Gaming's Second-class Citizens

"Battlefield 1943 looks amazing for a downloadable game!" Myself and many others were saying this sort of thing last summer when Electronic Arts' downloadable Battlefield was released. We weren't used to seeing 3D first-person shooters with online multiplayer for up to 24 people and destructible environments in our Xbox Live Arcade or PlayStation Network games. We were used to, you know, Pac-Man Championship Edition -- an awesome game, to be sure, but a pretty modest package compared to something like Modern Warfare 2. Battlefield 1943 also looks modest when standing next to Modern Warfare 2, but much, much less so.

Shortly after the launch of Battlefield 1943 we got Shadow Complex on XBLA and again marveled at the quality of this downloadable game. And now there are many non-retail games on the horizon producing a similar response from gamers. Hydrophobia, Breach, Blacklight: Tango Down, Monday Night Combat, Lead & Gold, Joe Danger, Limbo, Shank... These games all look pretty incredible, but we're still qualifying our excitement with "...for a downloadable game." Breach is a multiplayer shooter that takes environmental destruction to a new level. Monday Night Combat is basically a new Team Fortress. Playing Shank is like playing a (super violent) Disney cartoon.

At what point do we stop apologizing for these games being downloadable? Castle Crashers and Battlefield 1943 have been downloaded over a million times each on XBLA alone. That means they're considerably more successful than high-profile retail releases like Just Cause 2 and Army of Two: The 40th Day (we've got their exact sales numbers, and while NPD won't let us share them with you, know that they are much lower than a million). Castle Crashers, Battlefield 1943, and plenty other downloadable games are visually impressive, great fun to play, and can be obtained for a fraction of the cost of a new retail title. Seems to me that downloadable games are offering the better value these days and it's the retail games that should be thinking about justifying their existence. For the many hours of gaming titles like Shadow Complex and Battlefield 1943 provide, they feel like a steal for $15. Modern Warfare 2 is certainly a terrific game, but at a whopping $75 for the full package and downloadable maps it doesn't exactly feel like a "steal."

Haven't downloadable games earned the right to just be games that can be impressive regardless of how they're distributed? IGN picked World of Goo, a WiiWare game, as our Wii Game of the Year in 2008, for instance. On all three current-gen consoles, downloadable games provide some of the most compelling experiences available on the system. I have certainly been guilty of "For a Downloadable Game" syndrome in the past, but going forward I will be discussing these efforts in the same way I would any other game: as software that can, and should, provide us with compelling gameplay and beautiful graphics. The days when there was an enormous divide between downloadable games and retail discs are over -- they are just games.