Mandatory Blog Post #13 - The Digital Marketplace

Isn't it wonderful that we can purchase anything we could ever want on the Internet, and at a cheaper price? With an Amazon account, we can buy books for almost half the price that it would cost in a store like Barnes & Noble. We have digital goods distributors like Steam that sell video games for almost one-fifth of the price (normally during their many sales). This is great for the consumer, the distributor and the company giving the rights to their products to the distributors. It isn't great for the physical world, however.

I'm sure we are all aware of the fears and speculations about Walmart's moving into small neighborhoods. Many people feared that, because Walmart is able to sell products at a much cheaper price, it would drive local business to ruin. This was the case in most places. Some were able to survive on the idea of 'helping a small business,' but it simply was not enough to keep all of them alive. This is the same fate that awaits physical stores when the Internet starts to take over completely.    
What is the incentive for going to a store and paying $10 when you can get the same thing online for $7 (assuming one has Amazon Prime with free two day shipping). Well, if you don't want to wait those two days you might want to buy local. Some people prefer the interactivity when going to a store; I know that I prefer to go to my local record store and talk the workers about music and to talk to comic book store owners about upcoming and past releases. I can't necessarily get that online, but, boy, can I get them much cheaper.

The same with video games. PC is my primary choice for video-gaming and physical copies can still be a bit pricey. Services like Steam make being a PC gamer cheap and convenient. While I do love this, I wonder if this is making video games disposable. I am an avid collector, as I mentioned in my Scott McCloud blog (you should read it). I love to show off my collections of CD's and comic books, I used to able to do that with my video games, but not anymore (I am referring to my PC games here, I do have collections of games from my various Nintendo consoles). With the constant Steam sales, I often find myself buying games that I would not have normally, and they end up just sitting there, unplayed. I would not dream of doing this if I sill had to pay 50 - 60 dollars for my games, not that I'm complaining. My PC collection is kind of meaningless at this point, I would not want that with my other collections, but I fear that it is the dark future of the digital marketplace.            
 
The sad truth for me, even though I do enjoy supporting local businesses, is that I do not have a choice here in Potsdam. Since Strawberry Fields Music closed, I have nowhere to buy CD's. I either have to wait to go back to Syracuse and go to the Soundgarden (great place by the way) or order them online. The same with physical video games, there are no video game stores in the area. Until just recently, I couldn't get many comics here, but there seems to be a sudden interest as Misty Hollow has started selling comics and the shrinking Tim's comics continues to order books even though they had trouble in the past, and continue to.

I don't want to advocate for anything, even though we know who's going to win in the long run, but I don't want to lose the physical world to the digital one, even though it is cheaper and more convenient.