Broken Games And Broken Dreams – The Boulevard Of Broken Games

Incomplete Games

Game companies releasing broken games, with us actually having to download again and again the complete games as patches may be the industry’s way of slowly grinding the benefits of owning a
physical copy on our systems.

It’s good of them to patch games and repair the broken things, but the ‘ lame patches’ which are not patches at all but complete re-downloads consuming the same amount of space that’s on the disc? Why’s that?

Could it be that a physical game is actually nothing more than a key allowing you to play the game? And basically the game being a digital game?

Downloading the game complete instead of a small patch makes it very easy for companies not to actually make separate small incremental patches available but just ‘ update’ the complete digital download as a whole. Whether you download it again
to ‘ patch ‘ your game or download it for the first time after you stuck in the disk and spent time installing it from disk actually will make no difference at all.

I dare to say that there are in fact no physical copies on modern consoles. 0-day patch downloads are more or less mandatory in order for the game to function at all really.

I have the PS4 and XboxOne sitting in my gamesroom but I find myself not buying many games for them. I only more or less get the plus or gold downloads and on the XboxOne I enjoy the backwards compatibility and the slowly trickling down of the Live Arcade games that do appear on the system. Getting a disc
seems pointless, especially at the prices they go for. And the digital downloads on the PS4 and XboxOne are even more expensive.

I reckon I am just old-fashioned and want a sense of ownership and control when it comes to videogames that you pay quite a fair bit of money for them. Now with e-consumables like streaming music, certain sale e-books or magazines, rental movies, netflix I
consume those as disposable transient experiences and don’t think twice about forking out the nominal fees. I reckon because you get quite a fair bit to access or content for just a small amount of money that feels like a good deal. Renting a movie is not a big deal too.

But with games – especially when they are quite expensive and the fact that I grew up in an era where a game was something you had to save up for, and a game that you had to make due with for a long time still makes me think about games in a different
fashion. I reckon especially the younger generations might not experience these issues of wanting ownership and autonomy of what you do with YOUR games. If you aren’t responsible for your own income and your own roof over your head yet, but do have a
disposable income to buy games with you may just care about buying and experiencing the games and not realize that the game companies are overcharging for something that’s broken to begin with and will only be accessible for as long as they deem
reasonable. ULAs will allow then to pull the plug at any time. The people buying those games will have moved on to the next game and probably won’t even care.

PC games on Steam – I own quite a few. But you get quite a bit of autonomy here. Allowing you to install on multiple systems as long as you log in with your account. Even backing up the installs to some extend is possible.

The fact that the Steam server basically has to be up in order for you to play the game is a downside so GOG.com good old games is the better option for me. But Steam has excellent sales and I do cave and get games on PC. More easily than on the modern
consoles.

I reckon because from a PC you expect something different than from a console. Basically the modern consoles behave like PCs but allow you far less control and access than PCs so the modern
consoles – the ease of use – poppin’ in a game and playing some of that without the hassle is something that has been taken away from videogames. I reckon the ease of use, the not having to think about updates is something that attracted me to console
gaming in the first place but as this has more or less
been taken away completely it doesn’t do as much
for me as it did before.

I am a gamer and will always be a gamer I think, but I am only buying console games that I ‘ really ‘ want to play and where the console actually has an advantage. 🙂

o-o-o-o

Track: Clandestine Dancing by Lactobacillus Prime