I’ve loved video games my whole life. Growing up in the 1990s and early 2000s, I played the ever-living-hell out of 4 Game Boys (original, Pocket, Color, and Advance), a Sega Genesis, a SNES, a PS1, a PS2, a PS3, an Xbox, and any PC I could get my little hands on. I played everything from big titles like Mario or Madden or Warcraft to ones I’m not sure Sega, Sony, or Nintendo knew existed. I once managed to find and hook up this ancient thing called an Atari buried in a closet in my grandparents’ house, and I loved every second of playing it.

This interest eventually took me to employment at GameStop, and other stores in the Entertainment/Games section, in my later teens (2006-ish). It also led me to pursue a career in making video games (I would eventually realize I didn’t have the 3D art skills necessary and I hate, HATE, coding). My only possible “in” would be writing stories or dialogue, but I knew that wasn’t really much of a career. I moved on, sad and somewhat defeated, but it didn’t do anything to curtail my desire to play games. That wouldn’t happen until about 2011, maybe 2010. Over the past 5 or 6 years, I went from buying a game or two a month to buying a game or two per year. In the past year, I've purchased one game: Fallout 4.

In my mind, the gaming industry has become a multi-billion dollar legalized scam industry. No longer are games shipped nearly-bug-free out of the box. No, it's now so commonplace for new games to be buggy as hell and require several patches over the first few weeks to remedy that it's expected. No longer are games shipped complete. No, one pays $60 to gain access to $25 more worth of DLC content that 15 years ago would have been in the damn game upon initial release. And the worst of it, Day-1 DLC + patch. Fucking Christ… I imagine I feel similar to how Mark Baum in The Big Short felt about the big bankers when I look at the gaming industry today: greedy scam artists who don't care and do it because they know they can get away with it.

Somewhere along the line, possibly shortly after the ushering in of The Sims expansion packs, companies realized they could remove content from their game, without lowering the price of it, and sell it back to the costumer for extra money. A total perversion of the industry.

Somewhere along the line, probably taking a cue from how much of Corporate America behaves, the big developers decided they didn’t like competition and sought out, bought, and ate alive smaller studios that made good games.

Somewhere along the line, probably taking a cue from Hollywood, the industry discovered it could pump out the same game repeatedly, and people would buy it.

Somewhere along the line it became acceptable for gaming companies and game retailers to own gaming media that rates games and controls information about games – how is that not grounds for collusion? Can someone tell me?

Somewhere along the line, gamers became so starved for quality games that they either convince themselves the hype machine isn’t part of the scam or they become so entranced by the idea of a game that they fool themselves into thinking it's something it isn’t, and then willingly – no, enthusiastically - hand over hundreds of millions of dollars of their money to some charlatan(s) for a game with 0 actual content.

From patches, to DLC, to Collector’s Editions with superfluous bonus, sorry "exclusive", in-game content and a sticker priced at an extra $20, EA/Activistion/Ubisoft/GoFuckYourselfGames are laughing at gamers all the way to the bank. And they will continue to laugh until their games stop selling.

There are a few last bastions of quality gaming out there, so please, do not flame me with “such-and-such are good developers,” because I know. The problem is: their existence is, simply, not enough. And buying their games plus the games developed by these fraudulent companies isn’t going to change gaming for the better, it won’t cure the disease that’s infected the industry for over a decade.

Now, this isn’t a call to arms. We’re all free to do as we want with our own money, but if you believe, like I do, that gaming is really fucking awful right now, then you’re not doing yourself any favors by continually buying these products. If you want things to get better, then talk with your money, or the lack of it.