Is Diablo III Further Evidence Of Overreliance on the Internet?

At Cracked.Com John Cheese provides 5 Reasons ‘Diablo III’ Represents Gaming’s Annoying Future. He reports on his experience with the anticipated new release, noting in exasperation that even playing the one-player version of the game requires you to log in to the company’s website. Thus if the server’s down (and you can bet it was on release day) then you can’t play.

Cheese will have none of it:

We handed Blizzard 64 dollars and said, “I would like to be a monk named F—hole, please.” And in return, they took our money first and responded second, “No, that name doesn’t quite sit with us. Take out the cursing, and you can play. Well, for an hour or so, that is. Maybe. We’ll see how it goes.”

Sixty-four dollars is as much as some people make in an entire day. For them, handing that over to play a video game is not a minor event. All they want in return is to use the product they just f—ing paid for. If any other company in the world sold you a product that didn’t work, and then refused to hand over some sort of compensation in return, you wouldn’t even need a lawyer. The judge would tell them straight up, “Give them a working product, or give them their money back, or go to fucking jail.” But for whatever reason, the video game industry gets away with this now? Every time they have a problem with their servers, I can’t play the game I already bought? In an era when people carry their entire music library around with them on their phones, I have less ownership and control of my video games than I had in 1979?

Are we beginning to rely on the internet too much? Do we just assume that it will always be there when we need it?

I think back to how we managed to live just fine before getting a GPS for our car. And now we get frustrated and worry when it freezes or misdirects us.

A new book on the subject that arrived in the mail the other day: iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us.