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Bytes vs. Bindings: Digital Media vs. Physical Media with Chris, Rui, and Logan
37 Plays8 months ago
In this engaging episode of the CodePlay Culture Podcast, we bring together Chris, Rui, and Logan to tackle the ongoing debate between digital media and physical media. We delve into the advantages and challenges of both formats across various domains including video games, books, and music. Our guests share their personal preferences and professional insights on issues like convenience, environmental impact, collectibility, and user experience. This conversation also explores how recent technological advancements and shifting consumer behaviors are influencing the market dynamics and cultural significance of media consumption. Tune in as we dissect whether the future of media is destined to be entirely digital or if there's still a cherished place for physical media in our digital age.
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Transcript
Introduction to Codeplay Culture Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Codeplay Culture podcast, where we discuss tech, gaming, health, and the world around us.
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome back to Codeplay Culture podcast. Today, Chris, Ruby, and Logan, we are going to briefly touch in on a topic that's near and dear to a lot of our hearts, these nostalgic video game player people, myself being one of them, physical versus digital. This whole trend of you don't need a disc. You don't need to get off of your sofa. You can just switch the game just like apps.
Physical vs Digital Media in Gaming
00:00:41
Speaker
But then there's also that whole collector, I have a lot of books on my bookshelf, I have a lot of games, this whole move of not releasing physical.
00:00:51
Speaker
And, um, yeah, right. Chris, go ahead. Oh, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And for, for those listening with audio in, um, the background, uh, Chris has a plethora of books, games, movies. Um, I think I see some big PC box games. You remember like they were like the size of a box of Cheerios before back in the daily Warcraft. I remember those. Yeah. No, I love them. Books are upstairs. All the board games are downstairs in the basement.
00:01:19
Speaker
Um, board games, like when you're bored of games board, do you, do you have any of those board games that are like the re-release of like monopoly that's like, like super high end. You're like, Oh, I don't want to touch it. It's like white glove, 250 bucks. These like reissues of like, they made them all high end. Well, I mean, some of the, some of the board games I have are pretty high end. Like a few are still in strength because they're collectors items, but I'm not a big collector in general. It's just, yeah.
00:01:46
Speaker
You know, there are games that don't see the table very often anyway, but I got a good copy, like whether it be in an auction or game or game auction or something. But there's only a few of those that are treasured items. But so what makes it so collectible in terms of board games? A lot of like the old Avalon Hill board games, especially some of the older war games, I'm not a big fan of as a genre, but some of those games, like old bookshelf games, you saw that you put them up there looked like the sizing looks like a book.
00:02:10
Speaker
Yeah, just finding them with all the pieces. And if you find one seal, the many things were printed in small print runs in the 1970s. Most people play them online. So having a physical copy, it's just it's nice to have. Yeah. My group of friends, I play this real old game called Source of the Nile that we built a whole like better character sheets and we'd play it and had very fond memories. I mean, they're hard to find. I spent
00:02:35
Speaker
$55 for a good condition one at auction many years ago and then like laminated the board Doesn't it's a bit dated but yeah just to have that as a nice memory to my friends and at some point, you know bust it out would be fun, but Right. I've seen people blow four or five hundred dollars on like mint condition games in the 50s and 60s and
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, you want physical? Boy, you're going to pay. Even modern board games, they'll come up with high-end versions where all the figures are all 3D printed and painted. Was that Kim Kardashian crystal? What's that crystal jeweler?
00:03:15
Speaker
Swarvanotsky or is that like a Russian mafia guy or is it you know what I'm talking about like the is like they should have little like monopoly pieces of like pure crystal and they're like, Oh, sets to rate. Yeah. Real nice even ghost that is a couple hundred dollars.
Challenges with Digital Licenses
00:03:33
Speaker
Yeah. And it is not a complete like anti-segue for like hitting board games right away in this topic. It is still the physical versus digital. I have friends that just played chess online, but they grew up like loving it, playing it physically. I get it. Yes, there's a, I don't know, I don't want to be too opinionated on it. But I think this is a topic that we're going to have to advocate for our opinions and
00:04:00
Speaker
I'm of the personal opinion that if I plop down 80 bucks for Final Fantasy, whatever, I don't wanna have a digital license that is subject to whatever that I don't have physically. The license is stored on the disc, let's say, from a ULA perspective, license agreement perspective. If you take that away, one time I had to migrate from
00:04:27
Speaker
a PS3 to a PS3 Slim, and it was like a back and forth with Sony to get my SingStar songs that I purchased, like $200 in, yeah, you know, I do karaoke, big deal, want to fight, you know, like from Family Guy, it's like, big deal, want to fight.
00:04:46
Speaker
No, it's like a thing that my wife and her friends, we have people over and do it. It's like, uh, and then it's like 200 bucks in like sing star games. I'm like, you transferred new PS three. Like you don't get those. It just, it's regionally locked, like whatever I'm like.
00:05:02
Speaker
The whole thing of like, hey, I'm Elon, I'll just turn off the Teslas at free will. I'm not saying that's a thing, but it can be done for a lot of good, like providing satellite internet to Ukraine during times when they can't get it or whatever it is. But my point is if you walk into a store and buy a pizza, I just don't want a digital representation. That's a bad example. But you get what I'm trying to say for getting something for something.
00:05:26
Speaker
right right and it's not good for the consumer right um as a consumer i want to have i want to own that product that i purchased i want to give it to my friends or lend it out right but i can't because it's it's it's a digital asset so sony tried to mitigate that using their their game sharing technology which is um it's good but it's just not there right you can't resell your games you can let your friends borrow it but you can't
00:05:51
Speaker
And I think if I'm not mistaken, that's within the household. Hmm. I didn't know about that. That's cool. But I'm not sure. But it's definitely not good for the consumer. Yeah, but that's the whole drawback to a digital asset, too, right? Because there's already going to be a date in terms of the platform with which you can play it on. I mean, having published board games, we had a we had a digital app. We had a award winning digital app for our game, Epigo.
00:06:18
Speaker
But as soon as apples went from a 32 bit to 64 bit, it didn't work anymore. The second you updated your iPhone, you couldn't download the app anymore. They took it off the app store. We had no control over it. Well, you can make it a 64-bit app. I'm like, well, we don't have any money for that. So again, even that was seven
Limitations of Digital Assets and Licensing
00:06:39
Speaker
or eight years ago. Things can change.
00:06:42
Speaker
And they're completely out of your control as a game developer for the most part. I think that's gotten better with, and you guys are more into this world of coding where you can do things more in HTML5 and other platform independent apps or programming languages, which definitely helps. But I think that's why you're seeing even these classic games, these PlayStation, but the physical, tangible assets are actually holding value now because there's only so many of them made.
00:07:12
Speaker
even Nintendo games that have all been ported over into the online switch world, the physical games haven't lost value and it's pretty crazy. Right. Yeah. Like a switch.
00:07:23
Speaker
a game called Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, something like that, Pixel Remaster Collection. So when we were at Game Haven, and shout out to Game Haven in Burlington, Ontario, Canada, great people there. Very elaborate. Yeah, bring cash. It's like a
00:07:49
Speaker
very organized collection. Like if you had like micro play or game stops back in the day, like a mom and pop game stop that had everything under the sun. It's incredible.
Collectibility of Limited Physical Releases
00:08:01
Speaker
Like, so we went there a couple of days ago, um, got beaten Kaitos one and two, which was a game cube, uh, release. And then they re-released it HD remastered on switch. And
00:08:13
Speaker
And it didn't get, what he was explaining is there was, it was hard to come by the physical releases for North American. So this was a, I guess, Peggy 13, you know, Peggy rated European, you know, pal, you know, forum format, but because all of the consoles like right now, I think I know switch and PS, I think they're all region like unlocked, right? So as long as you have English in there, or even if you don't subtitles and like a Japanese import,
00:08:40
Speaker
just worked so i popped in the european um baton kytos one and two to the switch good to go no issues um and then he mentioned about this final fantasy remastered pixel edition which is final fantasy one through six
00:08:57
Speaker
the eight bit one where they've up res to like the best of the best to be like 10 ADP. And I was like, oh my God, they didn't know about this. And then I looked, it was like a PS4 version, really? And then when you Google it, it's like, the first thing that comes up is Reddit. How are they selling the physical release of this for over 200 bucks? Because apparently it only came out short and now it's like, people really want physical.
00:09:23
Speaker
Right. Yeah. The it's the thing with cash, too. And like, let's go all like like debit credit Bitcoin. Like, no, like I think it's there's something to be said about like making a stand for the retainment of we're not like low techs fighting for paper. Like we're pro like we're pro carbon neutral, pro
Quality Differences: Physical vs Digital Media
00:09:43
Speaker
meaning we're just there's something to be said here. I'm not sure how I can articulate it more succinctly, but, you know, it has nothing to do with like pollution, you know.
00:09:53
Speaker
Yeah. You say that, but I think over 51% of the sales now are now digital on PSN. It's surpassed physical.
00:10:03
Speaker
Yeah, I might want to see whether that data is kind of coming from because if you're not being like a naysayer, but if you have like the PSN subscription, how are you counting those metrics, right? Because if you're like automatically counting the ones that you get for free every month and like, yeah, I don't think it counts those. I think it counts, um, you know, physical versus, you know, direct purchases, purchases right through the store, but I don't know. Can they track how many physical, I guess they can track how many go out.
00:10:30
Speaker
How many are shipped? How much can they get? You're not going to get all the individual store sales in the resale market, but you know how many you actually produced and delivered through distribution. When you put the disc into a PlayStation, they probably have some kind of like insert statement to a database of saying, Hey, this person put in the physical disc here and they might count those. Let's hope not, but it's possible. Yeah.
00:10:59
Speaker
Yeah, so in terms of like playing the game, right? Again, it's more fun having the physical disc, taking it to somebody's house, popping it in and playing. But at the same time, it's so convenient, right? Logan, I come to your place and we just log into my PSN account and got like hundreds, hundreds of fun games to play, right? That's why it's super convenient. PC games would have it almost good where you like install it and then you don't need the disc.
00:11:28
Speaker
but then the license, in a perfect world, like if they could figure out this from a licensing perspective, I put it in, it installs it, I don't need the disk, okay? It has a one and done and then maybe you can like alleviate that, like lift the license and say, okay, I'm selling this, I'm going to like,
00:11:46
Speaker
you know, deactivate my license tied to this. I don't want to switch discs, but I want to own the, I want them to be installed. They are installed. I guess when you put the disc in after it installs a 50, 60 gigabyte install of death stranding, it just really uses the disc as the license proof.
00:12:05
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, for PC, the only thing I've, I've only ever bought games on steam and I don't do a lot of PC gaming, but you know, my civ six license, if they're all on steam, like I never bought physical copies and, and this copy they do sell, they have really nice anniversary additions, but they, there was so much DLC anyway that, you know, actually owning like, I've got the poster in behind me because my buddy was one of the developers, but, um,
00:12:32
Speaker
If you have a love for a franchise or an IP, then yeah, you might want that physical collector's edition copy, but it's more of just like you'd have a piece of art on your wall.
00:12:42
Speaker
Yeah. Or, you know, have, have that tangible thing where someone walking through, oh, you're into Final Fantasy or you're into Civ, you know, I love it. It's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Same thing with books though, right? I mean, I know people that just love the Kindle because of the ease, like, oh, I can pay $3 for a book instead of 13. So there's no physical, you know, trees in there, but you know, there's a different feeling in reading. I don't want to hold another device and everyone has a personal preference. I think the same thing applies to games to some extent.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. I feel like I'm kicking and screaming as I'm being dragged down to the digital devil, you know? And I'm standing up for that stuff. But what you said there really resonates with me, Chris. I've done that before where I'll have like a Spotify description, and I listen to the album so many times. I'm like, I love this artist. I'm going to buy the CD. It's going to stay there shrink-wrapped on my shelf, whatever. But it was an extra little token of giving back as a
00:13:39
Speaker
Now, OK, like I bought, you know, the physical book of the four hour work week from Tim Ferriss, but I fell in love with the audible one that I purchased. Sometimes I'll purchase things multiple times as a way of showing I appreciate and love the content of this content creator. Yeah, I love that philosophy, too. And I wanted to ask you about the game that's not 64 bit. I know we talked a little bit about that. Do you want to send us a code and we can like
00:14:06
Speaker
let's say we could spend four hours to just like put it right back in the app store. Like I'd love to. Well, that seems like a cool little pro bono challenge, you know? Yeah, but even so even still, I mean, you know, we produced
00:14:21
Speaker
just happened to have a handy copy. We produced Epico, right? This was from 2010 now. And yeah, making a box that was 12.5 inches by 12.5 inches was a big mistake. I'll keep that clean because it's impossible to fit in any US postal service boxes. But we had an awesome board game store open up about a month ago in a town over from me. Fantastic owner is a great guy. And him and his wife, I was able to sell them copies. I still have this physical asset.
00:14:51
Speaker
boxes upon boxes down on my basement, whereas the digital app is useless until I get someone to write the code. Board games are a special case because I think that the novelty is in the physical manifestation of pieces and flipping cards, shuffling. Those are always fond memories. I'm getting my daughter into it as well.
00:15:16
Speaker
I love board games. Yeah. I'm just teaching my son how to play risk right now. So I bought, I bought risk many years ago, risk 2049. It was a futuristic risk. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, we're just like, I'm teaching you how to play, how to play. We're playing like a watered down version where, you know, roll the dice and just attack, you know, just the basics, very, very basics. Yeah. But man, it's fun. It's fun. You're going to have memory.
00:15:39
Speaker
memories tired of that game, right? When your son finds that in the in the closet 20 years from now, he'll remember playing those games with you, right? Yeah. And that's, you know, I can go down to my board games, and some of these haven't seen the table since I had kids, right? Five, six, seven years, some are older, but I, I can instantly put myself back in that place when I whenever I see that object. It's the same book on a shelf or video game case that's on that it's on your mantle, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. For a brief moment, we transported into those memories. Yeah. I mean,
00:16:07
Speaker
You know, some of these I listen to an auto audiobook and I either picked up a copy to use bookstore or you just bought it new just to have it on the shelf because, you know, exactly your point support the support the author, but
00:16:19
Speaker
Yeah, no, it makes sense. And yeah, about the memories, right? So like, we'll crack open again, physical DVDs too. And we talked about this last time, but crack open those DVDs and, you know, pop one in and yeah, it's fun. Just crack them open, man. Yeah. It was like my wife,
00:16:41
Speaker
doesn't come down to the basement that often because I don't, I'm working on making it more clean and tidy to be up to her level of standards to be around. Um, but like, she's like super, you know, eighth year champion, whatever minimalist where I'm like a novice, where I'm trying to get there. So she comes out and she's like, how do we get all these like 4k Blu-rays? I'm like, we have, we have like Netflix, which has, you know, Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision, 4k. Like why do we have that? And
00:17:08
Speaker
And I was like, well, let me have a guess over it. And I put it into Xbox Series X 4K. And then it's like HDMI 2.2 right to an Atmos receiver, 9.2 speakers. Even though it says Dolby Atmos Dolby Vision on Netflix, and if you have a gigabit fiber up and down to your ISP,
00:17:32
Speaker
Like they're still buffering. They're still, it's not lossless. It's not a hundred percent. Like it is such a dramatic difference in quality by having a physical with 4k discs alone. Like you can take that back to Blu-ray or DVD or maybe like.
00:17:48
Speaker
I get maybe streaming a beta max or streaming a DVD, sorry, streaming 4K is probably better than DVD quality Disney or whatever. Maybe, maybe not, whatever. But there is a certain thing to say, hey, take the physical current equivalent 4K or Blu-ray. It's better physical. Like it's higher quality. It's like if you're an audio file, video file, like
00:18:10
Speaker
Damn, it's so worth it to buy physical your favorite movies, you know? Right. But even then, a CD is still digitized, right? Yeah. Even Blu-ray digitized where you're seeing a big push back towards analog. I mean, that's why vinyl records, you see them everywhere. Oh, yes. Yeah. I do love the click and the pop.
00:18:28
Speaker
Like that's not like a, you know, a ghetto hip hop thing or whatever, like for ruffling people down. But like of records that like pretty click and pop. A lot of my favorite artists are Vinnie passes like two albums ago and I messaged him on Twitter. I was like, I was like humbled by him responding to me. He's like, yeah, we only came out with it on vinyl. I was like, good for you guys. Right. Like I love that. So I should probably buy that one. But
00:18:59
Speaker
I like that. I got a, you got one, uh, Ruby, the next time I see you, Chris, I'll have to give you a, like, we have like this really cool from Amazon provide these like suitcase level vinyl players. Looks like you're going into, uh, like your hit man going on a job with a suitcase where you open it up. It's a really convenient, uh, USB Bluetooth and you know, physical analog player, but you're right about analog. Yeah.
00:19:24
Speaker
Can I just show you this? You probably don't see this on the board. You don't hear this on the audio podcast. But if I click this desk view, you see how it's showing here? Yeah. What do you think about an AI version of your board game, Chris, where it would show the pieces digitally on the board and then it's an actual
00:19:47
Speaker
You know, an AR version of they're doing that with Minecraft and stuff where you can. There's there's a program called Tabletop Simulator, and that got a lot of it's highly prevalent in the board game prototyping industry. Yeah, the whole world. I mean, that's where a lot of play testing is done because play testers is hard to get together. You made people around the world where it's physically moving things in a 3D space. Yeah. But it's more of a platform and you just program, you know, add in your art files, add in, you know, I want to be able to roll the dice. What's on the die?
00:20:15
Speaker
So there's that You have board game arenas imply them a popular place to play on play game strategy games online They have a lot of the popular ones and they're great ways to play there's you know, still something is lacking but yeah, yeah, you know, are you trying to get the the plays in of a game to discover its mechanical and or thematic depth or are you Trying to have you know focusing on the moment and the collectiveness of the game, right? I think that
00:20:42
Speaker
you can approach any game or piece of art in different ways. Like that's, I think reading a book physically versus listening to an audio book are going to be different experiences. And if you really love something, you want to get all those experiences, right? Like I played through the ages, like my favorite desert island board game, I'd say 400 times at a conservative estimate. And I'd say 370 of those, maybe less are digital.
00:21:11
Speaker
I still remember that the games I played, you know, how I learned the game and with the physical pieces, I still have my previous version of the game downstairs. I probably won't see the table till my kids at least 15, but that's how, you know, she'll get introduced to it. But, you know, it doesn't make me my love for the game or my physical copy any less different. It's just I wanted to explore the mechanical depth. And the only way is to play online because each game typically takes three to four hours.
00:21:37
Speaker
Um, so digital implementations can really help support a game's audience, right? I'm still playing the game because I have that digital way to keep, keep playing it connections with the people who also play it, right? It depends on how obscure a piece of art is and games and video games, board games, books. I mean, they're all art, right? Yeah.
00:22:00
Speaker
Should we have G tins on these things, like globally unique identifiers? Same thing they did with like the like GS1 did with agriculture and like apples have the same barcode globally and all that stuff for digital assets. I'm not saying NFTs, but I'm talking about like, hey, if I create a Word document on my desktop and it says, you know, Logan is cool and I save it, like should that not generate like a unique piece of whatever with a license and kind of like NFTs, but for every single thing that's like
00:22:29
Speaker
I don't know, but then we're getting into global repository, big brother level of we can see it all and know it all. But yeah. Yeah. And it's also you want the providence of it, right? If you make a digital copy of a digital game, you know, tweak a few things and you just can you go sell it? Yeah.
00:22:47
Speaker
As a content creator, I'm like, hell no. That's my idea. But even then, there's no enforcement for any of that crap anyway. Yeah. China will still, they'll just dismantle it and remake it, regurgitate it. That's typically what happens with physical electronics and stuff like that. Whatever. I don't blame anyone for trying to be a smart capitalist. I feel like a lot of people that sell software online found this really good SDK for
00:23:16
Speaker
imagine the most beautiful maps you've ever seen, not Google maps, not like Waze, not Tesla, it's called Mapbox. And I think like Skip the Dishes and all these people use it and it shows like it's like just they're not like Uber doesn't have their own, like it's like literally a very behind the scenes like, oh, it's a software kit for iOS and Android, but they're not open source, but they have all the code
00:23:42
Speaker
Well, they're open source, but you have to pay for the license, but you can literally go get the code, download it and just use it. But in their licensing terms on GitHub says you need a license for this or you're going to be like legally pursued. So it's like the whole licensing thing of.
00:23:57
Speaker
Um, yeah, like you should buy it, but like, here you go. If you want to, whatever. Um, but yeah, it's hard to like patent chase people. If they're just going to like find loopholes, like we don't have the lawyers to do that, to be able to damn capitalism getting in the way of creativity. Once again, like let's make it fun first and forget about the money. It's like hard to say when you got to feed your family. Yeah, absolutely, man.
Impact of Remakes on Classic Games
00:24:22
Speaker
Um, that's a good point.
00:24:25
Speaker
You know, even even with, you know, we talked before about the digitization of older games, right? And I guess the most recent thing in the gaming world has been the Tetris kid, right? Who has only got the game to defeated it against the right term. Yeah, he completed Tetris.
00:24:44
Speaker
Yeah, well, he got a kill screen in Tetris, right? But there were guys that went through this crazy math of like how to actually generate the kill screen. I went through the history of this. But like, just the technique, there was the whole technique of like tapping the bottom of the controller to get like, impossible, like for someone to actually move the things left and right. Like people figured out physical ways of like getting the pieces to move faster.
00:25:05
Speaker
And it took decades until no one thought about this until these kids started trying to break the game. But like, you can't, you know, Tetris has been remade for how many times, right? Yep. You can download Tetris 99 on your Switch. But like, you can't do that. Right. You can't do that. Like, they've made it more accessible. Sure. They've added more bells and whistles and more fancy music. But like,
00:25:27
Speaker
That physical NES game has got somewhat value because you need an actual old Nintendo controller and you need that combination to generate a kill screen to do this. Yes. And to build this whole cult following around it. I think that's where the value is from this stuff. It's having that physical experience. Yeah. But the newer systems I don't think have that.
00:25:52
Speaker
because it's getting more and more away from it, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like if Nintendo switch could just like become like Nintendo switch 4K to like the new version. It's like, oh, we're just an app now. Would you really be surprised a little bit? But like, OK, that makes sense. Like with all the.
00:26:09
Speaker
I was like, I clicked on the wrong thing on our bedroom Samsung TV, and I thought it was Xbox hooked up to HDMI one, but it was really Samsung's Xbox app for the Xbox cloud streaming service like Netflix. I was like, okay, yeah, video games is just like a Netflix that streams now.
00:26:29
Speaker
weirdly, I watched this YouTube video last night, which is a guy talking about Adobe suite of products, how everyone pirates them. And for good reason in his, he's like, the video was called pirating Adobe software is good, change my mind or something like thing like that is because
00:26:50
Speaker
like the old versions, you can't activate them anymore. Let's say you plopped a thousand bucks down for a CS2 Dreamweaver or whatever fireworks. Because the activation server has been deprecated, when you install that on a new machine, even if you have let's say XP that will run it or whatever, it just won't activate. What he's advocating for is, no, I purchased that.
00:27:15
Speaker
Um, and they're like, you know, so there is something to be said about the old console will play the game a hundred percent, as long as it doesn't go through a hardware failure or whatever it is. Um, and then there's like this whole, like, yeah, maybe it won't work on the next one because they were using emulators and updates to backwards compatibility to habit. So.
00:27:37
Speaker
I think like you do need to have like if you do care about that piece of content, you got to take care of it and like, you know, make sure it's not like aging or dying due to like natural, you know. Yeah. But you're not going to develop a game unless you think that there's actually a market for it still. Right. If there's some redeeming qualities of it. So it's also a way to get these things to continue to survive. It's the reason you reprint a book. All right. So it's not three thousand copies and it exists. There's ten thousand, twenty thousand, hundred thousand.
00:28:05
Speaker
You want to keep things in the zeitgeist, you keep it in print. And you're only going to keep it in print if it's selling copies. I mean, that's capitalism, sure. But the same thing with redeveloping or modernizing a video game. It doesn't ruin the original experience. It just keeps it accessible.
00:28:25
Speaker
Yep. It makes it, it's like a version, you know, here's the new version, right? Like, and if it's not relevant, maybe they won't have enough money to, or if they cloud fund it or go fund me, then it doesn't happen. Like keep it in the zeitgeist, right? Yeah. But sometimes it ruins it.
00:28:42
Speaker
Yes. Like remakes over remasters. Or just, you know, hey, listen, if you really love this, like there's the original version, you could play that. And, you know, again, people are introduced to it through a new vector. Yes. Don't increase the value of the older stuff, I think.
00:28:57
Speaker
for sure. Yeah. It's like the whole thing like turn your music down. What is that? And it's like, dad, it's rap. It's like, Oh, but it's not the rap that I listened to. I'm like, Okay, well, yeah, we'll think about it from our perspective, like not just everyone's perspective, it keeps it relevant. You know, it's a rehab. I think there's a deep seated human need for collectivity, right to assemble things hunter gatherer type type
00:29:19
Speaker
behavior where like, I think the high end of this collector, especially in the video game world, just insane, right? I went to a convention last year, it's like they have like, like old comic books will get graded, and they're in the plastic, right? And they have like, original SNES games, like in the in the original box mint condition, like it's in the sealed box, they'll never be open again. I'm like, and it's $20,000. I'm like, what? You can't open it can't play like it just kind of to me, it was a bridge to there is that cute collectivity aspect of it. There's just
00:29:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's a different breed for me, right? Yeah. I mean, like, I think play with your toys. I think mainly the people, yeah, the people who buy that are looking for, for investments, right? And they're short or long-term. I don't think they're gamers per se. They're just looking for some kind of way to make money. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's also the fact that the generation that grew up with physical games, right? Like I'll have disposable incomes and a nostalgia factor.
00:30:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's I think I think that's different than the vinyl thing, which is more of a desire for the analog. Yes.
00:30:30
Speaker
He wants to go back and play NES games. They're terrible. There's a handful of good ones. That's about it. Yeah, I do like when they up-res it. I think it was called 30-minute, 32nd Hero or something. Have you guys heard of that game? 32nd Hero, 30-minute Hero. It was on PlayStation 4 or 3, maybe like a downloadable one, 10 bucks, whatever.
00:30:52
Speaker
And it's like Final Fantasy, but you literally have like 30 minutes to beat the entire game. And when you're like running on the world map, it's like this whole amphetamine, like caffeine, like you go so quick. It's like this terrifying, like,
00:31:07
Speaker
Psychosis level of like this guy's jacked on Monster mixed with Red Bull and you have 30 minutes to figure out the game like to beat it and then it just resets But it's pretty cool It's got this great like techno music and then when you're in the battles for like, you know turn-based battles imagine they just go so quick it's like it's not as bad as I'm depicting it's really well done and
00:31:32
Speaker
but I'm not sure how I was getting. Oh yeah, so that was like a beautiful, like not 4K, but like 1080p 8-bit and getting back to Steam, that Final Fantasy remaster pixel collection on Steam is available. I can get that in digital and they're beautiful. Like Final Fantasy, let's say three and they have like, they've redone the fonts,
00:31:56
Speaker
Because the last one they got a whole bunch of negative feedback about that fonts not appropriate for that final fans like it's so good So like I do like that I can always get them on digital and But I do like I don't I don't expect everyone to make everything physical like I get there's a cost for that and
00:32:20
Speaker
But it's also made it more accessible because you can just, if you have the digital, you can just bring it on your laptop or your switch or whatever, you know, your PSP. And if you've got two young kids and it's nine o'clock at night and you're waiting for them to go to bed, like you're not going to have your whole, you know, PlayStation with a TV and everything else going, right? Yes, exactly. It's just, it comes down to how much do you love a thing and how you prefer to enjoy it.
00:32:47
Speaker
I mean, they have made it accessible with the region unlocking. It used to be much harder. You used to have to like, I think with PlayStation 1, you had to either have a PAL PS1 or you'd have to like mod your PS1. Like I remember my buddy Bart, he got it for his birthday. I was so jealous of like, oh no, it's for his first communion or something. And then you had to hold down
00:33:11
Speaker
like the you have to eject it and hold down the eject button and then the disc is spinning and take that disc off and put on I think I remember that it's like oh my god this is like some like MacGyver level of toothpicking which is super cool yeah I don't miss the days where I had to pull and tend to a cartridge
00:33:30
Speaker
It's like Nintendo harmonica. I'm allergic to dust now. Oh, my specific allergy to dust is Nintendo cartridges, the rest of the dust. Yes, silicone scrapings. It's like silicone fiberglass cough lately. All the actual lead in the solder on all those joints. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you had me at solder.
00:33:57
Speaker
I feel like I should solder because I think that's manly. No, man. Soldering is a good version of welding. Our college band led solder halfway through. Now it's still not the same, but it's way better than it was. The first non-led solder can was so bad. We have our own little treasure and supplies and we're like,
00:34:23
Speaker
You have like closet glue sniffers, but like on silicone instead of like, it does, it actually makes you prosperous, not takes away your life. You know, like, cause you're like building. Then your stuff just didn't work. Yeah. No. Technology. What were you soldering did? Hmm. What were you building? Electrical engineer. Like we were actually. Oh, I just, I didn't brush it off. Logical engineer. Oh, sorry. I was talking as an ocean engineer. So I did electrical and mechanical. Oh yeah. Like these are all underwater robots and stuff.
00:34:53
Speaker
Yeah. Like, so after you made the dolphins talk, when were you going to let us know that you've had these novel breakthroughs? Like, uh, oh, they're talking to the Pulitzer prize, surprise Pulitzer. It's almost feels where you have to go back for your master's and PhD. And I wasn't doing it. I just decided to go work on trains because that made sense.
00:35:07
Speaker
Yeah. Like Sheldon Cooper. This guy should probably not be so interested in choo choo choos. Honestly, you go into those Warhammer stores, I'm like, oh my God, I love this. I used to, the people that could paint them, I'm like,
00:35:26
Speaker
Like I used to admire them so much. It's like, how do you not use like a microscope to like paint this piece? Like seeing this one dude carve Godzilla out of a grain of rice or like this, there's like a Guinness book world record for the smallest and some things like this micro stuff is like pretty incredible.
00:35:46
Speaker
A lot of crazy hobbies out there. Yes. I mean, none of them are like, I think we'll get you a date, you know? I'd be like, oh yeah, what are you into? Wait, rice carving won't get you a date? What are you talking about? I like to hate real small like orcs and stuff. You're like, she's like, oh yeah? It's like, no, that's not going to like, it's not like that. But it's pretty nerdy. It's not very whatever. But you know what? I love that stuff. I love all that world. Like I'm a closet.
00:36:15
Speaker
I'm a, no, I'm a public geek, but I'm like trying to not be geeky or whatever it is. Like, it's like a cool, whatever. But like, yeah, I got my demons. Let the nerd flag fly. That's what I say. Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
Nostalgia and Memories of Board Games
00:36:31
Speaker
Speaking of which, Rui has agreed to pull me on his, I was going to say moped, but no, he's got a Harley. No, you got a Kawasaki, right?
00:36:40
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Ninja. Yeah. And then he's going to pull me on that on a skateboard. And there's a like a broken sidewalk near my house and it looks like a launch ramp, but it's very subtle incline. And so you got to go probably like what this episode of Jackass Canada is going to be like Jackass man. Long sleeve for sure. I'm not going in short sleeve. You know, wear a helmet. That would be a smart decision. But most skateboards don't wear it because they're, you know,
00:37:10
Speaker
It's not cool and whatever.
00:37:12
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I'll probably, uh, not wear a helmet. The thing with helmet experience is what you're saying. Yeah. I want the analog pro skater one and two. Yeah. I don't want to like be concussed. Like he's a little concussed. How can you tell? Well, he's like dripping his mouth juice onto my head right now. It's like, okay. Yeah. He might be a little contusion concussed, but contused. So after we do that, that jump, we're going to go to the, we talked about going to the playground and you're going to settle that merry go round.
00:37:41
Speaker
I'll put the wheel on that merry-go-round. It'll just accelerate and it'll just kind of spin. And we'll have some cool footage. We don't drink any kind of alcohol, so that's the closest we can get to the spins. I like it. I think it's probably healthier for you.
00:37:59
Speaker
I feel like next week we're going to rename this to the Cold Culture Podcast because you guys have too much fun playing with it. Yes. Not enough work. Yeah. We're going to do monkey bars and that whole zipline thing too at that same park.
00:38:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, for sure. We can do it. I feel like adults don't play anymore. I'd like to call on you, Chris, this afternoon and be like, and ask your wife, can Chris come out and play? And she'd be like, no, he doesn't play with losers like you. When's the last time you went outside and like, no, no kids involved. I'm just going to go play.
00:38:30
Speaker
Like I think it's really hockey where I literally you're right. Yeah, skateboard. And you really you like cruise around and you like you're on your Kawasaki with the baseball bat like a tank top baseball bat. Absolutely. Road rash. Road rash. That's a game, right?
Conclusion: Supporting Physical Media
00:38:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. We are at time for the digital express expressing to
00:38:57
Speaker
converting from physical to digital and so on and so forth. Final takeaways, I guess me personally, you know, in my opinion, I love digital. The accessibility, I prefer getting something for what I pay for. I do love them like a whole bunch of collection of books. Yeah. Support your creatives. Yeah, support your creatives. Chris, final thoughts?
00:39:23
Speaker
That's it. Just yeah. Pay for what you love because then the people that create what you love will be able to create more of it because they can feed their families. That's basically it. Absolutely. You can support local establishments that support like you talked about your game store in Burlington, your friendly local game stores, indie bookstores, because those are the people in your community that are helping to grow the community. Whereas opposed to a multinational corporation that's just trying to eke out their margins. So.
00:39:51
Speaker
You talked about the game store too, um, that open up over close in town by, but yeah, support your local. That's good. Rui. Yeah, nothing to add except, uh, don't get sucked into the, uh, 75% off PSN deals because, uh, yeah, it's a rabbit hole. PayPal disputes. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
00:40:19
Speaker
Thanks everyone. Thanks guys. Take care.