If you were playing video games 15 years ago, you remember the feeling of lining up at your local Game Stop for the latest release. The excitement built as the line moved and you imagined placing the disc into your console or PC for the first time. If you were playing five years ago, you remember sitting at your computer repeatedly hitting the refresh button so that you could be the first to place a pre-order. Those days are over.
Dan Bunting, a game developer with over two decades of experience in AAA game development, has been front-and-center for this transition. During his time at the video game studio Treyarch, he held a series of key development positions for its massively popular Call of Duty franchise, serving as a producer for Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty 3 before being made a senior producer and multiplayer director for the franchise's first spinoff series, Call of Duty: Black Ops. Working on one of entertainment's largest and most popular releases in history, he served an integral role in ensuring that one of the game's most popular elements - online multiplayer - exceeded gamers' expectations.
"I've had a front-row seat at gaming's digital transformation," Bunting says. "In fact, for most entertainment, the way we access it has shifted almost entirely to digital. No one is running to Blockbuster anymore. Entire seasons of TV shows or any movie you want are just a click away."
While most major entertainment sectors have shifted their distribution methods, the video game industry was decidedly slower in making the transition. The ability to obtain a video game via digital channels has been around for the same amount of time as streaming services, but gamers have been generally slower to adopt these new methods. But recently -- in part because of the coronavirus pandemic -- it appears digital might finally be edging out physical.
Bunting went on to serve as multiplayer director for the sequel Call of Duty: Black Ops II before being made game director for its third series release. As Treyarch shifted its strategy from a cyclical development model to one that operated year-round, Dan Bunting shepherded his teams through the transition and helped them continue game development at a more sustainable pace. His leadership skills led him to be made co-studio head, a role in which he began overseeing strategic planning at the franchise level and continued to aid in the company's transition from annual blockbuster releases to a constant stream of content.
"I'm an avid gamer myself, and my career has allowed me to have a unique perspective on the digital transition of this industry," he says.
Overall, sales of digital versions of video games have slowly been catching up to physical game sales over the last few years, and now more than ever, the scale is tipping towards digital. In part, this is because of the coronavirus pandemic, which prevented consumers from shopping in-person and pushed them to digital channels for their entertainment needs. An analysis of NPD Game Pulse data conducted by Ars Technica found that the raw number of new games available on physical media dropped nearly 30 percent from 321 in 2018 to just 226 in 2021. While the number of digital games released each year remained relatively static between 2018 and 2020, 2021 saw a 64 percent increase, with nearly 2,200 digital titles being released.
"The pandemic certainly acted as an accelerator, but the trend toward digital had been growing -- though at a slower pace than other types of media -- long before the pandemic," Bunting said. "That's been especially true for those who play on a PC."
While PC gamers have had the ability to purchase digital copies for some time, less than fifteen years ago in-console digital stores weren't even available across every platform. Digital distribution only truly became an option in the seventh generation of video game consoles, including the Xbox 360 released in 2005 and the PS3 and Wii released in 2006.
Another reason video games were slower to the digital party is that their interactive and connective nature requires more storage than a movie or television series. Smaller hard drives and slower Internet speeds meant that downloading games, especially ones like Bunting's Call of Duty franchise, ranked as a luxury obtainable only by those with the ability to add space manually, such as PC gamers.
"What we've found is that, as the standards for hard drive sizes and Internet speeds have increased, so too has the popularity of purchasing digitally instead of physically," Bunting says.
A report compiled by Statista found that digital purchases accounted for 83 percent of all game sales in 2018, and all told, the proportion of all new console games available exclusively as digital downloads increased from 75 percent in 2018 to nearly 90 percent in 2021. Perhaps one of the biggest indications of this shift comes from the ninth generation of video game consoles, with Microsoft and Sony both releasing cheaper, disc drive-less counterparts to the standard editions of their latest consoles.
"Hard drive space and download speeds aren't the only contributing factors to digital distribution overtaking physical. There are other benefits to the digital shift," Bunting says. "Digital distribution provides an immediacy that can't be matched. With the high-speed internet widely available, a player can choose to purchase a game and have it downloaded and available to play within minutes."
The shift can also change the promotional schedule for video game development companies, Bunting notes, making deals available more frequently and easier to notice and take advantage of.
Digital marketplaces also take away the issue of quantity in distribution. With physical copies, pre-orders were a necessity if you wanted to guarantee yourself the game on launch day, but digital releases erase that problem.
"Gamers no longer need to worry about driving to multiple stores only to find empty shelves - digital copies are infinite and available at any time of the day or night," Bunting says. "Sure, there is a certain nostalgia attached to purchasing a physical copy of a game, but the industry had to adapt and move with the times."
* This is a contributed article and this content does not necessarily represent the views of techtimes.com
