Movie Review: Not for Resale: A Video Game Store Documentary
I
love video game documentaries. I even wrote the foreword to the DVD and Blu-ray
release of one called The Bits of Yesterday. So, when I heard about Not for
Resale: A Video Game Store Documentary, I was pumped. When I heard that some of
my friends were going to be in the film, I was even more excited. After
watching the movie yesterday, I can tell you I was not disappointed. Not even a
little bit.
As
everyone knows, physical media is dying. At least it’s on life support. It will
probably never go away entirely, thanks to niche projects and the need to put
something on the shelves at Walmart, but more and more people, especially younger
folks, are consuming music, movies, and video games through downloads and
streaming services.
Not
for Resale examines this phenomenon in fine fashion. By interviewing retro game
store owners like Joe Santulli (Digital Press) and James Ainesworth
(Thrillhouse Games), viewers get the inside scoop on what the lack of physical
media may mean to the future of their retail outlets, which largely deal in
used games. There will likely be relatively few physical releases for the next big
consoles—the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X—resulting in a dearth of used
product to sell for these systems a few years down the road.
As
Santulli says in the film, “Most kids are getting games from their couch.”
As
such, many retro gaming stores could suffer the same fate as Blockbuster Video. The problem is concerning, but there are potential solutions. For example, Pink
Gorilla co-owner Kelsey Lewin says in the film that it’s important for her
stores to diversify the stock to include peripheral merchandise, such as Mario,
Sonic, and Pokemon plushies.
Not
for Resale does an excellent job explaining the positives as well as the
negatives of physical media dying off. Downloaded games have little to no
resale value (hence the title of the movie), and slow internet speeds in certain
rural areas make downloading games difficult. However, as Frank Cifaldi, the
director of the Video Game History Foundation, explains in the film, it’s much easier
and cheaper to produce downloadable games, giving independent programmers the
ability to “make games for Nintendo consoles out of their homes.” Console Wars
author Blake Harris adds that there’s no need to worry about chip shortages,
like what happened with the NES in 1988.


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1 comment:
Thank you for sharing this video game documentary and i am really looking forward to watching this and please do share some more like these.
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