There was once a time you could buy a game and immediately start playing said game. There was even a time where you could hook up your new system and play that right away. Those days are sadly long behind us, but man they were great. You would think game developers would either make the installs and updates faster or just release a finished product. They do neither. And it is us who gets to suffer for it when we purchase anything.
So Many Updates
My first real disappointment with updates came when I finally purchased and Xbox One. I was frantically setting the system so I could whip some ass in the first Titanfall. Once I finally set up the wireless I was greeted by an update that took about 5 hours.
I understand that I didn’t buy it at launch. But, my God, why so much updating? Once that was finished I put Titanfall in and had to wait for that to install then update. I was unable to play my new system the day I purchased it and that was pretty crappy. Even with the PS4, I could play the day I bought it. And they don’t actually program computer software like Microsoft does!
The updates constantly interrupt my gaming sessions. I work a lot. Sometimes I don’t get to play for a week or so. And of course, when I want to play, both systems need to update. This is very aggravating. I waste my precious days off waiting for consoles to update just so I can continue my digital adventures. Just today I wanted to continue my trek through Far Cry 5 and something went wrong with the update. It didn’t sense it so I wasn’t allowed to even start. So I had to uninstall the title, re-install it and then get all the upgrades. Needless to say, my adventures in Hope County did not continue as I had planned. I understand the update was for the Season Pass DLC, but I didn’t purchase that and I just wanted to play the base game.
The Old Days
I miss the days of cartridges and no wi-fi. You bought your game, put it in your system and played immediately. I hate having to wait a day or so to play my newest game, or planning out when to put it in so I don’t waste time watching it slowly update. You could also swap out games at any time and not be surprised by an update if you’ve not played for a bit. I’ve set my machines to auto-update when I turn them on, but I didn’t know about that feature for a bit and lost out on a lot of gaming sessions.
I understand that developers want to make their games as perfect as possible, tweaking them and adding photo modes and all that jazz, but it gets a little ridiculous at times. Launch a complete game so I won’t waste hours watching a little bar gradually grow until I can finally play. No Man’s Sky and Mass Effect: Andromeda‘s first players would have been screwed had updates not been on the scene. Yet, both those games were commercial flops. Finish a game, then ship it. It’s an easy concept.
It’s come to the point now that I put all my games into the system that I’m yet to play so they can install right away, then update gradually until I pull them off my pile of shame. That way I can kind of go back to the way things used to be when I was a child. I can swap out games at my convenience, not wondering if I have to waste away an entire day.
Conclusion
I’m glad that I outsmarted the game companies, but upset that I have to put so much time and effort just to play a game when I want to. Maybe I’m spoiled because of my age and this never used to be an issue, but man, I miss those times. I want to swap games out on the fly when I grow weary of them, but I can’t really do that now so I keep a nice variety in all the systems I use so that I never grow too tired of one genre.