The state of gaming offline in 2022

[Niku-Sama]

it sucks

and I'll tell you how i figured this out

I'm currently living in formerly farming extra white privilege town Oregon. Lots of hipsters that don't realize they are old yet, old farts and raisins roaming the streets and a bunch of shops that sell crap that would make Martha Stewart second guess her spending habits. With this sort clientele infrastructure is kind of a back of the mind sort of thing and well its at least 30 minutes from any other decently populated area too.

So the internet goes down a lot for a long amount of time.
Not a big, Its not like the thing i need to live. if my water were shut off for a week then yea kinda worrying but internet, nah.

so interwebs goes offline for hours. I do things, repack my stuff because hopefully i can move soon (please!), work on the car, clean up around the house, bug the cat, pester the dog. i get to a point where i have some time so i want to try and play a game. ok I have games. maybe too many. so i try Hot Wheels Unleashed for PS4, close to 100% on that one just have time trials to do. Start up the system pop the disc in and when i go to start the game it tells me it needs an update, well that clearly isn't going to happen with no internuts, so i tell it to run any way and it wont. it gets to the splash screen and tries to communicate with the server for about 10 minutes.

eff that

so i try some PC games, i have some games that were free on the Epic store downloaded that i haven't tried yet so i figured I'd give em a whack. Mind you these aren't AAA games, most of them are smaller some indy some not. None of them work.
Demons Tilt
Black Widow Recharged
Centipede Recharged
any Atari recharged game

just sits there trying to communicate with the overlord some where out on the http webs. WHY!?!?
These aren't games that need to communicate for any thing other than an update that is most likely never coming. I can play them on my own i find out after the intern is back 8 hours later. so what gives?

i thought well lets see if something with a little more umpf works. I start up PREY a uh... game in a whole different league (and was also free). Starts up no problem... so what gives?
Then the epic launcher decides to shit it self out of the blue and wont work in off line mode despite having that option selected since day one. it refuses to work at all. I said screw it and went to bed, it was 2am at this point and i can only look up so many work arounds on my phone with out downloading any thing.

the next day i get up and think i should pre load some other games so i start with Bioshock Infinite, i have a physical copy of this game i bought for PC on day one but its packed (like the rest of my life, i mean stuff) and it didn't need to communicate with the mothership every time i tried to fart and since i had it in the epic store too i figured I'd just load that version. couldn't be any different right? well no apparently not. i get it downloaded and i try to test it.

first epic gets involved by reopening their launcher, and then it hangs for a minute, then suddenly a 2K launcher starts loading out of no where. I didn't install this! Exactly! I didn't install it, and it isn't installed, its running stand alone buried in the bioshock directory.

i mean what is this. I have legitimate access to these games, why do you have to pummel us to death with launchers, logins and trackers just to play a game that's frankly not worth being connected online at all for?
It makes no sense, its almost as if where at a time where we still need NO CD patches for games only instead of CDs we need NO Launcher or NO interwebs patches.

the fact that bioshock has to check in with big brother and big sister to even begin to run is crazy. The fact that they are treating the internet like its a constant is kinda lame. Sure i am from an area where it rarely went down but this happens no matter what. Its not a utility like water, electricity or gas. people can live with out it, like a telephone, without it life goes on. sure people are able to live with out water, electricity or gas but less people are, I'd like to see grandma out digging a well or chopping wood to heat and cook. regardless...

this is getting worse and worse, and the industry wonders why people want to hang onto their physical copies for so long, its shit like this.

most games are not a hive mind that need to cease to function if they cant communicate with the mothership. sure some things wont work like leader boards or other internet specific features but the core of the game should just work in the end because theirs no reason it shouldn't. i obtained your game legitimately let me fucking play it when and where and how i want and stop making me jump through hoops in order to do so!

i legit think we need community created patches for this, not every game would be worthy but a lot would be

[Gamevet]

The Witcher 3 supposedly is DRM free, but I have my doubts, since I’m able to play it on two different PCs using cloud saves. I’m thinking that my old copies of Diablo 2 and Star Craft might work without internet, though I think Blizzard may have locked it to Battlenet some 10 years ago.

That’s why I love having handhelds like the PSP, 3DS and Game Boy Advance. They don’t need anything, including power, until their batteries run down. I had a GBA that I hadn’t used in a year, and it still had a decent charge on the battery.

[Gameguy]

It's why I'm really not into modern games at all, I don't want to deal with this type of stuff. I have stable internet, but I don't like unnecessary bloated crap installed on my PC or being tracked for marketing or other reasons. With consoles I really don't bother to set them up to my wifi, I never did with my PS3. I did actually connect my Xbox 360 to the wifi, back when we had a different modem and ISP, and I haven't bothered installing it to the new wifi. All I remember is trying to download a game someone kindly gifted to me, and it took ages because there was a type of service issue with Microsoft at the time, so my first attempt at using the online feature to download a game didn't impress me.

This reminds me, I do have a copy of Dreamfall for PC I bought ages ago, and avoided installing because of the DRM Starforce being included. I did download a patch which would allow the game to be played without needing this Starforce, but this was so long ago I'm not sure if the online instructions are still listed on how to use it, so I'll have to do research again. I still haven't played the first game The Longest Journey which is why I didn't install the sequel yet, it's all in the pile of games I haven't got around to playing.

I barely play games at this point, if I have free time I tend to just surf the internet like youtube, or watch movies or old TV shows online. There's just so much else that would take up my time instead of games.

[Gametrek]

Niku-Sama you mention "Bioshock".

Just to note the originals are better then the remakes in just about every way. Go look it up.

When in doubt just Download, download, download. Because honestly I do not care anymore. We have this highspeed internet for nothing.

About physical copies. The only physical copies of any games I play are the collectable. Take "Ladders" AKA "Death Stranding" ( also please checkout Yoshi Strnaded animation short ).
They have this kick arse big gigantic collectable set. Feels like I am buying a "Blade Runner" prop. In comparison to the current state of modern videogame packaging. The way I see things
unless somebody is an indpendent developer or making B-games it is not worth it anymore.

The only thing that is worth it is just to play with your friends and family. That s the only real reason why DLC is even a thing. You do not want to be left out of the party. However honestly I feel like the whole entire thing is a slap in the face of consumers. I would never purchase anything the flesh if I had to connect to an online server or some bs like that.

My advice about playing older games is to find communities or people who are willing to spend time hacking, modding, or actually fixing the game so it could play on updated systems. That is it.

Now we got Windows 11 ( which just sucks ) and I know the horrible day is coming when some game will say "Your Windows is outdated please install Windows 11" or even now "You have DX12 1.a
not DX12 1.b the game can not play" which is just silly.

I give up to be honest, I give up on big businesses and investing my time into them. I give up those things, it is like a poor mans fight. Like James from Team Rocket collects bottle-caps. He is filthy rich and has the perfect above normal household. I mean why James why? Is Jessie so special ? The boss fired them, and even tried to do away with them a couple of times. Why not just keel Jessie on the side. That is what is wrong with the entire state of gaming. You want to "Eat your cake and have it too" mentality.

Gameguy when in doubt just download download download