On the surface, the concept of an infinite arcade would appeal to most gamers. Stretching out like some kind of video game equivalent of Borges’ “Library of Babel,” the infinite arcade would promise every kind of game experience ever created. One of the ways the industry is trying to achieve this is through the downloadable game business model. David Kushner of Wired Magazine explores this concept, through the eyes of the gaming industry.

There have been some successes in this arena; Kushner brings up Geometry Wars, one of Microsoft’s hits on their Xbox Live Arcade service. Peter Moore seems to believe that downloadable content is the future: “…the concept of driving to the store to buy a plastic disc with data… will be ridiculous.” Both Sony and Nintendo seem to be eager to offer similar content. Valve has built their Steam service, and Turner Broadcasting has invested heavily into the subscription service Gametap. Even the vaporous Phantom was trying to cash in on the downloadable bandwagon.

From the perspective of the game publisher, this model is attractive from a financial point of view; digital downloads are cheaper, there’s no manufacturing or inventory to take care of, and there is no competing for shelf space. However, there are other benefits that go unmentioned in the article. Digital downloads with secure authentication can help reduce piracy; when a user is determined to have violated the terms of service, their rights to the game can simply be revoked. Moore believes the plastic disc will become a quaint concept, but as the disc goes away, so does the concept of ownership. While future generations might laugh at having to buy cartridges and DVD-ROMs, the current generation values the ability to have ownership of physical media.

The other option that content providers may be salivating over is the ability to make consumers pay for the same content, over and over again. In the physical media world, providers make this happen by staging various DVD special editions over the years; witness George Lucas and his fan-base provoking staged Star Wars releases. In the physical-media free world, content providers can now fragment their content. Developers offer game collections with multiple games; the individual games can now be sold separately at $5 a pop. Gamefly gets users on the hook for $9.99 per month to continue playing their old content. Used games become a thing of the past, and forget returning games that don’t deliver on their promise. Downloadable games can be locked to a specific console, so users can’t let a friend borrow a game that they have finished. Backwards compatibility becomes a joke when gamers that buy a new console have to re-purchase all of their downloaded content anyway.

The infinite arcade seems like a dream, but way that game publishers provide the content would appear to take away a lot of freedom from the gaming public.