How publishers punish us for buying their games

linkin

VIP Member
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/...ying-a-new-game-or-what-i-dont-want-to-do.ars

Mainly talking about consoles, but the points still stand for all platforms. Pasted some stuff from the article, but not all of it. You guys can read it there.

I don't care what system it's on, what technical excuse you have, or anything else. Putting a new game into your system only to be told to go grab a sandwich while the game takes ten minutes or so to install is a pain in the butt. When the game is done installing and you're confronted with another loading screen? That's just adding insult to injury. I want to play, not look at a slowly filling progress bar.

Likewise, I don't want to be stuck installing an update. It's like a big sign saying "this game wasn't ready to ship." I mean, that's literally what happened. Publishers can now ship a game that doesn't work, knowing they can push out an update that installs the first time you play the game. So I have an idea: for every megabyte of patch I need to download, I get to punch one person on your development team. I'm not a strong guy, so it won't hurt that much, but it will make me feel better.

Remember when games just came with the content, ready to go? These days that content is still on the disc, but you'll need to input a code to access the online play or all the characters. The reason is simple: if you have the gall to sell the game to someone else, your buyer will still have to give the publisher money to play it online. What's fun about this system in practice is that everyone is annoyed.

Listen, I just bought your new game. I paid around $60 for it if I bought it new, and if I bought it used I have to pay you to play it online. So why can't you let me enjoy that feeling of owning a new game for a second before trying to sell me the next big thing? You have to rub my face in a whole other game before I get a chance to play this game a single time? Why not just come to my house and call me an idiot for spending money on the current game when the new game is months away and you're already showing me how much better it looks?

I already have a Steam account, an Xbox Live account, and a PlayStation Network account. I'm barely comfortable with all the information those companies have, so I'm not happy when a new game asks me to make yet another account to go online and use their online services.

Anything that puts time between my putting the game into the system and actually playing it is a bad thing. I actively remove splash screens from by PC games by deleting the movie files. I don't want to watch trailers before I play. I don't want to download anything, and I'm annoyed that I'm expected to. I don't want to have to do something to unlock a feature that should be standard. I'm getting sick and tired of games that I play requiring this much time to get primed and ready to go before I can actually play.

Personally I think they are right in most regards. Games are better, but all the crap you have to get through to play the damned thing makes the whole experience bad.

Remember your first time with GFWL? Case in point. That crap literally made me rage.
 
No because I had the common sense not to buy any game that used GFWL :P Once again if people didn't buy games that did this it wouldn't be a problem. I pretty much have given up on new age gaming. I am sticking to old titles/classics as anymore what you buy isn't worth what you get.
 
1. If the guy thinks loading screens are anything new he deserves a bullet through the brain to take him out of the gene pool for being so stupid, because they have been around as long as games themselves. Heaven help him if he ever had to use a console that required tape cassettes, or worse yet, one where you have to spend hours actually programming the game first, and if you accidentally nudge the RAM pack you will lose everything.

And to say "don't tell me the technical side" to try and be a cynical smart arse, when clearly if he looked into it why you must install a game his questions would be answered.

2. I remember days when games came out ready to go but still had bugs. I now see updates to fix minor bugs, and only in extreme circumstances (BLOPs) a game being released completely messed up. The only large updates you generally see add new content, and if this guy is seriously complaining because devs are utilising the internet to fix bugs they passed over or to give free content (content you would previously have to buy an expansion pack to get), there is something wrong with him.

3. The guy clearly doesn't like adverts, so should go and sit in a dark corner with the TV off, radio off, never reading, never looking outside and never talking to anybody, because if he were to do that he would encounter an ad in some form or another. So long as the advert is only on a menu rather than actually in game, I don't care. The guy was complaining about load times, yet now he spends enough time on menus to get pissed off by the adverts, rather than just going into the game?

4. Steam, Microsoft, Sony and every other games/technology company I have ever given details to have never contacted me regarding their services due to me having an account with them, nor have they ever shared my details. Clearly it isn't a bad thing that they have the information, and clearly it is only there for verification/identification, especially with the 3 examples he gave where you are buying things from them, so they need to cross check you and your bank details

5. I ever so slightly agree about the splash screens, but to be fair the vast majority allow you to skip them. He wouldn't complain about a film director having pre-credits, yet he does about this...

I think he has no common sense and is complaining just for the sake of it. The majority of "issues" he points out have always been there and are so minor it seems he has a personality disorder where every minor niggle ticks him off.

If a game is good, I could care less about splash screens, adverts and other crap, it is the actual playable content that I buy a game for and notice, and if the companies provide entertainment (what I generally buy a game for), they have if anything treated me for buying their games, even if it does say "there is DLC available" or if it has the publisher/dev logo's before the game starts
 
I don't think this guy really knows what all goes into a game.

Installing the game is necessary because loading from a disk is extremely /slow/.

Codes and login details help prevent pirating of games.

Unskippable splash screens 99% of the time aren't there just to make you buy another game. Usually the game is frantically loading something in the background. That way you at least have a little movie to watch instead of just a loading bar.

and Etc which I feel Aastii hit spot on.
 
i personally have no problem with loading screens. the problem with games on the PC for me, is that it's always a kind of afterthought. It's as if they're all like, CHECK THIS OUT ITS GOING TO BE ON XBOX AND PS3!!!11!!one!! and btw, you can also get it on PC.
the PC versions just aren't really as good as on consoles, which is really really silly, because that kind of thing just encourages piracy. Why pay for a game that isn't really excellent on PC, that you can get for free? (excluding Crysis, of course) And the fact that you can get Halo 1 and 2 on PC, but they can't be bothered to make a PC port.
 
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