Will We Still be Able to Play our Games in 20 Years?

Posted by Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory
on July 12th, 2010
Filed Under: Articles

I really enjoy playing old games. This will come as no surprise to readers that keep up with our Friday Old Games series. But when I do get in the retro mood, I almost always do it on the real console. ROMs, collections, and downloadable releases just don’t feel the same as hooking up an NES (or whatever other system) and playing the game with the setup it was intended for, controller and all.

Lately, this has got me thinking. 20 years from now, will we still be able to experience this current generation of games? And if so, to what capacity?

While this isn’t the first generation of consoles to have online functionality, it has made the biggest leap into online integration by far. Achievements/Trophies, leaderboards, patches, DLC, digitally distributed games, online multiplayer with no options for local; these are all common aspects of gaming on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Achievements and Trophies pose arguably the smallest problem. By the time support for hosting your gamerscore is finally pulled, I doubt many will care. By then we’ll have some new type of point value to feed our narcissism and, after all, who cares about the points anyway if nobody else is actively looking at them?

The lack of local multiplayer is a bigger issue. At some point, this generation of games’ online multiplayer functionality will cease to function. Games such as Halo 2, which is only one generation behind, have already had their servers shut down. While shutting down Halo is a less of an issue due to it’s robust local multiplayer options, what about a game like MAG?

MAG is an online-only game. When the servers go down, the game can no longer be played. While this is a more extreme example, think of games based on user-generated content like Little Big Planet. Sure, we’ll still be able to play the developer-made levels and even create our own, but arguably one of the biggest draws of the game is playing a seemingly infinite number of levels from the online community.

Games are being patched more than ever before. Some of these patches tweak aspects of the game to make them more enjoyable while others fix game-crashing bugs. If one day, a console generation or two from now, I pick up an old game from this generation, it’s likely that I’ll be at the mercy of whatever the developers managed to get on the disc. The “we can just patch that problem later” mentality could end up with some repercussions in the future of retro gaming.

Digitally distributed games are something I can only hope console makers are thinking actively about. I sincerely hope the Playstation 4 and Xbox 720 will be able to play the PSN and XBLA games you’ve purchased, but at this point it’s hard to say what exactly will happen. If those storefronts close, it’s a sad thought to think of games like Geometry Wars 2 having no way to be purchased.

My biggest concern, though, is the systems working at all. Remember the ApocalyPS3? An internal clock-issue caused all kinds of havoc for a short time, regardless of whether you were trying to connect online. The point is not that I think this exact same issue will happen again. But what about similar issues? Who is going to care to fix a system breaking issue on a system that is two console generations old? If console makers don’t support backwards compatibility with the next consoles, emulation might end up being the only way to continue playing these games.

While a bit grim to think about, we can always hope for the best. I suppose we can’t hold onto the past forever, but a man can dream.

Tags: digital distribution, Editorials, Geometry Wars 2, Little Big Planet, MAG, online gaming, ps3, psn, Xbox 360, xbox live

This entry was posted on Monday, July 12th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Will We Still be Able to Play our Games in 20 Years?”

July 12th, 2010 at 5:26 am
Michelle says:

I’ve noticed the same issue, it bothers me that so much of our game content is online only. Take Monster Hunter Tri as a recent example, the latter half of the game is only available online, and once the servers are switched off (which will only be in a matter of years) That content will be gone forever.

So in that regard its a shame that more games don’t allow you to play multiplayer or other online only content without a connection. Split screen options and the like are slowly and quietly being wound down or removed altogether, our games collections aren’t going to be nearly as complete in X years time.
July 12th, 2010 at 6:29 am
Vim says:

When the next generation comes around, Microsoft and Sony will be herding consumers to their new platforms with little regard for what had gone before. Look at the shambolic backwards compatability of original Xbox games, or Sony taking out the hardware PS2 emulation. Granted you can pick up the original consoles if you have a desire to play those games but next time this won’t be so simple.

Publishers know consumers will re-buy old games digitally, and generally want to move everything online. To them it makes perfect bsuiness sense, yet they show very little concern about what might happen to these games when the DRM servers are shut down – it’s all a very short-term attitude.

They love online too as it extends the life of a game and they can continue to make money from it via DLC. Great until the servers get shut down or people move onto something else, rendering the online component of games useless – but that’s another rant.

Meanwhile we can still play C64 games from 1985, and as long as the disc isn’t borked will be able to continue to do so.

Even great mountains crumble to dust eventually.
July 12th, 2010 at 8:23 am
J.J. says:

Rock Band is going to be a usueless husk in the future. Most of the game is DLC, and if your licenses are screwed up because of owning new hardware or whatever, there is going to be quite a bit of gameplay that will be lost to memory. And hard drives only last for so long, its not like replacing a battery in your old Zelda cart. In probably 15-20 years, when it’s toast, everything you paid for is gone.
July 12th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
ecco6t9 says:

See people who want to stick it to Gamestop by moving to DD only aren’t thinking about this.

I’m pretty sure in Futurama years a Game Boy and Tetris still work.
July 21st, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:

Wow, apparently Demon’s Souls online functionality could potentially shut down as early as 2011. I was not aware of this, but it’s stuff like this that made me write this article.
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/07/21/atlus-to-continue-demons-souls-servers-until-2011/
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:50 am
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:

In case you’re coming here for the first time thinking to yourself “this article sounds familiar…”, that might be because it was re-published (with permission) on Kotaku: http://kotaku.com/5593081/will-we-still-be-able-to-play-our-games-in-20-years
July 25th, 2010 at 1:21 am
Game Retail Store » This Week In Video Game Criticism: Affectation, Accessibility, Waggle says:

[...] the intriguingly named Wing Damage blog, Jesse “Main Finger” Gregory asks ‘Will We Still be Able to Play our Games in 20 Years?‘ Another pertinent question might equally be will we even want to play these games in 20 [...]