The sorry state of gaming.

This post may be a bit short as I am writing it from a mobile device which is a bit if a pain if I am honest.

So gaming has been around since before I was born. ( I am a couple decades old and some) During that time gaming has evolved so much. From the single paddle controllers of the atari to the beautiful and powerful consoles that are present today.

The point of this post and one of my main complaints is how we as gamers have allowed the gaming companies to take advantage of us.

Since online gaming has become such an important part of our gaming experience, game devs have since began capitalizing on this. Before you would buy a game and apart from perhaps a mod here and there your game was final until next release. But now it is acceptable to give us games in episodes or missing chunks of content to come along at a later date as dlc. Then there are mmos which may be free to play but have premium stores which players can buy upgrades and boosts to give them an advantage. This has become acceptable because we as gamers have allowed it. Some companies can be considered guilty of this but do not take advantage, for example The Walking Dead game. This was an episodic release title but once you bought the game you would have all its content when it became available.

But this episodic release business model doesn't always work. Half life 2 took this approach and for awhile it was great. We got great minor story expansions as we all waited in anticipation for the next big release of Half life 3. But then the episodes stopped and Half life crawled to the back of the shelf to hide from the big outside world. I think the problem with episodic release is that you are never guaranteed to get the full product. The developer may stop at episode 1 or 2 or 3 or blah blah and then that's that.

Early access is another thing that has become popular lately. I to have bought games which were early access only to be greatly disappointed with things like slow updates on the game. The point of selling an early access is to help fund the future development. But if you take the sales then do not deliver on a better product down the line are you not just committing a sort of fraud?

Early access does work. The granddaddy of early alpha is Minecraft. When this was first released it was but a shadow of its current self. Mojang took this game, told us it is rough around the edges but delivered on the future content. Even today it is still being updated periodically.

Episodic releases, Early access, Steam Greenlight, Kick start campaigns..... there are many ways developers and indie developers are bringing us games. Some developers are great and deliver what they say but some lie and cheat us to make a quick buck.

Becareful out there gamers. Do not travel alone. If in doubt check for reviews. Good luck and Good day.