How Alienated can the game industry become for a gamer?

How Alienated can the game industry become for a gamer?

Before 2006 gaming wasn't much of an active role for me, there was plenty of other activities that seized my mind that at the time I wouldn't even believe or even fathom the idea that after picking up an xbox360 it would turn into my own lifestyle.

I remember the day like it was yesterday. I had a good 400 bucks to blow at gamestop,
I didn't really know what was going to happen. I had just moved to Florida, which at the time was new to me to, relocating. I was opening doors to a lot of new choices in my life..

I walked in to the store, the month was August of 06.
Big Signs in and out of this video-game world displaying the new Microsoft blockbuster 'Gears of War' coming soon.
At the time I had no clue what the was. only that it seemed violent and scary. Which only made me more curious about this "Xbox360".

I previously owned an original xbox. All of my friends in school played the shit out of Halo2, but to be completely honest with you, I just couldn't get into it.
I thought it was boring, and to be honest I was really bad at Halo. The only 2 Big games that I ever got into before the 360 were Red Faction, & Max Payne 1&2. I got to say playing Red faction on the PC in multiplayer was addictive as hell and I wasn't even playing on a super jacked out computer like most PC Gamers do.

I had made a decision, I said f- it, talked to a gamestop guy pointed at the 360 and said "ill take that.." and then proceeded to browse the catalog of current released games. The choices in games back then were quite limited. I came across titles such as call of duty 3, The Outfit, FIFA, NBA & MADDEN..
Nothing really appealed to me except for the one, "Saints Row".
This was the one, the one for years I would never cheat on, never leave my xbox, and if It broke I would be back at gamestop the next day trying to find a replacement.
Upon bringing my first copy of Saints Row to the counter, where I would end up buying both this, and my 360. The manager looked at me and said "really...are you sure you want this game...this game is really f-d up" and i said "F-yeah i want it" i wanted it even more just because he said that too..

The first few years of the 360s life were completely EPIC. All this xbox live stuff was new to me, and completely brought a different dimension to what I was used to. Meeting people on xbox was so simple. Coming across different characters, different ethnicity's, opinions, ideas, loud people, annoying people, angry people, emotional people, friendly people, rude people, you name it, Xbox had it. We had people who were terrible at games yet they just liked to talk, people who tried to ruin your gaming ego by talking trash, and people who just wanted to have a good time. My friends list started out with 0 people in 2006, over time it started to grow. All from the community of Saints Row online. Every once in a while it would get optimized, whether i deleted someone, or someone deleted me, inflation and deflation.
I really think the reason why it started out this way, was because of the way the 360 evolved. from 2006 to 2007 there was no 'Party chat system.. There was no way to steer away from a conversation, you either had your mic off and were listening, muted the ones you didn't want to hear, or were engaged in the conversation. The community felt alive. Trash talk gave the game more emotion, but friends balanced the playing field.

Once again the 360 evolved, adding with it the party chat system. People would still go on to use the game chat, but for the most part, people kept in the party chats, to exclude themselves from the public. Their own private member lair. Creating friends became increasingly difficult. For me, I wasn't too bothered at the time because by then I found out who my true friends are, and who my true enemies were. I see this as a form of despair for the next gen systems. Of course everyone still has the friends they made before, and of course they will come across new friends through old ones, but turning a game into any sort of community seems crushed. Rarely will people use the game chat on xbox one, some games do not even support talking to everyone in the game. The early concept of xbox live is almost gone...gone are the days of trash talk, gone are the days of meeting a lot of interesting people. gone , gone , gone!

I really enjoyed how games that were released on the 360 that came out before 2009 were complete, and the multiplayer components worked flawlessly to some degree... people could join, get a match, make a lobby, have friends with them, and
rinse plus repeat... It just made sense... Not like today, not how it is now, where every game that comes out is released half broken, and developers cold heartedly make us wait weeks or months to fix something that should have been fixed before it was released. Most of us are quiet about it, yet everyone is thinking the same thing. Why is the magic from the 360 no where to be found on here? Why do I have to wait years to get the enjoyment that I got the day I bought my 360?

Some Games can last years, ones I hated lasted months or weeks, replay-ability is often what I look for in a game, if its what you enjoy, if its something you love, just know nothing lasts forever. There are always exploits discovered, manipulations that just make you sick, unfixed glitches, unfixed bugs, lag switching, modding, no more patches, no more updates, and yet even sometimes never a good sequel to re-quench your thirst.
I remember when Saints Row 2 was first talked about, and I was so optimistic, so grateful , and so ready to take out my enemies on my new turf version 2. It just never happened the way I wanted. I didn't get what I felt promised to me. I wanted the same game play, I wanted the same Game Modes, but instead I got worst game play...different Game Modes, and just didn't feel the same about it felt for Saints Row 1s Online. I was really shocked, Upset, and shocked... Do not get me wrong Saints Row2 fans, those who enjoyed the single player, got exactly what they wanted.. I'm truly happy for them. I myself am not happy. I thought it was going to be my multiplayer Carnage from the last game all over again. Where I could have my group of friends-- Mafia of War, that was the 'gang' we built in Saints Row, and be able to wreak havoc on there. Trying to dominate as the #1 Gang on that game too.

The Developers of Saints Row obviously wanted to part ways with us...They wanted us to just go away or something, like a bad tick on a dogs back. Its just not that easy, trying to walk away from something that was loved by me, so many of my friends, and enemies. We were a community. The release of Saints Row 3 would actually discontinue any multiplayer component at all. They would enter a new direction, a direction that almost made me and my friends feel alienated, and let down. We felt as if these developers were just intentionally trying to aggravate its old fan base, and create a set of whole new fans. A set of new fans that would end up completely wiping us out from existence on their forums, and on the franchise completely.
We have come to the point of Saints Row IV where we just had to let it go, we had to wash away our thoughts of there ever being a real sequel to our version of Saints Row we loved.

What goes around comes around.. I think its only a matter of time before the same franchise you so loved at one point that alienated the hell out of you, starts alienating the hell out of its new fan base. which is exactly whats been going on pf late.
Saints Row3 introduced Uploading Characters to the site, it would later be reused in Saints Row IV. And then when Volition transitioned to a new company, the whole sever for uploading characters went to blunder. The website/forum was a bit out dated..I can see the company is slowly making a fix, but im kind of at odds to the fact that they will ever fix that character uploader. The truth sort of leans on the next gen remaster of "Saints Row IV", which in my opinion was the wrong choice to remaster. However if looked closely, you save your character locally, not on the character upload server. All points to a no fix of the character uploader, sorry guys! Just Know this wasnt the first time they took something away from a fan base who loves them. In 2008 they decided to remove the 'gang' leaderboards from Saints Row 1. We were devistated, the gang leaderboards are part-not-all what made Saints Row so different from the other shooters.

I am alienated, and in no means just at saints row. There is a lot to be alienated about. Just look at GTA V, and halo. No heists yet, and no working matchmaking for me and my friends. Every day I get on the Xbox one, and hop on the master chief collection to either a broken update, or none at all. Spending hours trying to search for a match with my friends, and just saying "F this" plugging in the 360!

I hope who ever is reading this, if you get anything out of this rant, is that the gaming industry needs to loosen up. They need to dig deeper into the community and see what really made it special. They need to understand its importance not to alienate the fans.

See any of you reading this one day, on the gears of war collection next year!!
Thank you for reading my rant ~ Godzhand