The Download Space: A New Home for Fighting, Racing, and Sports Games

Video games have been a part of my life for as long as my hands have been able to hold a controller. Many of those years were spent locked in epic battles with my younger brother. We would wage war all day in Street Fighter 2, WWF: No Mercy, NBA Street Vol. 2, and Madden football. These were some of the best video game moments of my life.

Things were simple back then there was no Xbox Live or PSN for us to connect to. We would just plop down on the couch, pick-up our controllers, and have at it. Nowadays my brother and I hardly ever find the time to play one-on-one. Yes, we no longer live together, but we both have next generation consoles and we haven't beaten the crap out of each other in years. We both still love these genres of games, but we never seem to be playing the same thing at the same time. Which makes me think that all Racing, Fighting, and Sports games should at the very least offer a fully-downloadable version for people to enjoy.

Since about 1994 the release of a Madden game has become an unofficial holiday, both in my household and in the entire country. After the release of the PS3 I assumed that, given broadband penetration and increased hard-drive space, the idea of having Madden or any other sports title sitting on my hard-drive waiting for me to play would be an inevitability. Yet, as we enter year five of the current game generation we are still shackled by the idea of the boxed sports title.

Sports games work because you can pick them up and put them down at your leisure. Fanatics aside, how many people want to sit through three or four games of football? Sports are best consumed in bite-sized snacks. In a perfect world you would be able to hop online, play a quick game of Madden or any other sports title with a friend, and then move on. Having this kind of flexibility would serve as a huge boon to sports games and maybe even manage to expand their reach. The boxed sports title has become a barrier of entry to the average person and it is time for game developers and publishers to tear this barrier down.

Similarly, racing games need to embrace their proper place as supplement gaming. The idea of spending three to four hours painstakingly tuning your car into an unstoppable force of nature; This goes against what a racing title's true purpose is. Yes, there's still an audience for that type of racing game, but with so many franchises to choose from, how are you supposed to know what game will suit your needs?

Now imagine if all racing games were fully downloadable, with free trials to hook new/novice players in. For instance, a racing game I really enjoyed over the last few months was one from Black Rock Studios called Split Second. This game did away with the upgrading and car tweaking that has turned off many casual fans. By stripping away these features, Split Second was able to focus on great in-race action.

Many of my friends never played this title, most citing the fact they didn't want to invest the effort into a racing game they knew nothing about. This is where the idea of having a downloadable version at launch would have been a benefit to Split Second. I could have sent everyone on my friends list a trial of the game to try for themselves. We all trust our friends much more than any online or print publication, so when someone you knows suggest you play a game, you are much more receptive to the idea. This, combined with the ability to download the trial right from your friend's sent request could have done a lot of the promotion a new and unproven IP needs to succeed.

Finally, fighting games. One I put a lot of time into was a wrestling game for the N64 entitled No Mercy. Like I mentioned previously, the wars between my younger brother and I were epic, but it was not just him and I who had these battles. Most of my friends were playing this game at the same time. Today, almost all of my friends still play fighting games and love them, but the problem now is we all don't hop onto the same game at the same time. Some us can't afford to buy the newest fighting game on the market, and some are a little gun shy when comes to wading knee deep into a new fighter.

Again, this is a huge opportunity for a fully downloadable fighting game to come in and clean up. People talk about the "feel" of a fighter being paramount to their buying decisions. While demos do provide a window into the feel of a fighting game, having a few friends tell you what the game they're playing feels like would be really beneficial, not only to you but to the game's developers. They'd be able to tell you as well as show you with a send-able game trial. The impact this would have on the growth of fighting games is immeasurable.

As gamers we have true power to elevate games that we all like as a community and ignore titles that don't grab our interest. This ability has become even easier thanks to online-enabled game consoles, and I feel as though some genres need to embrace these online-created communities fully. The days of piling four of your friends together on a couch to play a game is dying, if it's not dead already. For fighting, racing, and sports games it is time to embrace this online world with open arms. Now is the time to lay the groundwork that could prove to be very fruitful in the future.

By creating a fully downloadable option, these games would be able to thrive and grow at a much faster rate than they already do. Developers and publishers continue to curse big-box retailers and the used game market for the way they continue to cut them out of potential profits. By alternating the way they deliver their games, developers and publishers could reap the benefits of a more direct line to their consumers. This would also open the door to subscription based models, which, as scary as it may sound, gives a publisher a straight line to your wallet.

Before you disregard my entire argument based on that last statement, ask yourself these two questions: "When you like something, do you want more of it?" and '' Do you want it delivered to you in the quickest and most efficient way possible?" If you answered yes to these questions then the future I envision for some of my favorite games is a place you might want to be.