Gaming is better than ever, so why does it suck? ( PART 2)

So when I left you we were pretty much around 2003.  Games were becoming huge multi-gigabyte affairs whose installation meant juggling half a dozen discs and staring at progress bars for what seemed like hours.  Yeah, it's still a bit faster than the average Steam download (by 2x) but it always seems to take longer when you have all those discs.

It was also the start of the upgrade mill.  Better games demanded better performance and it wasn't long before I was bringing my own rig over which could be anything from a laptop to a full on gaming monster.  For awhile there it was a continuing arms race as we continually tried to one up each other. 

It became painfully obvious that games like Test Drive and Need For Speed suffered the same affliction as Racer, however.  Meaning that in driving games we couldn't be sure if a win resulted from own performance or an advantage of the rig we were playing on.  That necessitated a foray into game genres less dependent on the hardware and more focused on a cooperative play style.

So we moved on to Role playing games like Dungeon Siege 2 and Dragon Age.  We also embraced real time strategy games like Star Trek Armada 2, Star Wars: Empire at War and even shooters like Battlefield 1942, Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, Call of Duty and a host of others whose game boxes still clutter our bookshelves.

It let us at least continue gaming while one of us tried to achieve some parity with the other's gaming rig. 

But this isn't a story about hardware.  Aside from what drove us to purchase it, that is...

By the way, we played A LOT of games most of which we've long forgotten about.  My friend was a Diablo fanatic and I was nuts over Need For Speed 3.  The list from the last article, however, comprised games that we literally spent 100's and in some cases thousands of hours playing. 

But around the time Battlefield 2142 launched something began to change.  The Internet was maturing and multiplayer gaming was moving from your living room to the wider world.  With it we began seeing the advent of DLC and games being pumped out on a timetable.

The first echoes of DRM started too with the hated Securom anti-piracy solution.  Everyone hated it and online forums were filled with angry gamers bemoaning its interference.  "No-CD" cracks were popular downloads for gamers not because they wanted to pirate the game but because DRM they contained often denied them access to their legitimate copy. 

Something had to change.

It's pretty rare to get a triple-A title on physical media these days.  Even consoles are more likely to  download a game instead of making you fumble with some kind of disc.  Unfortunately, games are largely unplayable without an Internet connection these days as most are focused on at least some measure of an online experience.  

That's meant that cooperative gameplay has seen a sharp decline in the past few years.  Even if your chosen game includes a so-called "Lan mode" it's likely you'll still have to log into an online server to play. 

It's largely the compromise that arose from the uproar over DRM on physical media.  If a publisher can guarantee that every copy of their game has to  phone home there's no real need for draconian measures on the physical media anymore.  In other words, they just move the draconian measures to the Internet.

The problem is that publishers aren't going to maintain servers forever.  Try to start a local LAN game of Need For Speed: Carbon, for example, and you're going to be disappointed.  This was one of the earliest examples of the "phone home" method of copy protection.  When EA shut down the servers they not only shut down online play, they shut down LAN play as well making the game largely useless.

Nice.

But that was just the start.

Part 3

Gaming is better than ever, so why does it suck? ( PART 1)

What do you care about?

I'm not after some philosophical journey of self awareness.  This is a gaming blog after all...

Think about that last second before you slap down your hard earned cash for a game.   

What are your expectations? 

Is it just another toy to be played with and discarded like so much gift wrap on a Christmas morning?  Or is it the promise of continuing an experience that began long ago.

I'm not getting misty here, I know it's just another consumable product only slightly elevated above the Family size bags of Doritos and Red Bulls cluttering your cabinets.

But publishers pour millions into marketing schemes designed to nurture the belief that the latest triple-A title is something you can't live without.  They further it with promises that only a pre-order can fulfill and add in an artificial scarcity to engender the burning desire to spend more. 

Even if you're just casually interested, the media blitz is inescapable.  For months before launch YouTube will be flooded with "leaked" game footage and gaming review websites will literally burst with tantalizing hints of what's to come.

It's all just so much video game razzle dazzle.

Believe it or not, there was a time when none of this was necessary. 

For a lot of us, our first exposure to video games was at the local arcade.  When consoles came along our preferred platform was largely influenced by how faithful the gaming was to that experience.  After that, it didn't take much to prod you into expanding your library.  Games almost sold themselves with little more than a  few well placed ads and some eye-catching box art.

No raucous launch events, buxom bikini beauties or red carpet arrivals.

The games may not have been the eye-popping and intricately designed affairs common with today's titles but there was something in their simplicity that endured. 

Developers didn't have the luxury of gigabytes of memory and computing power rivaling the Space Shuttle.  The earliest games were written in machine code.  No fancy program libraries or point and click development environments here.  It was about getting the most out of limited resources that would be laughable by the standards of today's cheapest Smartphone.

...and it was good.

Some would call it a golden age where the games somehow transcended the primitive hardware they ran on.  By today's standards the games were crude even by smartphone standards!  I mean, how many times could anyone possibly get chased around the same maze by the same pixilated ghosts?  How many barrels would Mario have to jump or alligators would Pitfall Harry have to swing over?

It didn't matter because it was fun.  If it wasn't, you wouldn't bother with it again and chances are whoever made it wouldn't get another chance. 

Remember the infamous E.T. of which thousands of copies were laid to rest in a remote New Mexico landfill (along with Atari's future) 30 years ago?  It was a lesson that almost killed an industry.  When your focus is on the business of gaming instead of the games your fortunes are never certain. 

I wonder if history is repeating itself...

Anyone who's been around gaming for more than a few years will likely have fond memories of their own golden age.  Maybe it was the Legend of Zelda, Doom or Battlefield 1942.  Whatever it was it kept you hooked.

I was talking with a buddy of mine the other day and we were reminiscing on a decade of lost Saturday nights.  When we started the tradition of ruining our eyesight in darkened rooms, the games were a generation or so removed from those crude polygon opponents of our youth.  But not so far as to lose what I feel is the real essence of gaming. 

Back then the closest thing to DLC came in the form of an expansion pack and multiplayer usually meant everybody was in the same room.  Online gaming was still in its infancy with most folks still on dialup or sub-Megabit DSL connections.  Great for email but Battlefield anything was still a few years off.  These days you'll get kicked from a server if your ping is over 200 milliseconds.   You could've seen that in a LAN connection 10 years ago.

As we ran down our personal inventory of games a few cherished favorites came to the forefront.  These were games that we couldn't wait to play.  In some cases it could have been a second career if we thought to take them seriously.  Unfortunately, professional gaming was still little more than a curiosity at the time.  Besides, most of our competition probably wouldn't have had to worry about grown up stuff like car payments or rent like we did. 

While I had taken a hiatus from gaming to focus on careers and college, my friend had stayed faithful to the cause having been active through every generation of gaming.  I on the other hand was lucky to boot up my old Atari 800 and play a thrilling game of Star Raiders or maybe a few rounds of Commander Keen on a 486 SX25.

When I came back to gaming I was amazed.  The first title I remember regularly playing was Star Wars: Episode 1 Racer.  Shortly after my friend and I had discovered a mutual appreciation for gaming, he built a second PC that happened to be identical to his first.  As such we were evenly matched except for the part where I was completely incompetent at anything more complex than the shareware version of Doom. 

Yeah, I always had an excuse for my shortcomings but the reality of it was that I hadn't taken a game seriously (if there is such a thing) since my high school days.  But it was fun and the games I experienced were mind-blowing compared to anything I'd ever played before.  So much so that it was distracting which explains my poor showing... of course.

Once I got over my euphoria, however, I got competitive.  I played Racer almost every day learning the nuances of every track till I could almost play by muscle memory alone.  After 6 months I finally got to the point where I was competition and actually won a few races. 

We'd still be playing that game today except that my friend updated one of the rigs and we soon discovered that size mattered.  These were the days when there was a very real advantage to having newer hardware meaning whomever had the newer rig usually won the race.  It's still a fun game if you can get it to work with a newer operating system. 

Coincidentally that was something we had to deal with a lot.  Gaming wasn't as plug and play as it is these days and many a night was spent ferreting out drivers and registry entries. 

I'll say this, it helped being a Windows admin...

On to Part 2