Tuesday, 11 September 2012

Problems with today's gaming industry (Part - I)

Over the last decade or so we have seen
new features creep there way into the
gaming industry which are justified by devs/publishers to stop piracy or to
 generate more revenue out of the  consumers. Out of the list below what do you think has been the worst "feature" to  be introduced so far?

1) DRM (Digital rights: management) to curb piracy, so far DRM has been unsuccessful to stop video game piracy, the worst part about DRM that you always need to be online even if you want to play Singleplayer games, it clearly stats no internet = no games, ubisoft's Uplay is the best example of DRM, well ubisoft claimed that it would stop pc game piracy but however yesterday evening (05/09/2012) they reported the 93 to 95% of games that gamers play are pirated. Ya now we see DRM is very successful !






2) DLC (Downloadable content) :
DRM can be good in some ways but this DLC sh*t is worst part in gaming industry ever, its the thing that is being made along with the game and also present in your Disc but you need to pay to unlock the level/modes, so technically you are paying not NOTHING ! In early times the DLC's were called expansion packs but they were out of the box, you can even buy a physical copy of expansion packs that is kind of good, but today its like DLCs are part of the game, no game releases without sh*tty DLCs, best example is recently released Battlefield 3 Premium which costs 50$ (Rs.2700 india and Rs.3299 from flipkart)
What does premium includes:
Few new maps, couple of new weapons and vehicles) which is definitely not worth Rs.2699. (50$)

* MOH Warfighter Limited edition =Rs.1499 (27$)
* Crysis 3 Limited Edition = Rs.1499 (27$)

Hence Crysis 3 +MOH Warfighter (both
limited editions)=Rs 2988 (54$),
Which is almost same price as that of BF3  Premium so above is better deal , I will go
for above two games then BF3 Premium.



As we know EA games is a fat greedy pig who just cares about money they proudly say DLC's are future of gaming. So in near future we can expect only 5 game levels are unlocked out of 9 levels and you need to pay for every level to unlock, seriously bullsh*t !
i don't hate DLCs but i hate their costs it costs as much as new game, like Skyrim dawnguard, BF3 premium, Mw3 chaos pack, spec ops pack etc etc etc...

3) Constant patching :
Releasing unfinished games results in constant patching, almost all games released nowadays are  unfinished due to deadlines like skyrim, rage and BF3 the best, its the most annoying thing like when you turn your pc/console to kick some a** in multiplayers the game starts to update and it takes forever, i remember i borrowed a friends BF3 copy just to know whether the game is worth buying or not, first time BF3 downloaded a f*ckin 4GBs on updates ! Which took a whole day to download as my internet is shite (70kbps download speed), multiplayer experience was horrible 10 year olds camping with snipers and mortars, tons and tons of glitches and bugs, small maps compared to classic BF2 and BC2, back to topic, after a week playing BF3, Dice decided to screw us once again another update/patch released of 3GBs this time i didn't care to update just returned the copy to my friend and decided not to even take Battlefield 3 for free, whereas Battlefield : Bad company 2 predecessor of Battlefield 3 had just 1 update and that too of just 1.2GBs which included some minor bug fixes and BC2: Vietnam DLC which was FREE, All hail to Vietnam ! Best DLC ever, BC2 was a fully completed game, same thing was with Need for speed: Most wanted and call of duty 4: modern warfare which almost in all 8 back to back updates, it happens mostly with multiplayer games,
Developers Y U NO release completed games ?





4) Good graphics, no story :
Max Payne 2, Indigo prophecy, Ashen (N-gage), call of duty 4, Farcry 2, Black ops and many more were the games which didn't had that DX11 ultra, hyper, tessellated graphics but are popular due to their good storyline and excellent game design. However Game devs today concentrate more on graphics instead of story there are only few games which have good graphics and good story as well, Graphics is secondary, a good game design and story is what matters, its like beauty with brains, most of games are'nt balanced, games like Crysis series doesn't have that good story people like it due to realistic graphics, in android gaming too there are games with decent graphics but good story is missing, now just don't tell that mobile games are not made for story etc etc, 10 years ago the games released on Nokia's N-gage platforms like Elder scrolls, Ashen, splinter cell: chaos theory were simple awesome, shame on developers they still cannot create games that on N-gage for Android platform, another example Battlefield 3, now i am not purposely targeting battlefield 3 for each and every problem but BF3 is whole package of annoying sh*t and stuff, BF3's campaign was horrible 'a copy of COD' however Multiplayer is a copy of COD as well, a common story in video game nowadays, Russia and gulf countries are countries of terrorists they are planning to nuke America, how bad might be the graphics of COD, how silly might be its multiplayer, but story is logical and critically acclaimed especially black ops.





5) Digital downloads : i personally hate this one, not because my internet speed is low or something but it kills the actual joy and satisfaction of physical copies.


(1) Broadband sucker : Purchasing games digitally is a nightmare for people with limited data usage internet and nowadays the game size is massive
Max Payne 3 - 26GBs
L.A noire - 17GBs
Battlefield 3 - 13GBs
plus their huge updates. even if we get games cheaper than retail stores we are still in loss. one of my friends told me 'by downloading games digitally i don't have to wait in queues out of game-shop during game release' that doesn't seems to be helping at the time release the downloads gets slower due to server load.





(2) No resell: for gamers on budget used games might be the only way they can afford to play some of their favorite games. Should they be denied the
joy of getting a new a game just because
they cannot spend the money for a new copy ?

(3) Price Control In The Hands Of One : If console games are sold digitally, right from the console, that leaves all the  pricing decisions in the hands of the platform holder. In theory, they could  raise the prices of games, and it would be  out of our control. If a particular retailer decides to charge too much for a game, we just buy it somewhere else. If there is no retailer, either we pay the price or we do not buy the game. Steam does a great job of having
sales frequently, so that at least gives me hope that we will not be ripped off.
Not everyone has a good internet or credit card/paypal to buy game online lets not forget only there are only 36% of internet users in India and 58% in America, but still people play games even though they don't have internet, so here its the same logic as DRM 'no internet = no games' (not to mention games purchased digitally requires net to start even to start singleplayer after purchasing)

What is your opinion of these problems overall? Do you think it  lead to the demise of
 video games? Let us know in the
 comments!




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