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Wednesday, December 30, 2009 10:44 am

"Easy Gamer"
Posted by: TOoSmOotH

With the holidays finally starting to wind down and having some time to reflect on the past year I wanted to write about gaming and maybe life in general. I consider myself a "old school" pc gamer who sometimes plays a little Rock Band on the 360. What has always kept me on the PC side is the small sense of freedom you get with games. Some of the best games I have ever played have been mods. Day of Defeat and Counterstrike are two big ones that come to mind. Some dude in his mom's basement was able to modify the game and make it better than the original. The freedom to change the game to make something new is there. Enter Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

I have to give props where props are due.. COD MF2 is a great game and the sales numbers back that up. But what gives me a bad feeling when it comes to PC Gaming about this game is the fact that there are no dedicated servers. This has been something that countless interblogs have bitched and moaned about and that is not really what my intention is here. My concern is that corporatism has finally completely consumed the last bastion of freedom in my life: Gaming. I am sure some of you are saying you are just now realizing that!?! For some reason I was holding out hope that somehow gaming would prevail. The reason there is no dedicated servers or mod stuff is because they want to charge for maps. The $60 they got from you for the game is not enough.. They want to charge you $10 for 3 shitty maps. Some of the best maps I have played in a lot of games are community maps which are free. People make these maps so they can enjoy the game more.. not to make money.

There are some other shitty things happening to PC Gaming. The fact that some of the classic PC titles like Command and Conquer are feeling more and more like console games. This way they can release it on multiple platforms with a quickness etc. I am not trying to say consoles suck I am just saying don't waste my time and money releasing some buggy PC title cause you can run it through the magic porting machine.

Now I know that gaming is big business and the world changes but what is left if my normal escape from reality is forcing me back into reality? Not trying to get all fight club on it but WTF?!? Maybe there is something wrong with me or I need a vacation or something but I wonder where we are going from here. I'm not saying there should be no rules in games or game companies shouldn't make money. I am saying the game companies need to remember how the road was paved before them and to stay true to that. The Gamer Bill of Rights is a good attempt and I hope it goes somewhere but for some reason I am cynical. I am cynical because I think it is too late. "Big Business" has taken over the gaming world. I will leave you with an exchange from the movie "Easy Rider":

George: Oh no. What you represent to them is freedom.
Billy: What the hell's wrong with freedom, man? That's what it's all about.
George: Oh yeah, that's right, that's what it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it - that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. 'Course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.

Most Recent Comments (Add Your Own or View All)

Wednesday, December 30 2009 - 6:10 PM
BloodReaper	It costs $60 to go out to lunch with a friend. Just saying..
Wednesday, December 30 2009 - 7:32 PM
TOoSmOotH	QUOTE (BloodReaper @ Dec 30 2009, 07:10 PM) It costs $60 to go out to lunch with a friend. Just saying.. Do they charge per ice cube?
Wednesday, December 30 2009 - 7:49 PM
BloodReaper	QUOTE (TOoSmOotH @ Dec 30 2009, 06:32 PM) Do they charge per ice cube? Nah, they charge out the ass for Guinness...but then, of course, you gotta get that shit from the tap.
Wednesday, December 30 2009 - 11:29 PM
VashtheStamp3d3	Great article, couldn't agree more... I'd say it honestly started around the time they started charging for Counter Strike seperately and charging monthly fees for playing games. The horrible thing is as much as I love using xbox live I'd say the marketplace is one of the biggest downfalls. Its like going to chuck-e-cheese. Instead of using your own quarters you gotta exchange your money for tokens (or in xboxes case gamer points). Unless you do the math you don't know how the points break down on to a dollar ammount. I'll admit I havent done the math but I do know they would just allow you to put regular money on your account if you werent being ripped off. Than you look at the games, I'll give you my favorite 3 games at the moment as prime examples. I love playing Madden, FIFA, and COD. Madden now gives you the options of buying all the old AFL alternate jerseys (used to be included), player progression packages for franchise mode (used to be able to do mini games each week to progress players depending on how good/bad you were at said mini games, and now they added an option to buy some special thing where you can play online in All-madden mode instead of All-pro for ranked matches. With FIFA they have live season where you pay a 1 time fee per major league (about 8 different major leagues) for them to keep you up to date with the latest player ratings on a weekly basis (used to be free), than they just started a 'Ultimate team' mini game within the game (where you buy the game as an addon) also where you can either purchase different packs and basically buy yourself the best team or you can play which takes a lot of time(I dont know anyone that played Ultimate Team that hasnt purchased atleast 3 packs @ about 500xbox pts each), than you can purchase stadiums. Im sure you guys get the picture and dont have to get into the COD thing. It's even worse with Rock Band or Guitar Hero where you pay out the ass for all sorts of new songs. Sadly I think this is how game designers figured out how to get another 30$ out of a game you already paid 60$ for thinking most people wouldn't care or not enough people would stand up to and boycott. Think about it, how many of us paid 14$ a month for WOW a game you already paid 50$ for the Origional than an additional 30-40$ for each expansion pack? You'd think
Thursday, December 31 2009 - 10:23 AM
BloodReaper	WoW is THE most cost effective game when it comes to hours play vs money spent and you can't deny that. The thing is busy work incarnate. I'm surprised games still cost so little. The ham and pepperoni I've been buying the past five years have over doubled in price per pound. Haven't concept, development, and manufacturing fees gone up significantly? From what I understand, down-loadable content is helping to keep the vanilla game prices under control. I also hear that manufacturers make shaves of dollars or even lose money on the consoles themselves, so games have to pick up the tab. In closing, I pray that they forget the next generation of consoles and just make them standardized computers. Make 'em so you can hook up the controllers you want and download games from any developer regardless of brand exclusivity. It's time for the triad to die - I ain't paying $400 to play God of War 3.
Thursday, December 31 2009 - 1:31 PM
VashtheStamp3d3	QUOTE (BloodReaper @ Dec 31 2009, 11:23 AM) WoW is THE most cost effective game when it comes to hours play vs money spent and you can't deny that. The thing is busy work incarnate. I'm surprised games still cost so little. The ham and pepperoni I've been buying the past five years have over doubled in price per pound. Haven't concept, development, and manufacturing fees gone up significantly? From what I understand, down-loadable content is helping to keep the vanilla game prices under control. I also hear that manufacturers make shaves of dollars or even lose money on the consoles themselves, so games have to pick up the tab. In closing, I pray that they forget the next generation of consoles and just make them standardized computers. Make 'em so you can hook up the controllers you want and download games from any developer regardless of brand exclusivity. It's time for the triad to die - I ain't paying $400 to play God of War 3. How is WOW the most cost effective per hours played vs money spent? If you play a regular game you pay 60$ for unlimited play saying you dont buy any extra crap. At the WOW rate you could actually buy a new game every 4-5months. The thing that helps WOW's value is the new content they add for no price.
Thursday, December 31 2009 - 4:32 PM
BloodReaper	QUOTE (VashtheStamp3d3 @ Dec 31 2009, 12:31 PM) How is WOW the most cost effective per hours played vs money spent? QUOTE (VashtheStamp3d3 @ Dec 31 2009, 12:31 PM) The thing that helps WOW's value is the new content they add for no price.
Thursday, December 31 2009 - 5:37 PM
VashtheStamp3d3	You said per hour played...not because of added game play. I don't think its really that cost effective unless you sell your account for "time spent" while playing WOW. You can get 3-4 new games over a year for the same price you pay for a wow subscription and thats not including the 80-100 you spend on the actual WOW disks.
Monday, January 4 2010 - 8:46 AM
Panaman	QUOTE (VashtheStamp3d3 @ Dec 31 2009, 06:37 PM) You said per hour played...not because of added game play. I don't think its really that cost effective unless you sell your account for "time spent" while playing WOW. You can get 3-4 new games over a year for the same price you pay for a wow subscription and thats not including the 80-100 you spend on the actual WOW disks. I don't think this post was intended to be a WoW vs. Console gaming... but anywho...... Playing WoW is rather inexpensive...... on the other hand... thats all you end up playing is WoW. The reason I quit playing is not becuase I was bored playing the game. It is because I wanted to play other games. I realized that if i was knee deep into my toons that I just won't play any other game. Since I quit playing WoW, I have spent more money on games but I do not regret it at all. I now own an xbox and about 15 games I got all used and also have been playing Left 4 Dead 2 on my PC. Also, i have been getting some video editing done on my pc since I can sit there and play my xbox while the video's compile on the computer. But to to get back to Smooth's point.. i tend to agree... it seems like developers are moving away from the PC unless its some MMORPG. Either way, as a gamer and being with technology you have to go with the flow.

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