I like to play games, yes I really do. And that's also why I am experiencing some very alarming things in game industry which are not good for the overall gaming experience.

I am pretty sure you all know such really great games in the past like Sim City, the older Battlefield Series or Command and Conquer.

Now. I am not sure, what has happened. What are the different studios thinking about - or the publishers.

Let's look at Sim City - they announced a new sim city for 2013, I hope they get everything right and cannot wait to play it :-)

But all the time since Sim City 4 (which was great) noone has came up with a game which is only near as good as Sim City.
One tried - it was Cities XL .. honestly .. they just packed a bunch of bugs inside a box and named it game. Really. It is very dissapointing when someone buys that game with the hope to have a good time with it and have to struggle with bungs, freezes and horrible user interface. You will soon get frustrated and throw it in a corner.
A year later, they released a sequel. In fact, they just add some textures and buildings and release it. You will experience the same buggy game, they have not even fixed ANY bug at it but sell it for the same price as the version before.
Another year later they do it AGAIN!! Blame them - really - blame them to hell for publishing the same nonsens over and over again.

I also liked Battlefield. I liked the original one, I liked Battlefield 2, I liked Battlefield 2142 and I also liked Bad Company 2.
Then they came up with Battlefield 3 - yeah! But after reading the first reviews I decided to not pay the full price for it and just wait for a discount.
Now discount is there and I get it. Graphics are very good .. but that's it .. what are they thinking of? If I want to buy something good looking but useless I will buy an iPhone (hehe) but not a game which purpose is to entertain me.

You need origin (which is buggy) a plugin in your browser (which is buggy) to start the game (which is buggy) which relies on punkbuster (which is buggy as hell).
So honestly, you are investing most of the time in trying to figure out why punkbuster kicks you out of the game because it has a bug.
I cannot understand what's the problem with it.

The same is true for nearly EVERY game you currently get for your PC. Sure, I can understand when from time to time a game does crash but that is no excuse to deliver poor games when they all know what makes their game good and waht does not.

Take the Anno Series - all of them were good, you can nearly blindly buy them (if you like such games) - really, they just work. Sure, they had some bugs in it, but they get fixed fast and everything is fine.

Look at the Sims Series - all of them were working fine.

So hopefully - game studios get an idea about how to do things properly.

Steam .. yeah, steam is another factor .. I like steam because I can buy games right here in my living room. But hell - why do I need to wait for minutes until a game starts up sometimes? ..and beside that, why some games are not available in my country (where there is no reason for it)?

So many things nowadays and someone (like me) has to write about it because it is annoying, when you are willed to buy something which in the end does not work like it is expected to work and noone cares about it in a manner which satisfies the buyers.

By the way, the bug in Punkbuster is there since january .. that is half a year and it still exists and noone cares - not good, that is not good ;-)

And please devs, please stop to force me watching your non-skipable intros. Show me a simple loading screen instead. (latest Need for Speed, latest Civilisation)