While I was out of town last week I received an e-mail from Electronic Arts (EA). The e-mail informed me that my old “EA” account would now be known as an “Origin” account. My initial reaction was, “why do I even have an EA account?” Then I remembered.
The reason I have an EA account is because, after buying a used copy of the last Need for Speed game for the PlayStation 3, I was forced to create an EA account to play the game online. Then, after doing that, the game informed me that I was going to have to also pay an additional $10 to play the game online, since I had purchased the game used. That was the day I swore I would never buy another Electronic Arts game, and whined posted about it on my blog.
Oh, and Origin is not optional, if you want to play new EA games. It has been confirmed that Battlefield 3 will require Origin to be installed. Even if you walk into the store and buy a copy of Battlefield 3, you will need to install EA’s Origin and sign up for an account before you can play BF3.
There comes a time when it makes sense to say, “it’s not you; it’s me.” I think that time comes when everything around you seems to no longer make any sense. For me, and gaming, it appears that time is now. Pretty much everything about modern video games either confounds me, confuses me, or simply makes me mad. I’ve complained about it here before dozens of times. I don’t like the DRM. I don’t like the online requirements. I don’t like the forced firmware upgrades. I don’t like micro-payments. To be honest, I just don’t like any of it anymore.
Between older video game consoles and computers, there are tens of thousands — maybe even a hundred thousand — games to choose from. There are so, so many games I’ve never played; thousands of solid, classic games I’ve never even tried. I’ve never played any of the Zelda games. Hell, I don’t know that I’ve played an RPG since the 1980s. I don’t think I’ve ever beaten any of the old LucasArts Point-and-Click adventures. I’ve never played a single Sega Master System game. I don’t think I beat a single text adventure written in the 1980s. Or 1990s.
Oh, Sir Graham — how I missed ye.
I feel like there are so many classic retro games that there’s just no reason to keep reading modern gaming news and getting mad at every single thing that modern companies do. When you’re mad at Microsoft, and Sony, and Electronic Arts, and Ubisoft, and Amazon … well, like I said, at some point you’ve got to step back, take a deep breath, and realize that it’s not them; it’s me. The things I complain about, the things I’ve been complaining about, don’t seem to bother other gamers — at least, not enough to write off modern gaming. But I am.
The Nintendo Wii seems to be the least Draconian of the bunch, so if there’s any system I’ll keep supporting for a bit longer.
My next major gaming project will be to build an “emulation box,” one that runs all the classic emulators, including M.A.M.E. I had a modded Xbox loaded up with emulators for a while, but I think I’ll go with a PC setup this time. Upstairs, next to my C64 setup, I think I’m going to set up a retro PC box as well. That should keep me entertained for the time being.
If it’s me, then fine — I blinked. If this is the future of gaming, then it looks like a good time for me to bow out of the gaming rat race, do a u-turn, and check out all the cheese I missed throughout the years.
Completely agree with this post end to end. The line that resonates with me the most is; “There are so, so many games I’ve never played; thousands of solid, classic games I’ve never even tried.”
In my office at home I have a “workstation” setup with my C64, my ORIGINAL 286 computer and 486 computer … I paid so damn much for them back in the day hell be damned if I EVER get rid of them ;) So whenever I get ticked at high prices for over rated garbage, or general BS that some of these companies pull, old school I go! In many respects I get much more enjoyment out of those games when I compare them 1:1 to the new ones.
I feel the same exact way. And the only future of new games for me may very well be homebrews. I just can’t bring myself to pay fifty bucks for a piece of crap that I can’t even play anymore. I just can’t figure out why kids these days enjoy getting screwed over by companies.
While I will likely never stop playing new games, I’m also completely sick and tired of the constant nickel and dime-ing. But what I am way more sick of is the way most people seem to support it. If I never hear the words “if you don’t like it, don’t buy it” again it’ll be too soon.
Every single time I see somebody complain about DLC or whatever, it’s always followed by a group of apologists who tell the person IF YOU DON’T LIKE DLC THEN DON’T BUY IT!! NOBODY IS FORCING YOU TO BUY IT!!!
Really? I was playing Transformers War for Cybertron a while back. A really great game. And one reason I wanted it was because I actually loved the multiplayer demo. I rarely play MP but this one was fun so I wanted to do it. They, of course, put out two map packs which would cost 20 dollars total if you actually bought them. For me, that is a total waste of money. I’m just going to play until I max out my characters, get my achievements and then I’ll be done and playing something else.
But the way they made it work is if you tried to join a game, it would go through the loading screen all the way up until you should be playing, but if you didn’t have the DLC, it would then go through a second loading screen and you’d find yourself all the way back to the main menu of the game with a “you don’t have this map” message. Every time you’d try to log into a game and not have the DLC was nearly a 5 minute process. It would take 20-30 minutes to find a game to play sometimes. It was so frustrating and annoying that it made me think about buying the maps to just not deal with it. Now….tell me…if that’s not trying to force you into buying it, what else is it? They could’ve had an option to never put somebody without DLC into a DLC map. It could’ve just put you back into the lobby instead all the way back to the main menu. But no, it was obviously and purposely made annoying to force you to buy DLC.
Though the worst for me, by far, is City of Heroes. It’s the superhero MMO and I’ve been playing it for years. I’ve quit a couple of times to try other MMOs but CoH is the best to me and everything else gets boring. Now it has ALWAYS been incredibly tough for me to justify the 14.99 a month to play one game. I don’t like it, I think it sucks, but I deal with it because I play it a lot, and they used to add all kinds of content for no extra cost so I felt I sort of got my money’s worth out of it.
A couple of years back they started charging 10-15 dollars for packs of costumes and some temp powers. Something that had always been free. I, and others, found this to be insane. We’re already paying 15 bucks a month and now we have to pay for costume pieces? But the apologists stood up and sided with the company. They didn’t think this was bad at all, they thought it was great! So instead of the company getting the message that this was un-acceptable, they got the message that we LOVED having our wallets raped so more and more of these packs came. And then they even charged for a game add on which they had never done before.
Now a month or so ago they announced City of Heroes: Freedom which is their free to play model. So now there is a very, very, very, very limited version of the game, unplayable I’d say, that you can play for “free” and there will be a DLC store where you can purchase more things to upgrade your free version. Then there will be the 15 a month VIP version which is the full game….which will also have the DLC store. I’m like what the, what, what the who? Why would the VIP player still need the DLC store? 15 a month gets you the whole game, right???
Wrong, they’re still going to be charging VIP players for add ons and costume pieces and stuff. Last night, through in game chat, I found out that they will even be charging for the main powersets and other stuff they never charged for before and never should. A couple of people in the chat tried to complain about it only to get shouted down by sycophants and apologists once again. I find it amazing. It seems to me that calling this update “Freedom” and the players “VIPs” is some kind of sick joke. I pay these people 180 dollars a YEAR to play their game, how is that NOT enough??
I just don’t get how people don’t understand why this is so frustrating. I don’t understand why they seem to ENJOY having some mega-corporation gouge every last penny out of their pocket. They don’t seem to understand that the more they support it, the worst it’s going to get and eventually it WILL effect them and they’ll be the ones crying. I picture these people sitting at a train crossing with the lights flashing, the bells ringing, but they keep on driving cause they can’t see the train itself.
Though you really lose me with the DRM complaints. What are they supposed to do? Not protect their games? Spend millions to make them and then just let everybody have it for free? Pretty sure that you, I and a lot of other people reading this are the reason DRM even exists. It’s a bit like the shoplifter complaining when the store hires a security guard. haha
I think the DRM police killed my response. Dangit.
My first experience with this issue happened recently when I bought Mafia2 for the PS3. The game was very short but there is a lot of DLC. Well, since all the add-ons are really only more of the same I decided to simply get all my trophies and then make up my own game rules. To wit: stuff like only killing a certain kind of NPC (there’s only seven to ten different NPC faces) Seeing how long I can survive with four stars. Seeing how many people I can shoot and still remain un-wanted. stuff like that. It extends the play time without having to spend more money.
@Lethargic: My complaint isn’t about copy protection in general. I expect that. What I hate is the constant barrage of firmware updates. What I hate is the BS of having to be constantly connected to their servers. You know when Sony’s PSN went down, there were a lot of games that simply stopped working — like several of Capcom’s games, games with no online play mode whatsoever. But since they couldn’t talk to “the mother ship”, the games refused to load. That happened last year too, when Ubisoft began requiring that gamers connect to their servers to play their games (even the offline ones). That worked well until hackers DDoS’ed Ubisoft’s servers, making the game unplayable for everybody.
Nobody seems to remember the original DIVX, those cheap movie discs that worked great until DIVX went out of business and shut down their servers, turning people’s movie collections into unwatchable coasters. People were up in arms about it then, but now history’s repeating itself and nobody seems to care, I guess because it’s “just games”.
If people complain about it, but still support it financially, then there’s no point. If you sign up for and support this Origin crap, Electronic Arts makes the same amount of money from you, whether you’re a satisfied customer or not. I feel compelled to not support these things financially.
I find the best way to deal with DRM is to let somebody else get rid of it and upload it to Demonoid so I can just download it.
Congratulations Rob. Let me recommend Illusion of Gaia for SNES. Play the Zelda games. Sega Master System has lots of great games and don’t forget the TG-16! I just started playing all the TG-16 games I missed and they are fantastic.
Nintendo GBA and DS games are great too! I’m playing through all the 2D Castlevania games for GBA/DS and they are really good!
Great post! Pretty much agree with all of it. I usually never buy DLC (the only exception this year was the L.A. Noire Rockstar pack but I only payed $40.00 for the game. Grand total $50.00 = still less than what it usually sold for at the time.) and wait for a GOTY to be released with DLC bundled. I won’t be playing the new Elder Scrolls till next year or till they release the GOTY.