G - Garbage in, garbage out.

Gaming studios need to hire higher quality employees and treat them better.

When you get bottom-feeding shitsucks for programmers and then you treat them like shit and pay them next to nothing... you get shit games. That is where we are. So many different places get game designers from shitty places and then put them on projects that they have no right being on and then treating them like crap when they don't come through. They then push the product harder and release a flaming bag of shit and defend it.

WHY?!

Please get quality people. There are quality people all over that do damn fine work. Multiple studios are capable of pushing out great stuff with a huge time gap. Valve and Blizzard always have good stuff and they seem to have happy employees and a higher quality of games. These things to parallel. EA has been slowly slipping down the shitter for years and are known to be some of the most hateful employers in the gaming industry.

I want good games. I am willing to pay for good games. I need you to MAKE good games. I bunch of C students from the shitty graphics arts school aren't going to cut it. The guys that put together the Unreal engine actually care about what they are doing and always do a great a job. They seem inspired to do great work, not because they make a ton of cash, but because they REALLY like it and they believe in what they are doing. What happened to that kind of game crafting?

F - Final Fantasy is now ridiculous.

Come on guys. I think that once we got to the one dozen mark someone should have thought about just making another Chronotrigger.

The latest incarnation of the game is another multi-platform MMO game. I don't know how it is doing or if it is actually picking up speed. All I know is that I am not going to play it and I really hope that the end is drawing near for these games. The shitty emo characters and bad hair of the last half dozen games just doesn't inspire me.

While Final Fantasy 7 really helped push the genre forward, I wasn't a fan of the huge change. I enjoyed the first 6 and hoped for the best with 7. Final Fantasy games since then have failed to really wow me and haven't broken the mold as much as FF7 did. I think it is time for a reboot and a fresh new feel for the franchise. I mean more than adding standard RPG elements (like real time fighting and not fights you randomly stumble into), but something more unique that makes the world feel new and exciting again.

I look forward to seeing huge improvements, especially with as fast as the technology has moved the last few years, but I just hope to see the games keep up. Good Luck.

E - Entertainment

PC gaming is entertainment.

Those guys playing WoW aren't watching movies or reading books. Entertainment to them IS playing a game. Gaming is now a legitimate form of entertainment, just like Risk was years ago, gaming is today. You can get online and play with buddies and have a great time. You can even toss on a headset and SPEAK to REAL LIVE people. I know a lot of you think we are crazy, but we aren't. We are having a good time... virtually. A guy with a huge paintball gun collection isn't a nutjob, he is an enthusiast... that is what we are.

Gone are the days of elitism. Now every single fucking dickhead frat boy has a 360 and thinks that CoD and Madden are cool. I've been playing both games on PC for... about a decade. You aren't cool and you aren't even the first person to be doing it. All you are doing is being a douchebag. People recognize games much more clearly today than they ever have because of the casual explosion and that is great. But you must understand that this is a replacement for ENTERTAINMENT. We aren't nerds or anti-social. We are using a different kind of Facebook, we call it Steam, and it tells us where our buddies are kicking ass.

D - DRM is a waste of time and money.

Just stop, please.

I love games. I love them so much that I actually buy them. After I buy them I get stuck dealing with annoying DRM that installs a rootkit or that refuses to allow me to play the game when I reinstall my OS because I have activated it too many times in a certain period of time... or ever.

WHAT?!

Since when does a game company have the right to tell me that a game that I PAID FOR cannot be played because I updated my PC to play it better or lost a drive suddenly. How retarded is that? How fucking stupid do they really think consumers of PC games are? Obviously, pretty fucking stupid, because we eat this shit up. Some of the most popular games have been riddled with issues caused by DRM. BioShock is my favorite example, because it crushed me.

I got BioShock, pre-order, from Direct2Drive. I downloaded it, activated it, then had several issues with the game, as a result of the DRM rootkit and then the poor performance, partially because of the DRM. So... I do a lot of things and eventually format. Well, turns out that I used up all of my activations. So after I uninstall it and then try later to install it (when a patch finally comes out to fix a lot of the issues in the game) I can't. I had used up my activations and now I have to fill out what seems like an application just to be able to play my game. The whole time I know I can get online, find a torrent and just play the damned game. But NOOOOOO! I paid for the game and I go through the proper channels to get it sorted out. A few days later I get an email telling me that they "will allow me" to play the game again. OH, how sweet of them to let me play the game I bought.

What a shitty experience. That isn't the only game. There has been DRM that was cracked when the game was in beta, not to mention all of the stuff they are trying to stuff into music and videos now. Give it a rest. No one wants that stuff. If I pay a dollar for a SONG, I want the song. I used to pay 12 bucks for a CD, now it's 20 for the same CD and the music isn't any better on it. We are over the old way and have moved on to something else. You can than Napster for infecting a whole new generation of music-listeners. They used to just record stuff on tape, now we just download it off the internet.

No amount of DRM is going to stop someone who wants to steal. All it is doing is harming those who actually paid for you product. Please, stop it. If you want people to buy your product, make one that is worthy of the 50 dollar price tag, or bring it down to 20 bucks or so. If MoH was 30 bucks right now, I'd buy it. I really want to play it, but I refuse to pay 60 bucks for a game that will be dead in a year. It's stupid.

Seriously, fucking stop it.

C - Comcast spells monopoly.

For those of you looking for a high speed gaming connection you have pretty limited options, especially where I am. I have Comcast. AT&T will offer me a slow service for a little less, but just can't compete. Comcast is blazing fast and doesn't seem too keen on letting anyone else in the area where I live.

I'd love to have Charter or even Time Warner. I'd love to have an option. I have recently switched to a package where I use TWO modems and stream most of my TV via a standard (15 mb down / 3 mb up) Comcast cable connection. I use the other connection (50 mb down / 10 mb up) for gaming. I no longer have a need for bloated HD cable TV, because the internet gives me everything I need. However, in the world of gaming... every single megabyte counts. Ping is very important as is the stability of your connection. While I had plenty of spotty service with Comcast in the past, since paying so much for the premium service... not so much as a hiccup.

I don't know why or what keeps other services from coming in, but I have to imagine it is the grip that Comcast already holds. People like my in-laws and my parents will refuse to live without cable, because they don't know how. All the knew is the TV and that remote. Trying to explain how to use Netflix on the Wii is almost exhausting (not to mention the Wii can't show HD with Netflix). We need to push forward and show the cable company that all we need some them is bandwidth now. I think we send two messages by doing that. One, that we know how valuable the internet is and we know how cheap bandwidth is. Second, we are willing to go to another provider for a service that is just as good. Getting a service in that didn't carry broadcasting would be much easier than one that did.

I am stuck with Comcast and it is what I use. It is pretty fast with this fancy new connection, but I think it is just a luxury now. I have a decent job and can afford it, but I am not sure that for the average consumer the pricepoint is there yet.

B - B is for Blizzard's merger

Ahh yes, B. One of my favorite letters.

Today we are going to discuss Blizzard and how they merged with Activision. We covered part of this with A, but I think it deserves a double-dose of anger.

Blizzard, a company who puts out games that go viral, somehow felt the need to further flex their gaming muscle with a merger with Activition. We covered all of the awful and horrible things that Activision managed to do, but not what Blizzard, themselves, had done. Blizzard gave way to this merger, though stood to gain little, while at the same time failing to keep the integrity of the company. From a business standpoint I am sure this is great, from a gaming standpoint... very, very bad.

What happens when a company who makes great games and produces hit after hit merges with a company who is catering to the lowest common denominator of gaming? Shit. Absolute garbage. The abortion that is Starcraft II combined with the uninspired, but almost back on track latest WoW expansion just doesn't give me hope for the future. WoW has been a legendary game to this point and has exceeded most, if not all, expectations for PC gaming, the MMO genre and everything in between.

I wish that Blizzard and Activision had simply formed into a huge company sharing a single name, instead of each trying so desperately to keep their own, yet share profits from each other. It's just a clusterfucker of stupid. I can't even tell who to blame for this. At least there are people still developing for PC, maybe these guys will help fuel the next upswing of PC gaming. Here is to hoping.

A - Activision means Asshole in Gamer.

To start off my month full of anger, I am going to start with... A. Duh. I told you it was A-Z.

Where better to start than what I consider to be part of the downfall of the current PC shooters, Activision. Poor concepts and recycled themes lead to destroying the Call of Duty games just to make a few bucks.

Aside from bastardizing what could have been a front-runner in a tight shooter race years ago, Activision also managed to infuriate gaming fans by shitting on an old franchise. Starcraft. Sure, Starcraft is actually a Blizzard franchise, but since the combination of the two companies, everything is a 50/50. That means the fucking abortion of a game that is Starcraft falls squarely into the lap of Activision as well. Awesome!

Selling us old maps from old games (MW maps for MW2) wasn't bad enough, now they are selling us a 3-part game one part at a time. Sweet! Because I didn't want a finished product after all these years. Right? We watched as the Starcraft shooter fell apart and faded away. We watched as consoles got a taste of Starcraft love... sort of. We finally get the franchise back to PC and in a format that we all knew and loved AND YOU FUCK IT ALL UP?! WHAT IN THE FUCK?! Why?!

Oh yeah... money.

Activision also managed to cash in on a mediocre Transformers game, too. It was so forgettable that I almost forgot to even mention it. Activision did manage to release a new Guitar Hero and DJ Hero game, though. Since we know that ALL gamers really love being ignored. What is sad, is I bet both of those silly time-wasters probably sold better than most of the best PC games released in the last 3 years. Not only were they unable to not give us a decent experience on PC, but they are obviously shifting their focus AWAY from PC.

I don't even want to get started on the shitty port that is Black Ops, or the fact that people couldn't play it online, or even at all, for weeks. Who do you have testing this stuff? Oh yeah... console fucktards. Sometimes, I think that I should just get a console so I can play finished games of a decent quality. Le Sigh.

Fuck you, Activision, you're awful. You managed to further corrupt one franchise you've been whoring out for years, decided to shit on another and the only good thing you put out this year was Blur... Really? A racing game? Ugh! Please die in a fire.