Talking to my wife this morning and she is having problems playing a game on her phone. It is one that requires a connection to a server that the company that produced the game runs. However every time she starts up the game it crashes outright. To prove it wasn't the fault of her phone I tried loading up the game on my phone and got the same result.
I know a lot of new games now have some form of online component. They talk to some server somewhere and either have a requirement or optional section that needs to talk to that server. Once that server is no longer available or not contactable the game becomes unplayable either partially or totally.
This is the dilemma my wife has. She likes her game and other than an easy method for stopping outright cheating there really is no need to talk to that server. I'm sure my wife would be perfectly happy to play the game without having to contact the servers they run.
The long term problem here though is that those servers aren't going to be there forever. Once that happens this particular game will be completely unplayable. After all the money she has spent on the game it is going to be frustrating to know you will never ever get any enjoyment out of it again.
The really annoying thing is that even games that don't require a server will be like that some day as well. They all run on some form of hardware that either will die or won't be able to hook up to a display that can accept the video signal connection or something like that. Unlike books/films etc making sure a game can always be played is a really hard problem to solve.
In the end though I just wish people would make their shit work. Making parts of my wife's game time sensitive and then through no fault of her own making her miss those time requirements is downright annoying.
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