June 11, 2014

I Remember When Playing Games was Easy

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

The excitement was palpable. A new game. A shiny new CD or — years earlier — a stack of floppies. After a torturous few minutes, you were up and playing the latest game. Those were the days.

Installing a new game today is more of an ordeal than an anticipation-building experience.

Case in point: Recently I purchased a game. It was on Steam, so the game was downloaded to my PC from the Internet. No shiny CD, no stack of floppies.

At broadband speeds, it was an annoying 2 hours to download the entire game, some 13GB of data. Compared to the old days, that’s probably in line: I’d have to drive to the local Egghead or Software Etc., browse the games, read the box, pretend like I wasn’t a spazz, calmly check out, race back home, and eagerly install the game.

Yeah, that would have been about two hours.

Of course, back then, I’d install the game and then do something quite remarkable: I’d actually start playing it.

When I downloaded my game from Steam, I figured it was done. The software was on my PC, and the big, tempting button on the screen read: Play

I clicked it.

Then, naturally, the game had to finish installation. That I can understand: It needs to check out my hardware, add drives and such.

The annoying driver, of course, is Direct X. My PC, having many games installed (but not too many, just in case my publisher is reading this [and they aren’t]), the PC already has Direct X installed. And it should be updated, right Microsoft? Windows Update runs once a week, so it should keep Direct X updated, right?

It doesn’t. Or at least it seems that way, because every dang doodle game I install has to check for Direct X and install the latest version.

Every. One.

Direct X is Windows technology that allows games to directly access the PC’s hardware, making them run faster. Or something.

Apparently, every game I install is just too stupid to say, “Hey! Look: Direct X is already installed. And by gum, it’s the version I want, or later. I’m good to go!” But no: Direct X is always re-installed. Or something.

So I thought I was ready to play the game.

Wrong.

The game wanted me to log into my Windows account, just so I could share my scores and screenshots with other Windows game players — probably all seven of those people who bought Zune music players. I skipped that step, figuring, “Who cares?” That was a mistake.

After playing for an hour, I attempted to save the game. I couldn’t save, of course, because Microsoft wanted me to log into my account. It wouldn’t let me, because it also needed newer drivers.

I quit the game. I tried to sign into the Windows Play or whatever it was called. It updated. Twice. Then I tried to start my game again.

Again, it wouldn’t let me play: I needed another update.

Many agonizing moments later, I got to play my game again. Nothing was saved, of course, so I had to re-live the first hour of the game. But now it works, despite all the consternation — a frustrating process that didn’t exist back when games were just software and the Internet was for us scientists.

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