This might come out a bit disjointed, so please bear with me....
There are things I like about the modern gaming environment, but I have to say that there are probably more I don't.
Back in the day, if you wanted a new game you had to either hope it was available at the store (and often it wasn't,) or had to sit biting your nails waiting for a UPS truck to drive down your street. I hated waiting, and the option today to just download your shiny new game is great. On the other hand, and it's time for a small horror story here, if you had the physical media you didn't have to worry as much about losing your money. For example, I spent $40 on a game from Direct2Drive (the one and only digital game I have or ever will buy if I can help it.) Now, D2D was bought out by GameFly. No sweat at first, until I decided to play my game again... Well, after a month of bouncing e-mails with GameFly, I finally get to re-download the game. Install it, and when I go to run it, I'm stuck at the validating screen because D2D isn't around any more. Another month of e-mail pong with GameFly to be told, "Sorry, we aren't planning to convert and distribute that game ourselves, you'll just have to make do with the old download from them, you can get it <here>" With a link to exact same installer that wouldn't work before (because D2D is not around to validate it.) Now, if I want to play it again, I'm going to have to go and buy it again at full price, assuming I can even find it. So, which is better? Waiting a week for your game, and being able to install/play it as many times as you want, or getting it now and running the risk that the server closes down and you can never play it again?
Issue number 2. The instant access to patches for games is great. Except for the trend I've seen of companies saying "send it now, if there's something wrong we'll give them a patch for it later." Now that is all fine and dandy, and doesn't bother me that much, except for those cases where you have to "pay" to get those patches in some form or another. Such as having to be a "member" to access the downloads? **cough** x-box live **cough** I also have to agree with another here, companies seem to "plan" on removing content they might otherwise have packaged with the game, so they can charge you for the "expansion" (DLC) later. Cannot say definitely that that is what they've done, but it sure looks like it sometimes. The instant access to patches/upgrades seems to have engendered companies into not caring any more about the quality of their releases.
Now, about quality, since I just brought it up. In many ways games have grown tremendously in quality. In other ways, they've actually done the opposite. There are solid reasons for this too. With modern HW capabilities, you can get visual & audio effects that were undreamed off. You must, though, realize that achieving these effects takes considerably longer to build. I can slap together an 8x8 pixel flower in 10 seconds easily. But now they are building flowers with 20000 polygons... Come on, that's going to take a bit of time. The problem is that they are spending all this time building the perfect flower, that they run out of time to build a gripping and enthralling story & plot. The bean counters want the game out there "now" so they can start getting some of the money they're spending back. And, to be honest, the gamers want the game "now" so they can start playing it. So, the games are beautiful to look at, and rather flat when actually playing. Where as, back then the play & story were gripping but the visuals were rather flat. Personally, I'd rather they spent less time on the visuals and give me a game that makes me actually think, instead of just point/shoot/point/shoot ad-infinitum. I still play games today, and some of them are rather modern, and fairly decent. But it has been years since I played a new game where I actually had to take notes, or stop playing while I try to figure out how to get past a certain puzzle (and no, I'm not talking about having access to internet walkthroughs.) Games where I would spend hours untangling the intricate plot twists, and being faces with shocking surprises, and situations that I just never saw coming. The fancy bells and whistles that programmers use as a crutch today, weren't available back then, so programmers had to provide something else to draw in the gamers.
Someone brought up special boot sequences that were required. Well, that really only applied to the PC scene, which originally wasn't designed for games. When IBM designed the PC, designers were actually quoted as saying, "why bother with that, home computers will never go anywhere." If you want to blame those boot nightmares on anyone, blame it on them. That being said, even the worst of the games I ever came across never gave me any serious problems. Did I like having to build a special boot floppy to run the game? Not really. But by the time it really started getting bad, games started moving away from DOS (which is where the problem existed.) Some of the games with the biggest problem... Ultima 7 (all of them,) & Elite II. All the others I tried, would actually build their own boot disk for you, no fuss, no muss. Get a floppy, label it Xanth, run the installer, and there you go. Also, snail mail was never an issue for me, where that is concerned. I never once came across a game that didn't come with a tech support phone number. That's how I got U7 up and running, I picked up the phone. Though, someone outside the US might not have found that as easy as me, I guess. I do remember European numbers on a game or two, but cannot say all of them had them.
Old style copy protection was a pain. But then again, all forms of copy protection (while necessary,) are a pain. Ok, I don't want to have to dig out my manual every time I want to play a game. Spinning the code wheel can be tedious. Having my floppy drive bang and chatter is rather nerve wracking. On the other hand, having to contact a server every time I want to play a game is just as bad. What about times when you just don't have access to the internet? What if the provider is gone (like D2D?) At least with manual checks, you don't have to worry about the manual deciding it just doesn't want you to read it right now. Yes, a fire can fry your copy protection, but I've had them replaced before (and for a lot less than buying the whole game over again.)
So it all boils down to what you want in a game. Do you want flash & glitter, or do you want erudite challenges. Do you want mindless action, or do you want artistic stimulation. Do you want to react or think. I know what I want, and it hasn't changed since 7th grade when I first started playing computer games. It just seems to have become less available. More games, IMHO, are becoming just cookie-cutter products. This is what worked before, and lets not take a chance any more. Lets just put out the same old thing, and just put a different label on it, or change the graphics. don't get me wrong, I've seen some awesome modern games, that have literally blown me away. Just not so many (relatively speaking,) as before. Before, there were games after games that I really wanted, but I could only buy so many, I only had time to play so many (and that's with many sleepless nights.) There was a huge variety, from Ultima, to Bard's Tale, to Wasteland, to Auto Duel, to Wizardry, to Enchanter, to Dragon Wars, to Might & Magic, to Lands of Lore, to ok you should get the picture. Now, there's Dragon Age, um... The Witcher, Fable was ok. Nothing else really comes to mind (Elder Scrolls is actually an older game with modern graphics, doesn't count.)
