Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable. You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Nyulene, joined by Steve and Yushan.
Coming up on the second half of the show, remember the joy of unboxing a new PlayStation or the thrill of a face-to-face video game match?
Despite the digital age, physical games do hold a special place in our memories and hearts.
Today, we'll explore why these timeless treasures continue to thrive, even as digital entertainment dominance.
Let's take a nostalgic journey into the world of physical games.
And antiques appraisal shows are experiencing a Renaissance Online, bringing that same thrill to a digital audience.
Roundtable tries to answer, why are these shows back in the spotlight?
Now, despite the rise of digital entertainment, physical games have not faded into history.
In fact, they continue to captivate audience around the world.
What makes these tangible entertainment tools so enduring in our increasingly virtual world?
What are some factors behind the lasting appeal of physical games and their unique place in our hearts and culture?
What challenges do physical games meet and how are they coping?
We are going to answer all these questions a little bit later, but I have to ask first.
Let's make our confession.
Who are game players here?
Me. We're all game players.
Yes, we play all kinds of video games.
It's our generation. What do you mean, fest?
Why do I have to confess?
I'm not ashamed about that at all.
Yeah, but we talk about it on Roundtable.
We should learn more. We should study.
We should try to give our younger generation a healthy guidance when it comes to how to grow up.
Yet, we spend a lot of our time playing video games.
That's why I use the word confess because I do that.
Oh, wow. I think it's just inevitable that all generation just naturally fell in love with video games.
Because of its appeal. I mean, it's well, different generation apparently are appealed to different types of video games.
That's what inspiring our topic right now.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing what you guys have to share because I know we're definitely from totally different perspectives.
I thought you're going to say generations and I was ready to say, ouch, but I have to say whole.
I have to say, I do have a quite a lion's share of my video game experience contributing to play stations like Xbox, Nintendo Switch, something like that.
I wonder if it's the similar situation with you, Steve.
Yeah, I've always been a game station person as opposed to playing online games.
A few years ago, I was curious as to what was so popular because there are certain games that are ultra popular online here in Korea.
So I hopped on to a website where you can just play online for free right there.
And I lasted about five minutes.
I got dropped into this world.
I didn't know where I was.
I didn't know what I was supposed to do.
I'm trying to control the mouse and the keyboard at the same time, but I didn't grow up using the mouse and the keyboard for gaming purposes.
So I, my wrist hurt, my fingers hurt.
I died like 10 times. It's been a minute and I gave up.
And yeah, it's always been a game station thing for me.
And when you compare it, you know, gosh, the video game quality, like the graphics quality, the speed of the games compared to what they were back in, I don't know, the 1980s when video games really kicked off.
Home stations got started.
It's just a completely and utterly different world now than what it used to be.
And I was just reading about this news that one of the most world renowned game has to be Super Mario.
But what shocked me was that in 2021, one Super Mario 64 game sells for a record breaking of 1.5 million US dollars over an auction.
I'm like, why is the retro game becoming a commodity?
Of course, I mean, sure, like it's not something that common folks like us can even think about purchasing via auctions.
I mean, but it just shocked me how sealed, ritual game or like vintage game are becoming like commodity in exchange of, I don't know, some sort of a ritual feeling or.
Yeah, I mean, that's a, that's a collector's item.
I guess. And there's, there's a market for that.
It's not a huge market, but obviously a market that does exist.
But that's not, that's not the norm, I guess.
But yeah, I mean, people think with nostalgia, don't they?
About old gaming systems, they grew up playing video games and they still play video games into their adult years.
I remember visiting my sister's friends house when I was in university.
So I was 19, 20 years old and I played video games at the time.
That man, her friends husband was 36 or 37 years old and he had a PlayStation and a surround sound system and a big screen TV that was specifically for gaming.
A game room? A game room?
A key had a man cave, yeah.
And he had a table in there as well.
Yeah. So I thought, I thought to myself at the time, really?
I mean, to an adult, aren't you like an adult man?
Are you still doing this?
And then of course, when I got to that age and now the age that I'm at now and I'm still doing that too.
You know, that's a different topic for a different show, the benefits of gaming and the dangers of gaming as well.
But the market is not just for children.
When we think about video games, we tend to make the association only with children, but that's really, really not the case anymore.
And also when it comes to the topic of games, even just video games, there are so many different subcategories.
You've got the video games on computers and your cell phone.
You've got the PlayStation types of video games and today we're discussing something that's quite niche.
That is the kind of video games that can be downloaded with the help of internet and you can play these downloaded type of games on a PlayStation or with your computer or the kind of little disk that you buy that you plug into your PlayStation and right on you can start playing.
That's the construction we try to make between so called physical game, let's call them physical game cars or game disks versus the downloaded content, the DLC type of games.
The reason there is this kind of difference or distinction is because for these different players, there are definitely differences in these physical game disks and the downloaded content.
So I have actually played both.
For me, the disks are quite easy to get.
You purchase it and you plug in.
You do not have to wait several hours for the game to download and you start playing with your friends at home and after maybe half a year or one year of enjoying the game to the fullest, you can actually sell it out.
So basically you're using 10, you end or 20, you end to enjoy the happy time for around a year.
For me, it's quite cost effective.
But what are some other differences when it comes to these types of physical game disks versus the downloaded content from online?
What's the difference in, for example, playing experiences?
In terms of the gaming experience, I can't comment on that because I've only ever purchased physical disks for my game station.
And the reason for that is what I was talking about before, the nostalgic reason for holding that.
There's something poetically romantic about waiting for a game to come out, going to the store, holding that disk in your hand, which is the same reason why people still buy LPs instead of digital downloads for music, right?
It's that romantic feeling.
And that's one of the reasons that people I think continue to buy physical copies.
But I was looking at the statistics for Sony for PlayStation specifically for one particular quarter, quarter number two in 2023.
Physical disks only accounted for 4% of their sales.
Now that number is still a significant amount of money.
That's a massive amount of money, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to digital sales these days, game downloads.
That's definitely the direction that the market is going.
Yeah. And as someone who only had the experience of playing DLC on the laptop, I have to let's use the word confess again that I totally don't understand the joy of collecting, say, disks were consoles from Nintendo Studio Xbox and PlayStation everything.
Oh, having a lot of disks of games that you've played and you see them, they're like your little trophy or treasure that you hold dear to your heart.
You know what I found astonishing as well that people just keep on collecting and see them as some sort of a see all that or the place they store all their disks and consoles as their vault in a way.
I was watching this YouTuber sharing all 35 consoles he's collected and then like numerous disks he's collected and it took up from the basement to the living room to one bedroom and almost half of the other bedroom.
So it's like it's all over the place.
Like you have to make really big enough of a room in order to hold all those physical tools that you have to apply to play.
You're saying that like it's a bad thing.
That's a great thing. Really?
It's like a library. It's like keeping books on a shelf, right?
But people speak about books in a different way than they do when they talk about games.
But only you mentioned it.
Re-sale value. That's one of the reasons people like to have physical copies as well because yep, they can keep the game for as long as they want to.
They can put it on a bookshelf in their room and go back and play the game again if they want to.
But if they want, they can sell it for, you know, the percentage has changed the older the game is.
But you can get a significant amount of money back on your initial purchase.
You know, I sold an older game station of mine and I had a collection of about 50 games and I posted it on a second hand sales website here in Korea.
I posted the station with pictures and the games about 50 games with pictures.
Do you know how long it took me to sell that?
About 90 seconds. Oh, wow.
It was online for about 90 seconds and somebody said, I'm coming to pick it up right now.
I said, you don't have any questions about the game's quality or anything like that.
He said, no, I'll be there in five minutes.
He was. And it was gone just like that.
And I felt so sad. One single tear just rolled down my cheek as he drove away with all my games and my collection.
And I've started a new one.
Congratulations. You know, way, because you can start a new collection with the money you've got after 90 seconds of posting it online.
You know what amuses me the most?
Seeing my library on steam, you know, like with the Witcher waiting for me to download whenever I want to and playing Boulderskate 3 whenever I want to and upgrade the game whenever I want to.
You know, I can save up all the digital storage on cloud instead of having to look for new discs or new CDs or, you know, have to play games separately because one CD is too small to hold them all.
You know, that's what I see as amusing in playing DLC.
You're right. Some people that the complaint they have about physical games these days is that the disc is simply a key to download the material that you need to download.
You know, and sometimes you'll put a, you'll put a brand new game into a game station and then immediately you're required to download extra content.
So people think, well, what's the point of that when I can just download the game from the internet in its entirety?
So you're right. So there's an argument to be made for that for sure.
Yes. And I think for different generations, the idea of whether or not something is tangible is different and it started to have different significance.
And for maybe the coming generation, having tangible play stations or having tangible video game discs are no longer important and no longer romantic in a certain way.
But for me, I can maybe resell the discs to other people.
I can share it with my friends.
I actually have already shared many of my discs with my friends.
And that's something we bond over.
And for me, that's also a little point added for the physical game discs.
But one thing for sure is that having physical games or physical game discs post certain risks and the probably problems for the sellers.
For example, you are issuing or publishing a new game.
If the new games are entirely digital, then you do not have to worry about losing the discs when you're traveling or shipping the disc from your headquarter to other retail stores.
You do not have to worry about them being lost and being released by legal YouTubers or something like that.
And all that risk is, I guess, part of the reasons that more and more and more major merchants major players in the market started to switch from physical games to these kind of digital games.
What's the best game you've ever played in your opinion?
Oh, I have to give it to Zelda.
Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I think both. I consider them as one game.
Yeah, different graphics, of course, right?
I've heard the newer one is a great experience.
My favorite of all time is the last of us.
I'm not sure if you've played that before.
Not really, but I'll go look into it.
It's a zombie survival game type thing.
Sounds like one. How about you?
Well, the one that I'm playing right now is one of the best game from 2023 called the Boulder's Gate or Boulder's Gate 3.
So it's sort of like a role playing, like you pick a race, you pick a title or a drop sort of thing.
And based on your race and your job title, you're going to encourage different dialogues throughout the journey.
So you travel from one act to the second and to eventually the third where you softened mystery and finish the whole adventure.
No way. So yeah, that's something I'm into.
I'm not really sure about the future for physical games because we talked about different generations have different understandings when it comes to tangible or intangible stuff.
And apparently you shan't does not see having physical discs as something super romantic already.
So I'm really not sure about the future generation situation, but I still feel like with if in the future we're looking at the kind of game that is super immersive with a lot of different details with a free world, you can explore the amount of data that is needed for one game.
It might be beyond one day or two day of download.
And maybe if we are not only playing games at home, but also playing games in certain, I don't know, game shops with these kind of very immersive games.
Maybe physical games can still hold a place.
I think if you're a lover of physical games, you can look to bookstores as a sign of hope.
Yes. I upload a book onto a tablet PC and read it wherever you want these days.
You don't need a hard copy or a soft copy, a paper copy of a book, but bookstores still exist and they're still really popular too.
Yes. One way for me to resonate with that is I have this habit of collecting DVD ever since I was like back in primary school.
So I do feel it. Okay, guys, I just don't do it.
DVDs? Yeah. I know right.
Nobody watched movie through CDs or DVDs anymore nowadays, but I still try to collect them.
I have relatively huge collection of it.
But the point that I'm trying to raise serious, yeah, I get it.
Okay, I get it, guys. Maybe in the future we're going to see physical games in game stores like bookstores or in antique stores or museums.
Yeah. You never know. You can find it out.
There's nice segue in this segue.
You can find out in the future episodes of Roundtable, I guess.
You're listening to Roundtable coming up next and teak appraisal shows have found new live online, engaging audiences what their blend of history and mysteries they tuned.
Looking for passion? How about fiery debate?
Want to hear about current events in China from different perspectives, then tune in to Roundtable where East meets West and understand it is the goal.
It's the hour of Roundtable with myself, Neil Holian, Steve Hathorley and you shan't.
Remember the excitement of watching experts review the secrets behind your family air loans on TV.
These programs which blend history, culture and mystery are thriving on digital platforms.
Let's explore why antique appraisal shows have researched in popularity.
So what are we watching when we're watching these antique appraisal live streaming studios?
Are we watching antique games?
I'm kidding. What are we watching?
To be honest, I really don't have the experience of watching one online, but I've seen the description of what it's like.
So basically, it's like a talk show or like a stand up comedy show, but focusing on antiques or really like examining if it's real, if it's like authentic or if it's like a forgery of sorts.
So there's been this like online rave here in China where one live streamer he tries to share with all the viewers on whether the antiques this viewer or this member of his live stream room is like presenting him as real or not.
So that's basically how this whole topic was initiated here in recent years, especially in the past six months that his live stream is getting more and more popular in all Chinese social media nowadays.
So basically, the way he does it is like inspiring jokes and funny dialogues and also being just niche about how to describe cultural relics or thousands of years of relics in a funny way to make it sounds more appealing to young people.
That's interesting because I remember when I was watching these kind of TV shows in terms of telling whether or not one certain antique or antique looking stuff is real or fake, it was a little more than that or different than that.
They have a TV show. I think it's still on air in England.
It's called Antiques Road Show.
And that started I think in the 1970s and then it started in the, I believe so.
And the same show in America, I think in 1997, same name, Antiques Road Show.
And these were really, really popular for people to watch.
In the United States, I think it's put on PBS public broadcasting.
So that's not like one of the major television stations where you'll find all the hottest dramas or anything.
There's a public television, but still incredibly popular.
Their number one show. What they did in the past, I was reading about it was they would have people come into these like banquet halls or hotel grand ballrooms and have so many people in there and then a praisers would go around and tell them, you know, it's worth a lot or it's worth nothing.
Then their rating started to dip over the years.
So they redesigned the show.
So what they do now is they announce which city they're going to be going to on their website.
Then people can apply and then they go to the historic sites of that town.
So there's history to be learned there.
You learn about the culture of that city or that town.
And then you have the drama of is this worth anything or enough?
Of course. So you've got something to learn.
You've got the visuals of the town or the city.
And then you've got the drama of what's it worth.
And then the people's reaction, if they do find out that it's worth a lot of money because they'll go crazy, right?
If they learn that it's worth a ton of money on a TV show that they thought was worth nothing before.
Well, the situation in China or the most famous anti-capraisal show in China was the one that's called Shou Chang Tian Xia.
Or Tian Xia Shou Chang. Tian Xia Shou Chang is something like that.
And the major wow factor of that show is you see the announcer, the TV announcer with the help of a lot of quote unquote experts telling whether or not the specific and teak brought by the audience or brought by any kind of Joe blocks like us.
They would bring their family heirloom.
And once the item is considered a forgery or a fake, the TV announcer would smash it into pieces.
And it happens right on TV.
It's crazy exciting. And the problem with that show is that after several years of popularity, once the TV announcer, again, he has not that much knowledge about history or about whether or not something is real, but he smashed one piece.
And later on, some experts claimed that that one piece actually worth around 200 million yuan.
It's a real. And I guess that happened.
They tried to sue him or something.
Of course. They tried to sue the program.
They tried to sue everybody, including the one who's holding the hammer.
And it got all, well, I think it's slippery slope from there.
But apparently the content we're talking about today is a bit less dramatic and a much smaller scale, yet a little more entertaining because with these kind of live streaming studios, not only are the hosts bringing about different types of stuff to showcase and to sell, they can also have this call in with any kind of audience watching the show and having the audience showcase their treasure.
They want to share with everybody and having the host figuring out whether or not it's a real or a fake.
But I actually have a lot of doubts because through a camera, a not that ultra high definition camera and without touching, without anything, how can you really tell whether or not the thing is real or not or worth anything?
I mean, that's a good point.
Based on the example you just raised just now, only even experts doing it face to face cannot tell, right?
So through online live streaming, I think most people or most audiences of those streamers were mainly to be fun.
Like being entertaining is the main goal for both parties, like ultimately.
For me, it impresses me as something, like you said, less pressurizing, first of all, and more entertaining and, of course, less authentic in a way.
Did you tell if this piece of St.
Nicholas is like a real jade with made of real jade or something?
Oh no, that's stone. And sometimes that's the kind of dialogue or interaction you want would be expecting from this sort of live stream interactions.
Like I remember there's one example that I was reading that one audience stopped being genuine at all and raised like totally non-cultural relic stuff for the streamer to check.
My dog is sad, could you please take a look at him?
Something like that. So yeah, it's like it's getting sort of like a joke, semi-joke, semi-cultural educational kind of show.
Again, back to my point, it's more of a talk show kind of entertainment style.
So all that jokes aside, do we see any kind of risk or potential problems with these kind of live streaming videos?
Do we see possibility of illegal trade of cultural relics?
Could HP a problem? I mean, it stays where it is right now for entertainment purposes mainly than, yeah, sure, why not?
But if some streamers, I'm not sure if there are any already, that they use the title or use the popularity they're getting to sell stuff and especially under like extra description on, you know, I do this.
This is what I do and I'm in contact with some sort of like, of manufacturers where that I am getting this stock of say, necklaces where, you know, jewelry's from a certain source that I can guarantee you this is real.
If this starts to get popular along with the live stream, I think that's going to be a big problem, to be honest.
Yeah, I think the way it is now, I mean, I haven't seen these in China, but from your description, the way it is now seems pretty harmless, I think.
A potential problem I suppose would be if the host of the show gave some advice about, you know, an item that was seen through a camera and said, no, that's not real, it's not worth anything.
But then it turned out to be worth something in the future, that might be a potential problem I suppose as well.
So maybe they have to put disclaimers on the show or on the streams that say this advice is simply one person's opinion, it's not necessarily something to be taken to heart.
Definitely. And also with the help of the streaming platforms as well as relevant departments coming into the play, being supervisors, making sure the harmless of these entertainment shows day as entertainment shows, I believe it's still fun content to watch that you can spend some of your leisure time with.
And it's exciting actually to see how these programs are engaging a new generation of viewers.
And that brings us to the end of today's roundtable thanks to Yushan and Steve and of course those of you who are still listening until next time keep the conversations going and the ideas flowing.
