of years in the late '90s to early '00s, but stopped after that and have not done so since. Other stores I remember going to in the '90s didn't ever sell used PC games. Between compatibility issues, one-time-use codes (for online or newer titles), and not being sure if all of the required stuff is included with the old game you're selling, I can absolutely understand why most stores simply don't bother with used PC games. Thrift stores like Goodwill or Salvation Army will take them, but that's about it really apart from ebay, most of the time. Computer games are definitely more of a hassle to deal with, and it takes a more dedicated consumer to want to deal with what might be required to get the game working. Sure when they first sold they'd work on then-modern computers fine, but now? Who knows. And should stores be expected to know which games come with one-time-use codes and which don't? For online sales, people can try to sell stuff, but you still need a highly educated consumer who knows what they're getting and what to avoid. Not everyone can be like that.
8. In the US at least, the PC won by the end of the '80s. Somehow, even though the Apple II and C64 were popular computers that decade too, and some people owned less successful computers like the Atari 8-bit line, Amiga, or Atari ST, I guess they weren't popular enough, because you virtually never see games for these in stores, and they're much less common online than their systems' sales figures (for the more successful ones) would suggest, I think. You can find them, sure, but finding games for a console that sold around the same amount will be easier. Why? Well, how much did the games sell? Not everyone with a computer bought games for it after all. Computer games on average didn't sell as well as console games, and console games were much more durably made (cartridges versus floppies!) too so more of them have survived. These differences have magnified over time. Also, see the next point.
9. Old computers may or may not be reliable, and are more complex than consoles so you need to know more about what you're doing to use one, in general. I don't know why C64 stuff is so uncommon, but I certainly can understand why people wouldn't want to deal with half hour long loading times again. (I never used a C64 myself, only PC and some Apple stuff, but it was like that.) They also take up more space than consoles and may require dedicated monitors, too. This can apply to PCs too, if you have games that just refuse to run on newer systems and aren't available on Steam or GOG. There are many such titles where the only good answer is an actual older PC. Getting all that working requires space and effort.
10. The shift from large boxes to small boxes in the early '00s, combined with Microsoft's move to consoles at that time, really hurt the PC gaming industry hard in the US. Smaller boxes require less shelf space, and then even less once it moved to DVD cases. This forced PC game manuals to shrink and extra materials to disappear. At the same time, the industry was consolizing and this led to even more of that. I made a thread a while back (I will link or post it below, in another post) about how PC gaming as it was is now dead, and that is still absolutely true -- PC gaming, as a form with lots of exclusive AAA titles, is dead. Digital sales have led to an indie renaissance, and more PC ports of console games than we'd had, and European markets have continued making computer games, but beyond that... well, there's some stuff from Kickstarter, but those games won't be in big boxes on retail shelves, and require Kickstarter to get funded in the first place. The point is, the death of PC gaming as it had been hurt the collector's market too, for sure. People have remarked on how prices for old Nintendo console games have gone up much more in recent years than prices for Genesis or Atari games, and it's absolutely true. The PC has been another casualty of this. And people who ARE interested in classic PC gaming have mostly settled for what they can easily get: GOG or Steam copies of stuff. Particularly for games that came with lots of manuals, maps, and the like there's nothing like the real thing, but the real thing is harder to find. And people who don't have good enough internet connections to download everything, because of where they live? Well they're pretty much out as far as modern PC gaming is concerned, I guess. I wish things were different, and the digital renaissance had helped out PC game retail too, but sadly it did not. Those Steam sale prices sure are tempting for those of us who can download stuff, but I'd love to have more modern PC games physical too... particularly if stupid online DRM mechanisms would go away from games that don't need them.
The result has been that for various reasons, collectors have focused more on classic console games than classic PC games. Computers like the Commodore 64, Apple II, and PC sold millions back in the '80s, but I don't think I've ever seen a C64, Apple, or '80s PC game in a used game store around here! Well, I saw an '80s PC game... once. That's it. Even on systems where you didn't usually have a hard drive, like was true for most '80s computers, for whatever reason people either didn't keep the disks, or they corrupted and people then threw them away. Also even though lots of people had computers, more gamers had consoles, clearly. The market interest follows what the majority had, consoles. Console games are also much easier to run on a modern system of course. Still, this one I don't entirely have an answer for. I'd think that I'd see more old computer games around, in person or online, given how many people did own computers then compared to consoles. But, you don't. The games seem to have vanished. I don't really know why, really; though the above factors are surely many of the reasons, despite all that I'd think they'd be more common than they are. But clearly, they aren't. As for prices, that's purely an issue of demand. Less demand means lower prices. There are some old PC games that have value -- my retail copy of Zone 66 Missions 3 & 4 is definitely worth some money -- but most aren't worth much because they aren't in demand.
Too sum it up though, I really do think that lack of a used market on the PC because of all the games that put hurdles up or make it impossible to resell games and the fading of the PC in the early '00s are critical reasons for why there aren't as many PC game collectors. You often can't just buy the box (of a used PC game) and have it work, and which ones will and which wouldn't for newer games isn't always clear. And without a used market, it's hard to get a lot of stores to put serious effort into selling PC games -- local places and Gamestops alike all rely heavily on used sales.
I know that some people would say "well, it's because Steam killed retail and it's better", but the two things did not happen in that order! First PC retail started to die, and then several years later came the rise of Steam and other digital distribution platforms. If PC retail hadn't died along with the North American PC-specific (non-MMO or indie) game development community, Steam wouldn't be quite as dominant today -- because as nice as Steam is, if there was still a serious physical option for PC games, I think that at least some people would be interested. That tiny section of PC games in Gamestops or Wal-Mart or whatever is only a small fraction of what it was back in the '90s after all.
Yeah, digital is a strong competitor, but not everyone has wants to or an internet connection good enough to go all digital, and right now, a lot of those people are pretty much left out as far as PC gaming goes. Some PC games have physical releases, but these days quite a few do not. So those people just mostly play console games, I'm sure, and must be part of why consoles have been getting more pushback than PC games did against going digital -- console gaming still has a strong retail scene to defend, after all. By the time PC games started going digital-focused, once again, the retail side was already mostly dead and PC gaming was in very bad shape, and unfortunately the digital-led rebirth didn't help used games, collecting, or PC retail one bit. And so the result is, PC game "collecting" now is often just about how long your Steam list is. That's something, and I have lots of digital games from all those sales too, but it's not quite the same as having lots of physical items, it just isn't. And yes, as I've said before, the loss of used games and resale rights really is a HUGE problem with the industry now, and it's going to get a lot worse as consoles head towards digital too. Digital rights are a huge problem with no solution.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=390128 - I wrote this a few years ago, about the death as PC gaming as it was. Since then digital has risen to new heights, the indie boom has grown a lot, and kickstarter has allowed for some interesting things as well, but core big-budget titles are still as console-focused as ever. That's to be expected, but it means that most of what I said there is still valid.
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