Why Do They Hate Us?

Offense: Only dedicated servers for Modern Warfare 2

Offense: Will release L4D2 after just one year of the first game. Didn't live up to the promise to regularly update and support the first.

Offense: Buys out smaller developers, finds ways to ruin beloved franchises. The Wal-Mart of video games. Read into how they treat their employees...

I miss the good old days. It was an innocent time, when PC gaming was still an almost underground activity. No corporate giants, no multi-million dollar budgets, no army sized development teams. The original studios were driven not just by profit, but by passion, creativity and a willingness to take risks. The explosion in popularity of electronic entertainment has cost the hobby its very soul.

When something becomes all about the money, nothing else matters. Not quality control, consumer demands or end user convenience. We've entered a dark age in computer gaming in which we have become desperate peasants suffering at the whims of feudal lords who can dictate to us how we play our games. It's wrong, and something is going to have to happen.

Modern Warfare 2, no custom servers, clan matches, and the PC version costs as much as the console version. What a load of crap.

I don't know if its simple greed, desperation (considering the economy) or cold hearted business practices by people who probably never handled a game controller in their life. But it seems to be that companies are getting increasingly selfish, overly protective and simply wrong headed when it comes to what we the players, should want. In all their arrogance, ignorance or both, they know they have us where they want us.

They can do pretty much whatever they want, realizing that the consumer has very little power to change it. Most won't care, they'll simply put up with it. Those that do will be left with a near unwinnable battle against corporate juggernauts, or contemplate giving up their beloved hobby.

Congratulations, you just bought the Terran campaign for SC II. When you're done feel free to purchase the rest of the game, in two more parts. What's next, will we pay for each individual mission? Or maybe for individual faction units? Go ahead, we can take it. Tell us how you're gonna screw us next.

I tip my hat to those who organized the L4D 2 boycott, and those who organized the petition against Infinity Ward for their misguided decision regarding CoD Modern Warfare 2. Admittedly, I will probably get L4D 2, but only because I need another FPS, and MW 2 is no longer an option for me. How much you want to bet we'll be seeing L4D 3 in another year?

Spore originally had a 3 install limit. Because EA thought it would be too extreme to require background checks, retina scans and a full body cavity search every time you logged onto the game.

As a lifelong and passionate gamer, it saddens me to see where the industry is going. Everything from draconian anti-Piracy measures, to catering to the casual crowd (I have nothing against casual gamers, but why does that mean almost every game has to be necessarily dumbed down for mass consumption? Again, studios catering to the many, while ignoring the needs of the devoted few. In fact, the very gamers that probably made them what they are today.) to raising the price of PC games, to chopping games up into segments and dishing them out to us bit by bit, for a price of course.

Why? Why couldn't things have stayed the way they were? I'm old enough to remember the industry, the gaming scene, before all this turned into the overly commercialized, soulless, overgrown monstrosity that it has become. Maybe its hard to express in words what it used to mean to be a gamer, and what companies and their products used to mean. It something you had to have been there for, to have experienced for yourself. To have lived in the heyday of titles like Civilization, Master of Orion, the King's Quest series, Wing Commander, X-Com, to name a few.

Maybe its just nostalgia, or maybe there really was a golden age that has long sinced passed us by. An age that was ruled over by fair and gentle kings, sharing their wealth and riches with all their philanthropic generosity. What we have now is akin to a gilded age, where arrogant, apathetic lords toss coins from their stage coaches to beggars. We went from the PC gaming equivalent of classical music such as from Mozart, to meaningless pop crap from "artists" like Britney Spears. We went from a gaming Renaissance era to some 1984ish Orwellian dystopia.

"Yes, my plan went perfectly! All those suckers who subscribed to Tabula Rasa gave me the money I needed to fly into space. So long suckers!"

Richard Gariott, a modern day Nero. The Roman emperor fiddled as his city burned. Gariott flew into space while his failed sci-fi MMO Tabula Rasa shut down. Nice, feel free not to come back to Earth.

We live in a paradoxical time. The PC and videogame industries are expanding at an unprecedented rate, each raking in billions. Never has the hobby been so prolific, accepted and popular. But is this really what we want? The more it expands, the more powerful it gets, the more soul and essence it will lose. And its a tragedy. While I don't think we can beat the giants, there is a way to fight back.

Find and support independent developers. Companies that have no choice but to listen to their players to survive. Arcen Games, Stardock, Introversion Software.

If you consider yourself a veteran gamer who remembers what it was like before all this BS, we must rethink the hobby. We must find other ways to enjoy what we love, without enabling the callous software giants. This is a call to action, a time to take a stand. Gamers of the world unite!