Imagine facing the prospect of suddenly and without explanation being permanently unable to play any multiplayer game, or download anything above about 100MB. This is the nature of my plight.

So, I don’t use RSS feeds. Should I?

Some housemates moved out, and the phone bill was in their name, so I called AT&T to change the billing info. AT&T insisted that it could not do this until I disable the DSL that was on the phone line. This wasn’t even AT&T DSL, mind you, it just happened to be on the same line.

I started the process of trying to get my DSL killed on the 12th. Of course, I lost net access right away, but apparently actually getting the DSL circuit off of the line (or the records associated with the line) has been an arduous process involving calls to AT&T, my ISP, and their vendor (Covad). I wasn’t able to actually get my phone records updated until last week, and wasn’t able to get the process of re-activating my DSL started until today. Of course _that_ process will take another “3-7 business days”. (That’s assuming that, for once, a time estimate quoted to me turns out to be correct.)

So that’s basically a month without broadband access because I wanted to change the name on my phone bills. Way to go, phone company and ISP, you guys are shining beacons of customer service. I am startled and dismayed by both the amount of time this is taking and also the amount of whip-cracking I have to keep doing to move the process along. I just want to pay my money and get a service in return, is that so wrong?

Anyway, I’m sort of getting net access by tethering my laptop through my cellphone… but no multiplayer games, no downloading demos or really anything else, and no video except _maybe_ short YouTube clips if I’m patient. So yeah, I agree, it’s horrifying. :-)

I disagree really. The old Nintendo/Atari/Console stuff was just as much ‘business’ back in the days. I actually dare to say that there’s a growing trend going on that games become less ‘business’. Of course the EA’s, Microsofts and Nintendo’s are here to stay, but there’s so much out there these days. It’s because of the internet. People can easily create and bring out their own stuff. There are much better tools and information is everyone. There’s an easy to find ‘niche’ for everyone.

I think the average 20 year old of today is involved in a lot more personal niches than the 20 year old of 20 years ago.

In the hours between that point and when I left the flat this morning there were several points where I just sat there wondering what to do, I fired up Mount and Blade and found myself unconciously hitting shift+tab every few minutes to check a Steam chat room that wasn’t there, and I paused an episode of Samurai Champloo to read up on yojimbo on wikipedia before remembering my situation.

When I came back this afternoon and the net was back up it was like I’d been away a year. Six unread RPS posts?! Unheard of. Literally minutes of new trailers from Ubidays. For a moment I thought my browser history had been reset when I saw all those unclicked links in netvibes.

I remember, years ago while on holiday, downloading the HL2 videos over a 56k in the hotel lobby because I was so desperate to see them; 6 or 7 IE windows pushing the creaky old PC to it’s limit as I attempted to maximize the amount of news and information I could absorb in the short time I had available. If anything it’s got worse with time and the proliferation of feeds and wikipedia; it’s just as Jim says, the internet has just become an extension of the brain and, just as when you are seperated from other parts of your brain, it results in difficulty to think and a tendancy to stare vacantly in to space.

MAGIC

Also, I feel your pain, but in different ways. I’ve moved house…actually, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve moved house in the last five or six years. Lots. But I’ve always been able to find solace in the escapism of the single player game. Whenever I’m offline for any extended period of time it means I can catch up with all those games I’ve ignored in favour of EVE.

It’s like technology has crept up and turned me into my dad.

If it wasn’t for the smell I’d probably be in there all day.

Gaming and game development will never be the same, and titles of that quality will never be developed ever again, either.

We’re more in a silver age, where hundreds of games are developed and released every year, but maybe 10 of them are actually any good. Those 10 tend to be REALLY good, mind, but the time in which imagination, originality and a love for the work were the primary motivations behind game development is over. It’s no longer a hobby, now it’s a business.

A game of Scrabble would be a good bet.