"People don't care about owning music or movies anymore. They stream everything. Why wouldn't the same thing apply to games?"

This is flawed logic.

There is a fundamental difference between games and almost all other forms of media. Games are not simply consumables... (🧵)

You watch a show, you listen to a song, but you do not *participate* in shaping that media. Those things are fixed. They do not evolve, nor does your place inside of it change, as you consume it over time.

Games are media co-created by you, the player.

People lost interest in filling their shelves with physical media, or disk drives with digital media, because the benefit of easy + cheap access outweighed benefits of ownership. Who cares about owning this thing that there are hundreds of thousands or millions of copies of?

Every game, especially online games, is a 1 of 1 instance of that media. It is composed of your particular storyline, your character stats, and a unique combination of items. It is a singular piece of media that you've put your time, skills, or creativity into.

Things like XBOX Game Pass will continue to thrive. A system that gives people access to countless titles is extremely appealing. Games themselves (before they are played) are not unique, and owning them, much like movies and music, will not feel special, until you play them.

Subscription services will not (in their current state) solve for the desire players will have to preserve their achievements + acquisitions. In less than 20 years, players have gotten comfortable with not owning any of their game items because publishers normalized that reality.

This will be a short-lived blip in the history of gaming. At least that's the prediction I have for the future. Players put a tremendous amount of themselves into the media of gaming, and when presented with better options for ownership, they'll slowly...then quickly demand it.

There will be a spectrum of technologies and business models that lead to this reality. I'm not here to prescribe who the winners will be, but rather argue for the overall premise that ownership of digital assets in games is a powerful and needed feature.

My goal in this particular subject is to be a patient educator, curator of the best examples, and advisor to the best game designers bold enough to build this future state.

gg ✅