GigaOM’s Lauren Hockenson has a great response to the recent gaming headlines about SimCity, Xbox One and the concept of the always-on console. Reading her arguments about why gamers need to sometimes be off-line, it struck me—as it often does with gaming-themed articles—how true these points are for all media.
I know Amazon probably sees a future where all your media is in the cloud (and preferably a cloud you access through them), but it doesn’t always work that way. People don’t always have a perfect Internet connection. Companies don’t always stay around forever to provide the cloud they promise. It’s better—safer—for everyone if the customer has the option to buy, and own.
Here are Hockenson’s three main reasons why customers deserve to play off-line. Don’t there apply to books just as well?
1. People have the right to be anti-social
Yes, social features can enhance. But they can also annoy. Just as Hockenson sometimes wants to play her games in peace, sometimes I just want to read a book without automatically broadcasting its contents to my mom, my boss and everyone else on my Facebook network. Have the “on” option if you want to, but give me a way to turn it off too.
2. Extra hurdles in the name of DRM will not fly
Hockenson calls this “sacrificing the experience of the many for the punishment of the few,” and I wholeheartedly agree. All DRM does is interfere with the customer who actually paid legitinately. It doesn’t actually stop the “pirate” anyway…
3. Gamers want to own games forever
Well, book buyers do too. I don’t want my access to something I paid for to be at the whim of some corporate overlord somewhere. If you want my access to be temporary, then charge me a lesser rental fee and that’s totally fair. But I am not cool with paying full retail price and not getting something I can keep.
In short, I’m OK with the cloud as an add-on feature—as in, you can keep a backup there to access again on the fly. But that cloud access should be for after I have already downloaded a real copy to archive and store off-line.
