Tag Archives: Gaming
Video Games Are Boring
Sorry about the nuclear winter behind me.
Gamers’ Rights
Recently, Activision Blizzard has taken a new stance on their character restoration policy in their number one game in the world; World of Warcraft. As with most MMO’s, account theft is a byproduct of carelessness on the part of the customer. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of people have had their accounts hacked or hijacked and were in need of a character restoration to recover whatever was lost from their accounts.
These restorations were completely avoidable, however, if the customer had only taken the time to follow some basic internet caveats: Don’t give your password out to anyone, don’t download strange programs, don’t click on suspicious links, etc. Of course, people follow instructions, even if for their own safety, as if they were somehow immune to any of the dangers that plague the internet. Of course, it’s not the consumer’s fault these dangers exist. But it’s common knowledge that you take responsibility for your actions.
Despite the frequent warnings, even from Blizzard themselves, people still found themselves with stripped characters. For these unfortunate people, Blizzard did character restorations which usually took one to three days to complete.
However, now Blizzard is telling it’s customer service representatives to dissuade people from getting character restorations and instead to take a care package to help them re-gear their characters. Of course, the customers are now outraged by Blizzards reluctance to restore their characters
A note from the author:
Here’s where I get a little pissed off. Blizzard does not have to do anything to help, not even to acknowledge you lost your gear in the first place. In fact, they could easily tell you to piss off and to not get hacked next time. The fact that they listen at all, not to mention do full restores for your stupidity, is a miracle. This over-entitled mentality running through most people has put a major strain on most companies. You pay a monthly fee to play the game, not for a personal ass licking from Blizzard (or any company for that matter) whenever you feel like you need a little rectal tickle. If you were to pay for a magazine subscription, the only thing that guarantees you is that a magazine will show up on the 15th of every month. It does not mean you can call up the editor and tell him what to print next month, how they should hold off on delivery until you get home from vacation, or to send you another because someone stole it out of your mailbox. Take some personal responsibility for a change and stop your fucking complaining.
The End of PC Gaming?
It seems with the growing power and popularity of gaming consoles, PC gaming has taken a backseat to development for games. By backseat I mean in the trunk, tied up and gagged. A vast majority of games released for the PC are usually console games modified to work on a computer. The problem with this is that these ported games usually don’t utilize the full potential of the medium on which they are being played.
Historically, PC games are more advanced than their console counterparts. Consoles like the NES and SNES were popular and had many fun titles to play. But if you wanted to play something more advanced than Super Mario World, you needed a computer. Computer games would include complex flight simulators, heavily detailed first person shooters, and addicting online real-time-strategy games.
Game developers seem to be moving away from the computer as a viable medium lately to placate the ‘safe’ market of Xbox, Playstation, and Wii consoles. They make quickly rushed titles with little or no quality assurance and mass produce these games just to offset the cost of production for the profit from sales. Granted, companies are obviously in business to make money, but computer games have always been a place to experiment with new technologies. Without computer gaming conventions, Xbox and Playstation would never have had online play, or at least not in the incarnation they do now.
PC gaming is expensive, sure. You need the hardware to play these games and it can be quite costly if you want some super gaming rig. Companies need to stop ignoring this medium, however, and start experimenting again. Stop trying to design games for safe overly-saturated markets (do we really need another first person shooter or ‘Gears of War’ knockoff?) and start trying to think up something new, inventive, and fun to play.