It is harder today than it ever was for a gamer to enjoy the pleasure of playing video games and obtaining the sense of achievement which, although slowly, has started to become a thing of the past now. In the good old days of the Sega Genies and Super Nintendo, games were released to the consumers once they were launched. Even with all the technology that has been made available to us today, current generation games delivered to both console and PC gamers are often incomplete or riddled with micro transactions in an effort to milk the consumer for as much as the developers and/or publishers can.
Let’s Suppose
Imagine purchasing a current generation video game only to realize that it depends on the downloading of an update in order for it to add new features. We have a high-speed internet connection so the download and update could take less than an hour. Now let’s imagine that you have to move to an area which is only able to offer you a download speed of 10 Mbps whereas at your former residence you were able to download the data at 300 Mbps. It may not be a problem since you’d still be able to download the update but it just takes you 30 times longer than it would have previously. If the situation still doesn’t seem that bad then for a moment think about the fact that you bought your child a Christmas gift and instead of receiving physical media which can simply be inserted into your device of choice, you receive a voucher redeemable for a download. This would take weeks to complete, considering you use a slow internet connection. Just make the situation a little more hectic! The game that you purchased requires an always active internet connection to play as an anti-piracy measure and your internet connection goes down, what would happen? A complete disaster!
Even though the game is visually more compelling than the games from 20 years ago, on the other side of the spectrum, they are much more complicated to play.
INCOMPLETE GAMES
Previously, when you purchased a game, the media that the game was packaged on, contained all the necessary data; it came as a complete package. If you happened to purchase the latest installment of Battlefield V (5) or Fallout 76 then you probably paid top dollar for an incomplete game.
Battlefield V single player campaign wasn’t playable for the first month after its release since the developer wanted the gaming community to keep an interest in it after release, this was actually counterproductive and resulted in backfiring on the publisher which eventually led to poor sales revenue. The main attraction, which had been trending, was for the battle royal that is expected to become available this year. The end result for the Electronic Arts – the publisher of Battlefield – was half of the game after its initial launch. The discount is not being offered by the publisher but rather by the retailers who need to clear the inventory space. Bad Publicity was another reason for the game’s downfall; be it a completely different story; it scheduled content to be released later. Those who did pay full price for the content felt as though they had been robbed, when only a week later it was offered at 50% off.
Fallout 76 is the latest installment in the popular Fallout franchise after Fallout 4 put forth by publishers Bethesda. Fallout 4 was an instant hit that allowed creativity to flourish with its crafting components and provided hours of enjoyable gameplay; the experience was truly immersive. Although the game itself was great, it was riddled with annoying bugs during gameplay, which ruined the experience and caused enough frustration for the long-term fans who simply walked away. The fact is that the game needs to be patched to rid itself from glitches; it should make the gameplay playable from the very first day of its release. The things about video games are that AAA titles usually exceed 50GB in size. If you happened to purchase a physical copy of the game, you’d have definitely come home only to realize that you needed 10 GB’s worth of updates to make the game playable. If your internet connection was not the greatest in the world or happened to be a metered connection, then you, my friend, were unfortunately out of luck.
Completion is the Key
The internet is a huge blessing for most of the people who do have access to high-speed internet. Those, who don’t, realize what they are missing out on once they hear the experiences and the lives of people that have gone too far and beyond at accomplishing effective results of their personal tasks. Most of the rural America does not have access to high-speed internet and when someone chooses to get the connection to play online games, they wouldn’t be subjected to download fixes or additional content which, in fact, was supposed to be readily available with the purchase. A developer needs to realize this and only release content once it is complete, and has satisfactory real-world performance. Apart from that, on your end, you should consider getting internet bundle deals to cut on the cost of the internet as well as to avail two services in one package.