PoolCleaningRobot said:
Could anyone have predicted this? That the Internet would be used to hinder us rather than help?
I learned it years and years ago. Let me tell you a story:
Once upon a time, I was walking through the electronics section of my local K-mart and I spied a new sight. On a shelf reserved for the half-dozen computer games the store stocked was a new game called "Half-Life 2". I picked it up and almost squee'd, I remembered Half-Life and it was a great game with many expansion packs. So I begged and pleaded with my mum till she bought it for me. That was the end of the enjoyment I got out of the game for many weeks.
You see, Half-Life 2 was packaged with a vicious and insidious program called Steam, which required that you connect to the internet with your computer to play the game. I was taken aback - why on earth would I have to connect to the internet to play a solely off-line game? Just about the only thing I'd ever used the internet for prior to this was to search for GameFAQs, play Diablo 2 at my brother's house, and do internet research in school.
Days passed while I pieced together what I had to do to play my new game - a game that I was already paying for with doubled chores. I dragged my massive computer down three flights of stairs from my room, hooked up my dad's external modem, and signed on to the internet - since I just had to enter a code to get to play the game. Steam then slapped me across the face again while kicking my dog.
"No, you can't play your new game" it said. "You must download a patch!" Now, prior to this I had downloaded patches before - it was the way of things for gaming for quite some time. But instead of going to my dad's work with a Zip drive disc to download the patch and bring it home, it told me I had to do it RIGHT NOW, on MY MACHINE - before I could even play the thing. Ten hours, it told me, ten cock-punching hours I had to tie up the phone line.
Several days passed till I was able to convince my folks to let me tie it up that long, and I finally played it the next day, almost two weeks after I had bought it. I didn't have any fun. I was seething with rage at the thing. And I never bought another game for my computer - I stole my brother's PS2 ("borrowed" it, but he never asked for it back), and have been a Console gamer specifically because they were ALWAYS off-line for neigh-on a decade now.
That's my story, and its why I can do nothing but shake my head at Microsoft now.
