Why You Don’t Own Your Own Video Games Any More
3. It Will Actively Change How Games Are Made
Our diminishing sense of ownership is already changing how games are being made - just look at the free-to-play boom and how popular Games-as-a-Service titles are right now, both of which base their revenue less on the core experience - if at all - than on the peripheral gumph you can buy after-the-fact.
Between this and all the aforementioned subscription services, heavily curated single-player-focused titles are becoming rarer with each passing year, such that a 10-hour AAA game with no ancillary embellishments is tough to come by in 2020.
The reality is that these experiences have either been downgraded to AA or indie, or more likely, the AAA titles have been filled with engagement-encouraging bloat and filler to keep players glued to their consoles, and ideally pumping money into microtransactions where possible.
With regards to Xbox Game Pass, we're likely to see far more in the way of episodic and bite-sized content, where ownership becomes less of a priority perhaps - not to sniff at the quality of these games in any way.
But the darker side of this is subscription services like Game Pass focusing on titles that keep you hooked into their ecosystem at any and all cost, interested more in addiction-inducing mechanics as opposed to finite games you can comfortably beat in a weekend.
But the future isn't completely bleak and hopeless, and there are a number of ways which both companies and players themselves can help maximise their own sense of ownership...