F—ing Frustrated

Let Me Rant…

Here we are in 2019, video games are beautiful and immersive with more and more content being added all the time. Not a bad thing at all. It is a great age to be a gamer!

I’ll spare everyone the line that starts with, “Back when I was a kid…” So I should be celebrating this Golden Age of gaming, right? Well yes, I suppose. However, there’s something that’s been bothering me for quite some time now, and I’m going to share that with you here in this article. Let me rant…

But It’s Not Finished!

Yeah…now you get what’s grinding my gears. I understood when companies would drop games onto PC that were in Alpha or Beta format. It used to be that you could download such games for free. It was expected that you would help troubleshoot, discover bugs and relay that information directly to the game developers in an effort to help them create and release a well put together product in its final form. Being a PC gamer, I found nothing wrong with this and was often happy and excited to be a part of that process.

Somewhere along the way, game developers got a bit greedy and started charging YOU to help THEM diagnose and develop games. Now I understand that a lot of these games start out as nothing but an idea. Often crowdsourcing is used to fund that idea to bring a game through its paces to fruition. It’s kind of genius really; paying a game developer to work for them. I can’t even fault the logic. Here is where I find a problem.

My Console Is My Safe Place

Console – the word itself literally means to provide comfort at a time of grief or disappointment. It’s also a panel or unit accommodating a set of controls for electronics or mechanical equipment. Yet to us gamers, the definitions can be rather synonymous. “My console consoles me!” When I hop onto my Xbox, the last thing I want to find are a bunch of in-game technical errors and problems that SHOULD have been worked out in Alpha or Beta phases of a games development before the game was released to the mass public.

Now, I’m not talking about games on Xbox that are released in their early stages. In my opinion, you signed an agreement upon buying those games acknowledging that they are unfinished and still in developmental stages. I’m actually talking about fully realized games being sold at full price, saturated with in-game purchases and the promise of many shiny, new expensive DLC’s to come.

What’s Trending?

My friends here in KSI like to game with me and I like to game with them as well. They often hit me with the, “Whiskey you have GOTTA try this game!” Then they follow it with the inevitable “why it’s a great game” and “why I’ll love it”.

The ever more prevalent trend that I’ve noticed is the ratio of time spent telling me why it’s a great game, to the time spent telling me what’s broken about the game and the promise that “there is a fix coming for that though, I hope”. Video games seem to be the only products on the market that sell brand new with a price to reflect that status, and rarely ever work as promised.

Let’s flip this on its damn head for a second. Let’s say you were in the market for a new car and your friend says, “Buy this make and model, I have one and it SOMETIMES works like it is supposed to.” I rest my case. You’re not gonna run out and buy that piece of junk! Yet with video games, we all do just that and nobody is holding these companies accountable. Not you and I the consumer, and not the companies that sell these lemons.

Damn Straight, I Boycott

It’s the only power we as consumers have. In an industry with seemingly no checks and balances regarding quality content, we alone hold the power. I’m going to tell you all ahead of time – NO, I won’t be buying the new Call of Duty game. The last four were terribly broken. No, I wont be buying Destiny 3 either. Can’t make me give those thieves over at Bungie my money.

In fact, I’m not buying any new video games – with the exception of Borderlands 3 – until they’ve been out at least three months and I’ve heard overwhelmingly positive things about them. I’ve had enough. The last straw for me was Red Dead Redemption 2. There was zero “redemption” there and there never will be. Screw you, Rockstar. Screw you.