Game companies going green with Eco-box
Did you buy a copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 or Left 4 Dead 2 recently? OK, go, check the inside of your case. What you’re seeing is the latest in eco-friendly measures in the video game industry.
Now, I’m a fan of these measures myself. I hope we usher in an age where all games are downloaded from consoles or kiosks and there aren’t any unnecessary games printed. Smaller cases are a good idea too, I much prefer the PS3 cases to the Wii or XBOX 360 ones. Viva Group had a different idea: take out a few slats of plastic and voila, you have less total plastic used. Dubbed “Eco-box”, the case is already being used for DVDs and is finally making the transition to the video game industry.
But this eco-chic comes with a price–not only is there no price reduction to consumers to compensate for the cheaper materials and shipping, but some are complaining that the cases are too fragile. Anecdotal tales from faceless Gamestop employees are echoing on the web, mostly noting that their store’s Modern Warfare 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 shipments arrived with damaged cases.
I called my local Gamestop in Bellevue, WA, and the manager there told me that so far they have “not seen any more or less copies of Left 4 Dead 2 or Modern Warfare 2 come in damaged than was to be expected”, and no customers have complained about the “flimsy” packaging. Are the complaints merely overblown flukes, or will we see more in the future? That remains yet to be seen, but for now, the Eco-box is reducing CO2 emissions one case at a time.
Maybe it’s just me, but I would have rather the extra plastic been taken from the parts that aren’t directly in front of or behind the disc… some of the dispensers at stores like Wal-Mart and Target put enough pressure on the lower-mid section of the cases to damage them, and in this case, there’s nothing left to protect the disc itself.
Wow, that’s a different kind of damage, too. Gamestop employees were saying that the games were getting damaged during the shipping process. I called my local Gamestop because I figured the one in my area would be high traffic enough that maybe they’d seen these ill effects, but they hadn’t (fluke? lie? lucky truth?). I don’t think Best Buy would tell me a thing.
I myself would prefer it if they switched to the cases that are used for Blu-ray. Those things are smaller, surely they’re saving plastic, too?