Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
I guess you haven't been to a bookstore lately. 
But seriously, I'm not trying to draw an equivalence between the social or intellectual value of video games and books. Nor does the asserted inferiority of the medium matter. My point is that there isn't a great deal of protest about format obsolescence with digital products in general. People aren't completely up in arms that a game they paid $50 for a few years ago won't work on their current consoles. (Similarly, when we transitioned from 78s to 33 1/3 vinyl to CD's, the presumption that a vinyl record entitled one to a free CD didn't exactly take root; i.e. ownership does not always guarantee lifetime access to the cultural product.)
There are also many valid reasons to "treasure" a game from an earlier time, by the way, ranging from nostalgia to good ol' playability. |
The answer to this is simple. Those other formats always had the obsolescence factor built in, being relatively new technologies, especially video games. People know when they buy these things that they might not work 3 or 5 years down the line.
Books have always been forever. You bought a book and assuming you treated it right you could re-read it your whole life. When I was a kid my grandparents gave me boxes and boxes of books that were originally my mom's when she was a kid -- a complete set of Nancy Drew's up until she outgrew them, a set of Dana Girls and the Bobbsey Twins and others I can't remember. I still have those books and they are still readable now, 45-55 years later.
I don't mind paying once for an ebook that I already own a pbook copy of - I consider it the equivalent of wanting both the paperback and the hardback. However it is ridiculous to ask me to pay again and again if I just want to change the device I'm reading it on. It's the same book -- the same content -- and I already paid for it. That's why I strip all DRM, convert everything to epub and back them up both on a second hard drive and online.
Once I own a pbook I can do anything I want with it. I can read it a bazillion times or just once. I can even *gasp* lend it to a friend who then gets to read it for free. If the author changes publishers or the book goes out of print, my copy is still mine. Forever. In a non-DRM'ed and non-proprietary format. That's what I want and expect from my ebooks.
-Marcy