I would enjoy it if people would exercise their Gestalt muscle, and attempt to see the forest through the trees before playing devil's advocate (which by the way has never once rivaled actual public discourse):

This is not, I repeat; not, intended to be a petty complaint of a personal nature, or an effort to start a support group in which people can pat me on the shoulder and tell me; 'it's ok'.

What I am trying to get across here, is that when an individual purchases a game at full retail - in this current gaming generation - that game (now more than ever) loses it's value at a faster pace than any game from other generations. This in large part is due to the fact that nearly every game must contain both a single, and multiplayer aspects (if not weighted more heavily on the ladder).

When developers and studios release almost identical titles at yearly intervals, the online community naturally migrates to the new title - leaving the old one behind, and within a year these games lose their community (and in many cases) their support from the developer altogether.

Single player games however have a much greater longevity, I can still plug in my old Dreamcast when the mood strikes me and still enjoy all the content that I originally paid for. Games that are heavily multiplayer geared, and in most cases lacking in single player content, have a much shorter longevity, i.e. you lose much of the content you originally paid for.

What I suggest is for studios to simply release purely multiplayer IP's on an online basis, and not attempt to mix them in with single player IP's (which always end up lacking) and tell the consumer 'it's a good value.'

The lack of support IS Steams fault. When you buy a game from a physical Retailer, they don't offer to install a patch for you, or offer technical advice, that'd be silly, but they at least only carry current titles, and are willing to discuss returns. These are outdated games, to which there exists no support anywhere, that Steam then bought at a discounted price, sold as if new, and have only a user generated support forum for any problems one may run into. It seems scandalous to me.

No, actually, the game was a good deal. My point is however, that this era of gaming is heavily based on multiplayer, and that it simply will not translate into replayability even a year from now. I'm saying that the value of games is decreasing.

Duke Nukem 3D came out in 1996. I was in 6th grade at the time and have fond memories of huddling around a computer with my friends and laughing at the 'They Live' quotes. I am now 28 years old. Probably the average age (if not somewhat younger) of a person who has fond first hand memories or nostalgia for Duke Nukem 3D.

You don't dumb-down nostalgia, the prime audience has obviously (hopefully) matured in the past 16 years. I feel most people found it down right offensive to have some studio ruin the good name of an old friend.

(and yes, I have purchased, and played it)

Just today I purchased the gameBlurfrom Steam at a discounted $5.00. Having played the demo a while back and having a reasonably positive reaction to it, I figured this to be a fairly good deal. However, my memory of the game, and also noted in it's review, is that the most intriguing part of the game was the multiplayer; of which there simply is none anymore.

I've been burnt by Steam ever increasingly as of late. They seem to be making quite a lot of money by purchasing the rights to older, third-party titles, and selling them at a discount but nonetheless large profit. This would be fine, IF they supported updates to these titles; most of which don't and won't ever work on a modern rig.

However, this current generation of gaming has been very focused on multiplayer aspects of nearly every title. Not to pick on one franchise specifically but Call of Duty for instance maintains a solid - if not formulaic - single player, but boasts one of the largest active online communities to date. But every year for the past consecutive 4 years they've come out with something bigger and better - and by all means it is. But what they're doing by this is completely undermining their supportive fans by weakening the online community of previous releases, without adding so much more as a few more game modes and maps.

When we think about used games, or games that have been on our wish list but for some reason never hopped on the band wagon soon enough, when we wait for these games to drop in price; not only are they out of date (technically) by the time we get to them, but they're also ghost towns online (which is more than half the content these days)

So, short shelf-life of games that boast nearly nothing new but a few multiplayer aspects, yet could easily get by on DLC and downloadable updates, who choose to come out with a new title every 12 months instead.

(Oh, and for the little rant on Steam. The guy, Gabe, he's worth 3 billion right? WHERE is Half-Life: Episode 3?, or any new title for that matter?)