Video games can be an exceptionally frustrating pastime. No matter how many times we die, get stuck or rage quit, we always seem to return hoping that we will conquer that tricky part. It’s worth it in the end, seeing that next level or new world, but something happened to video games along the way. They started getting easier, tutorials became more mundane and often players felt like there was quite a bit of hand holding going on.

Cue the multiplayer era. Just as we reached the cusp of frustration with easy single player games, multiplayer dynamics brought about a fresh wave of difficulty. Franchises like Call of Duty, Battlefield and Halo brought gaming to the big stage and gave it a renewed youthfulness.

While these franchises became immensely popular due mostly to their multiplayer portions, the single player campaigns started to wane and dwindle until we were left with games like Titanfall and Overwatch, which offered no single player campaign whatsoever.

The games started to feel rather unfinished and when annual franchise releases became commonplace it looked like AAA gaming was just looking for our money.

Gone are the days of truly difficult gaming. Gone are the puzzles and bosses that filled us with a true sense of accomplishment. Today’s games just feel like levels one and two spread out over a few hours. To add insult to injury, AAA gaming companies have started to feel so confident in their sales that games are shipping with not only next to zero single-player functionality, but with a highly restricted multiplayer experience.

If anyone is looking for a little more variety in their online gaming, these companies expect us to dish out another $50 to $60 for the downloadable content (DLC). This is the equivalent of buying a $5 hot dog and then being asked to pay an extra $5 for the condiments. Dammit if I’m forking over that kind of money I’m expecting an all-inclusive type deal here. The worst part about this is that people are still buying DLC, which just tells these companies that they can keep on their merry conniving little ways. Sure, video games have come a long way since Pong, but when customers are asked to spend upwards of $150 for a full experience it highlights some questionable business ethics. If the game was completely revolutionary, it might be justifiable in asking for such an exorbitant price. However, franchises like Call of Duty, who haven’t brought anything remotely game changing since 2008’s addition of Nazi Zombies, can still get away with this and no one bats an eye. It may be that I’m just getting older and I no longer have parents funding my videogame habit, but DLC has always irked me. Release a full game or don’t release one at all. Stop relying on DLC to give your games a second rush of income because you know full well that your initial product is nowhere near complete.

I truly feel bad for today’s parents; when I was a kid, spending $60 on an Nintendo 64 game kept me entertained for years, but today it seems that $150 can only buy about three months of entertainment.
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