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.<\/p>\n

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<\/b> pay an additional<\/b> $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<\/s> posted about it on my blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oh, and Origin is not optional, if you want to play new EA games. It has been confirmed<\/a> that Battlefield 3 will require Origin to be installed<\/b>. 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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\nOh, Sir Graham — how I missed ye.<\/i><\/p>\n

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<\/i> complaining about, don’t seem to bother other gamers — at least, not enough to write off modern gaming. But I am. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144,34,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-videogames","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}