Hey.  Y'know what really grinds my gears?  Getting online gaming to work.

Gaming graphics continue to surge forward to unfathomable new heights while netcode just seems to rot away in a dumpster.  Why is it that no matter how much progress we make, no matter how sophisticated games become, no matter how fast internet connections get, and no matter how powerful computers get, simply getting a lobby of your friends together in an online game and playing for a couple of hours without issue is like some kind of Herculean task, and if you manage to play, it is only by the grace of the gods.

I bought Halo The Master Chief Collection on Steam a little while ago, and I had been promising a good friend for some time that as soon as I finished some projects I had been working on and had time, we would do a Legendary all skulls run through of all the games in timeline order.  We're both Halo mega fans and veterans from way back, but neither of us has played any of them in a good decade or so.  I've beaten the games on Xbox inside and out, but I've never played the 1 & 2 anniversary editions, nor have ever had the pleasure of experiencing them with skulls.  A nostalgic playthrough with a new challenge and a fresh coat of paint sounded like such a blast.  My friend and I were insanely psyched.  The time came and we began our legendary journey.  Reach went off without a hitch.  It was by far the most fun that either of us have had in a decade.  I cannot describe the joy that this co-op campaign was bringing both of us.

Then our playthrough ground to a halt when we reached Halo CE and were plagued by frequent, fatal connection desync issues where the non-host player essentially freezes and is unable to interact with anything.  It's a permanent, game ending netcode bug.  All that can be done is quit and restart, losing hours of progress.  And then it happens again.  And again.  ...and again.  Apparently this is a widely known issue resulting from the MCC running on crumbling legacy netcode and never being updated, and 343 has openly stated that they have no interest in fixing it.  So, RIP.  There's goes the most fun we've had in a decade.

I think I know why stuff like this happens in so many games.  It's because advertising fancy, reliable netcode doesn't move product with most people, but advertising shiny, fancy lightning, textures, ambient occlusion, and raytracing does.  In other words, make game look pretty, make money.  If the game looks nice, people will buy it, but who f*ckin' cares if it works, because once you find out that it doesn't, then the company already has your money.

Why can't anything every just work?  I mean, seriously.  WTF?  25 years ago (Sweet merciful Celestia, am I old) my friends and I were sitting around troubleshooting Starcraft and trying all night to get everyone to connect and start the game before someone would get dropped.  Now, 25 years, and many gigabytes and tera flops later, and we're doing the exact same f*cking thing.  Nothing has changed.  We can land a car on Mars and drive it around, we can launch a telescope that can apparently see beyond and before the big bang (or something), but we can't play A F*CKIN GOD DAMN VIDEO GAME.

F*CK.