Golfshrine Digital Edition...?

I started the Golfshrine collection, formally, because golf games were just sitting on game store shelves, unwanted, priced down to bargain tier or even lower. Physical entities, taking up space, that I wanted to take up my space instead. This doesn't really happen the same way if it's not a physical object. In fact, there are a lot of things that don't happen the same way.

Digital ownership has always been somewhat shaky. The ownership of a chunk of data has been a contentious thing, poorly defined under present-day intellectual property law. Naturally, a lot of larger entities operate under the idea that this will not change any time soon. The license agreements of many a commercial piece of software very frequently include terms that, frankly, would not hold up to the scrutiny of a courtroom (if we lived in a just world - whether we do or not, though, is a bit above my level to write about). In such simple terms, you pay money for digital goods like a movie or a game, and the company grants you access to those goods. Under a lot of terms of agreement, you never actually own them. Many a storefront would dance around the idea, in so many paragraphs of legalese, and only recently would they just come out and say it. You're buying a license; the game is only being sent to you under the terms of that license, and at any time, the company can decide to revoke it. Whether that decision is made because you were caught cheating, or because they're trying to get a tax write-off by erasing the game from their servers...

All of which is to say that, when it comes to digital games, I don't really consider it collecting. Even if I can hoard the data on local storage indefinitely, back it up to as many hard drives and other computers as I can fit it, that data is inherently not permanent. In a world where an immensely popular million seller can vanish from the market over music rights, or legally dodgy tax reasons, I can't consciously say that I'm a permanent owner of it.

Golfshrine does have a digital counterpart of sorts. It's not just a Steam Collection, because there are golf games sold on stores that aren't Steam, like Big Finish's releases of Links LS and 386 on GOG. Because I do buy them, because I do actually play the games that enter Golfshrine and I do have a genuine interest in golf as a genre of video game. This is not just a shelf full of things that exist to look pretty. As far as Collecting them, though, I can download the installers of those and keep them on a bunch of stuff, but philosophically, that's not really going to be the same thing as having it on a pressed CD or DVD or set of floppy disks, with the nice labels and cardboard boxes and stuff.

I feel like it'd be wrong to list digital purchases in the wider Golfshrine inventory for these reasons. I bought them, sure, but it's enough of a pain to keep track of which digital services I owned them through, whether or not I'm even still able to legally download them, whether they even WORK, whether they've succumbed to link rot over the decades. And while I could print up some of those Golfshrine Placeholder Labels and burn my own discs about it* (assuming that's even something I can do, because I sure can't do that with, say, a Nintendo eShop download)... I feel like that really stretches the bounds of what Golfshrine is meant to be.

*Not that I don't have little CD books full of CDRs of stuff I downloaded, but I'm not gonna act like those are the same as the official media that I bought. (Second hand, from thrift stores and eBay people.)

I mean, maybe none of my reasons for drawing this line really stand up to scrutiny, and maybe somebody's going to point out how inconsistent the Golfshrine philosophy is. And there are some games that are primarily digital exclusives, that have physical editions through those short-print collectors' labels like Limited Run Games, that by their nature are going to be several times more expensive than just buying them digitally. (I wouldn't mind having the physical release of Golf Story, but because it's out of print, it's now hideously expensive, and I bought it on eShop anyway so it'd be duplicated effort.)

Does that all mean that these digital-first games aren't ever going to get their due on Golfshrine? Well, I don't want to over-promise; Lord knows I burn out pretty fast if I do. Does this call for a new pseudo-category on the Enshrined section? Maybe, but after I've just got done saying that I don't really "own" them, it feels hollow to do that. Little profiles of the games I've bought, in the vein of the Acquisitions? That's extra work, and I don't like to plan that far ahead for the aforementioned reasons of burnout. Maybe if the game is good and interesting enough to get such a profile. It'd need to really capture my interest, though.

And what's the central point of this long-winded rant, anyway? I suppose a lot of things. Digital ownership isn't great but sometimes it's the only viable option, and federal laws around it probably need serious reconsideration that they probably won't get while their best interests are with trillion dollar corporations who depend on the current system as it is. Owning things digitally feels less special because I don't get something I can hold in my hands unless I make it myself. And the things I make myself... it takes effort for those to feel anywhere near as nice. And effort's something that's in short supply with me these days, when I'm unemployed and not getting anything out of it beyond a CDR with some Sharpie on it. And stuff is too expensive sometimes. And I need to branch out into writing things that don't depend on my buying said stuff.

It's a lot to think about, and a lot to put on my plate.

What in hell am I doing, putting this kind of angry old guy rant on here, anyway? When I have other, half-finished stuff I could do instead?

Alright, alright. Enough of that, Weasel. Time you should step back a bit and smell the grass. One shot at a time. Not here to hit the perfect game. Just get from tee box A, to hole B, however many strokes it takes.

It's not like there's anybody else on this course today.