The Chicago Bears are on their way to another victory over the Minnesota Vikings. I’m ahead 35 to 7 in the 3rd quarter. My opponent has resorted to talking about my mom and my sexual orientation since he is losing so bad. Suddenly he disconnects from the game. This is usually how all the games I play online end. I don’t think I’ve ever finished a game of Madden while in the lead.

It’s a fact that nobody ever finishes an online game if they are losing by a wide margin. Not only that, but they aren’t face to face with you, so that allows them to say things that would usually cause their skull to get knocked in. Instead, they can hide behind anonymity and disconnect whenever they like. Remember the days of the arcade? Where your opponent would playfully trash talk. Nothing ever got out of hand. When your opponent lost, they would either bow to you, shake your hand or just tell you ‘nice game’ and walk away with dignity. I miss those days. Unfortunately, those days are gone.

The shortcomings of online gaming will never replace the experience you can get with gaming with a friend in an arcade or your living room. For now, games like World of Warcraft will work because they don’t require opponents to be online. But I still wish I could get in a full head-to-head game against an online opponent once in awhile and be able to finish a game in its entirety.

When the Playstation was hot, I was poor. I couldn’t afford the system or the games. On weekends, me and the 3 guys I lived with would occasionally rent a Playstation from Blockbuster along with several sports titles and have a blast. Over the last few years though, Blockbuster has been lacking in their game offerings, and they haven’t offered console rentals at all.

Blockbuster is looking to change that now though, as they expand their game offerings. They are offering consoles and a wider variety of games for rental as they try to provide consumers with other options than movies, which Netflix is killing them on.

It’s nice to have other options for game rentals since the other video chains such as Hollywood suck at it. GameFly is an option, but it’s expensive and when I want to play a game, I want it now. I don’t want to have to wait 3 days to receive it. With the new options, it looks like I will have to give Blockbuster another chance to win my business back.

Yes, I said it! Games that you play on your own are dead. You are witnessing a switch in the gaming world to everything becoming multi-player. Muti-player games add such a new experience to gaming that soon nobody will want to play games by themselves anymore.

When games like Pac-Man first came out, they were mainly 1 player. You could play 2 players and switch off when you lose a man, but hardly anybody did this. Then later games like Double Dragon and Rampage came out where you could play with multiple players simultaneously. Arcades later made a comeback based on the competition of mutliplayer games in the mid 1990’s such as Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2.

With the Internet, you can play with thousands of other players. The dynamic that Halo 3 and World of Warcraft bring to your PC is unmatched by any single player game. The Wii is popular because it is mainly a party system that involves multiple players in your living room. This is the future. Soon games like Metal Gear will need to have some type of multi-player capability added to future releases or franchises like this will simply die.

Electronic Arts is the Microsoft of the gaming world. I can’t stand them and I refuse to buy their games because they truly do not care about their employees or customers. Here are 6 reasons why we should boycott EA.

They ruined SimCity

Electronic Arts bought Maxis back in 1997, acquiring the rights to the SimCity franchise. Ever since that moment, SimCity has sucked. What once was one of the best strategic simulation games was turned into a dumbed down game with SimCity 4. Then it was remade into a game that just plain sucks with SimSocieties.

They resell the same sports game to us year after year

Madden 06, 07, 08, NBA Live 06, 07, 08. They sell us the same game every year with slight modifications and updated rosters. The gameplay for Madden hasn’t really changed in years, and as a result the sales of Madden are starting to drop off. The same thing can be said for all of the EA Sports games. We haven’t truly seen and mind-blowing innovation with these games for over 8 years. Why buy them?

They shut out competition

In 2004, ESPN NFL2k5 hit store shelves at $29.99. Not only was it lower priced than Madden, it was a better game. Threatened by this, EA threw their assload of cash at the NFL and NBA for exclusive rights to make games based on those leagues. Now we are stuck with Madden with no chance of other companies to grow their own better NFL or NBA games.

Luckily another company got the MLB licensing. MLB08: The Show and Major League Maseball 2K8 are really good games. Much better than the MVP line of games were.

Their overseas technical support sucks

Have you ever had problems getting your EA game to work? Try speaking English to their support team. Better yet, try understanding them. Even if it’s something as simple as a problem with a CD key, you probably won’t be successful in getting EA Tech Support to help you at all. Gone are the days where they would actually troubleshoot issues between the game and your video card. Now when you call they just advise you to uninstall and reinstall the game. If that doesn’t work they tell you to get new drivers for one of your multimedia devices.

They treat their employees poorly

After the Enron debacle, we are in an age where ethics matter more than dollars. Back in 2004, EA settled a lawsuit with its employees over unpaid overtime. The suit, filed in 2004 stemmed from employees’ allegations that they were required to work long hours and weekends with no overtime compensation.

EA has made billions and billions of dollars yet they avoid rewarding their employees with the money legally owed to them for overtime. I’m sure for EA employees, this is just a needle in a haystack regarding employee/employer relations.

They fail to manage most of their web pages

EA sells a certain game, then they make a pretty web site to go along with it. After they have taken all your cash, they have no interest in supporting you anymore and they let the web sites go without maintenance or support. A perfect example of this is the Sim Theme Park page. It’s been titled Untitled Document at the top for years. You can’t find a patch for the original SimCity anywhere and if you’re still into the last good version of SimCity which is SimCity 3000, good luck finding any support or patches for that. They also shut down The Sims Online, which sucked but many people bought the game and might still want to play.

It would cost EA virtually nothing to still provide information and patches for these games, but they choose not to. Want add-on’s or patches for your game that’s 7 years old? Screw you! We already have your money!

I could show you a chart with all of the technical specs for the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3. I could show you a comparison of the graphics for each system. Neither of those things matter though. The only thing that matters is the games. Which system has the best games? Right now, the PS3 doesn’t really have a title that makes it a must have system. The XBox 360 does with Halo 3. This is why the XBox 360 easily outsells the PS3, and will continue to for quite some time.

History repeats itself. If you look at the history of video games, you will see that the success of a system is based solely on the games, not the hardware that runs them. The ColecoVision was better than the Atari. The NeoGeo was better than Genesis or Super Nintendo. In both cases, they didn’t have the game library to back up these powerful systems, and the weaker system outsold the superior one. People bought the NES because you could play Punch Out, Super Mario Bros. and Zelda. People bought the PS2 to play Grand Theft Auto. Today, Halo 3 is the must have game.

The XBox 360 will also continue to have developers making great games for in the future. It is a much easier system for game developers to make games for because it’s based on DirectX. The PS3? Not so easy. In fact, many games were delayed for the PS3 this past Christmas season because developers struggled to get the games completed.

I know my decision is clear. I pick the system with the games I want to play. So stop comparing XBox 360 vs. the PS3. Compare the games instead and then make your decision.

Pac-man, Galaga, Street Figther II. These video games represent everything that was great about the traditional video arcade. I wanted to experience a traditional arcade once again upon my recent visit to Chicago only to find that the arcade I loved as a teen is now gone. It was the last one left of the four I frequented.

After these places survived for years on quarters from players yearning for a new challenger to find them, video arcades have been fading from the urban landscape. I thought about reasons why and struggled to find solid reasons. Was it home video gaming systems? Everybody owns a home system now. Gamers can play at home or play against somebody online if they would like an opponent. But arcades were very popular in the ’90s and back then everybody had a NES or SNES. So this reason alone couldn’t be what killed the video arcade.

Then it hit me. The reason? It was the coin-ops! Coin-ops never evolved like other electronic gadgets do. Smaller, faster, cheaper, better is the evolution every successful electronic item follows. Coin operated games did not follow this evolution. Compare the Galaga machine to the Street Fighter II Machine. Both games were created about 15 years apart, yet they pretty much are the same. A huge cabinet, a huge screen, controller and buttons. These machines became way too expensive to make any money on. I remember being told that an arcade had to rent a coin-op for about $500 a month or more if the game was any good. If the arcade owner were to buy the game, instead it would cost $3,500+. It takes a while for arcade owners to make their money back when you consider the overhead.

Why didn’t game makers start making the games smaller and cheaper? Why not do away with the huge cabinet to cut costs? Make it just a screen with a controller and a box for the tokens, or even better, a card scanner. That’s all you need! This would’ve resulted in huge savings for the arcade owner and the chance to make better profits. Instead, coin operated games stayed bulky and expensive. Arcade owners stopped buying them. With fewer orders, game makers eventually stopped making new coin-ops altogether.

Now when you are lucky to find an arcade that still operates, you’ll find that the owner has cut costs wherever he can. Machines are regularly out of order. Other machines often have problems with the screen or joystick. Games that should be 25 cents to play are still 50 cents to a dollar. All of which could have been prevented had the coin-op evolved.

These days, when you want to face a challenge from a stranger, the only option we have are Internet arcades. In a way the Internet arcade is an evolution of traditional arcades. Not many people are into the games that I always liked in these places though, so I never go. I guess I’ll just play my PS3 instead.