Below is a little rant that gets rude. Don't read it if you're offendable. Sorry about the lack of punctuation, I was really pissed off when writing this one.

Thought: Why is it that so many game publishers put out what amounts to complete shit? Have you looked at the crap that's been released lately??? Ultima Ascension? CRAP! Unrunable on ANY machine. Mechwarrior 3? CRAP! Multiplayer totally unusable out of the box. Tiberium Sun? JUNK! Unbalanced, outdated, boring shit. Extreme anything from Headgames? (The most pathetic excuse for a game studio anywhere??) Complete, utter shit. The tech guys at Headgames even told me, when I called, that Extreme Paintbrawl was an embarrassing, outdated, crappy, braindead piece of junk and that if I wanted to play good paintball I should download the Quake II Paintball mod. What the hell is going on????? My theory is that there is that some publishers simply have no pride in their work anymore. A few weeks ago I stumbled across an old favorite of mine.. Autoduel by Origin. 1988 I believe. The sticker on the front? "By Lord British and Chuckles" That's really cool, but started me to thinking. With games now having such huge development teams, is there any personal pride left in the business? Years ago when one was putting out a game, your personal name was behind it. Your reputation was staked on that software. Now it's just being published by a huge faceless corporation, so who cares? As a good example we first played Mechwarrior 3 at one of the FRAGtopia lites when it first came out. I personally could not believe how horrible it was! Obviously Zipper Interactive never played the damned thing. After two hours of complete frustration, I wrote a message to FASA telling them all the problems we'd found. Crashes, hangs, sound errors, HUGE lag and sync errors when more than 3 people were playing.. ON LAN FER CHRIST'S SAKE! Mechs would bounce like rubber balls if you applied jets just as you touched ground. You could fall THROUGH the level if you jumped your 'mech through buildings. Lasers had far too much power, allowing tiny 'mechs to topple massive lumbering beasts with single leg shots. People would get dropped randomly, especially if someone was trying to respawn when another player was typing. BOOT! They also removed most of the cool games you had in Mechwarrior 2. Teamplay didn't even work on their match making Internet service (MS Gaming Zone) And the damned game, as horrible as it was on LAN was horrendous over the 'net. The list goes on. It was a horror show. To give them credit, at least the game was really good single player. I think that much of the problem can be attributed to the Internet. As much of a boon to mutliplayer gaming as it has been, it helps with the "Release it now, patch it later" mentality that many publishers seem to have these days. I personally think that Mechwarrior 3 was released before it was done to beat Heavy Gear II to market. Which, incidentally was one hell of a lot better game! Speaking of horrible examples, I should mention a few good examples. Dynamix, and guys who made tribes did a killer job of play balancing and out of the box playability. The game was virtually perfect and playable out of the box. The patches fixed minor bugs and cheats as well as adding many cool new features. Good job guys! Lionhead Studios (Black and White) seem like a good bunch of guys as well. We'll see when they're game is released..... But I emailed them with a question and they got back to me the next day with a personal answer. Not a freaking email form. ('EH DIAMOND MULTIMEDIA, YOU BASTARDS???) I like that. Dynamix also kept on top of concerns and questions with their web site and forums. The little section where the dev team could post what they were up to, and their thoughts is a masterpiece! The Tribes community is truly a thing to behold, and much of it is attributable to the guys making the game. Anyhows........ I would like to see the people making games do it right damn it. Don't release the game until the fucking thing is done and done RIGHT. Have some pride in your work and product. I'd like to start launching class action lawsuits against people like Zipper/Microsoft, Westwood and Origin. False advertising is ILLEGAL GUYS! (Ex. Mutliplayer on the Privateer 2 box, small note inside saying it was never included........... I BOUGHT IT FOR MULTIPLAYER YOU IDIOTS!!) Promising a great game and releasing something that doesn't even qualify as being anything other than a frustrating, disappointing waste of money and effort should be illegal as well. Something has to be done by the gaming community as a whole. I don't know about you guys but I'm sick of being ripped off by these jerks who are only in it for the money. There's nothing wrong with that, provided that you are releasing a good product that people will want to buy. I can actually do something about it, other than simply not buying the game. I own a computer store. I refuse to carry shit. I don't want other gamers to have to put up with what I've had to. All of our copies of Extreme Paintbrawl went into the trash after I found it to be completely unplayable after about 60 seconds of playing. I'll never carry Tiberium Sun or anything related to it. Ascension has been banned. I also call all my suppliers who carry such things so they can warn their customers away from them. (Some of them are honest and actually do, being gamers themselves.) Something has to be done. Suggestions? I'd like to hear them! Click here.

An old friend, HJ|Bayonet Kagato sent me this after reading my little rant.

A Sad day for Gaming. There was a time when you could browse through the video game department and buy a game strictly by the name of the developer. Back in the heyday of the Commodore if it was made by EA, it was good to go. A simple matter of a company taking pride in its work.

These days, there are only two that fit that criteria for me. Dynamix and Looking Glass Studios. Unfortunately, that number is down to one, what with the closing of LGS. That hurts. Thief and Thief II were groundbreaking games that showed IMAGINATION! Ingenuity! A fresh approach. Things sadly lost in todays "Me too" world of video game developing.

Hats off to the men and women of LGS for bringing back hope. On the other hand, I see games like MW3 come out and, I am sickened. Most games I have to wait several weeks, even months before I buy them. Wait and see the reviews that Players give the game rather than waste my 50 dollars. Its nice to see that one company still lets me buy a game on its release date. There is one company I still have confidence that they did the best they could to ensure it was ready.

Thanks Dynamix. -a grateful Tribesman

PS: If any developers are reading this, know this one thing. If players dont give it a good review, I'm not buying. I give a damn what PCMagawhat or Videowhothefuckever says.