Schadenfreude: What Is It Good For?

No one wants to be on the losing side.  I cling to my HD-DVD player, not that it's hooked up or anything, but because I have some forty-odd discs, fallen soldiers in the post-DVD format war.  While I certainly purchased movies for content, there was a part of me that wanted to support the format, the Xbox tie-in.  And then Disney chose Blu-ray and the rest is history.

In the last couple of weeks, I've seen the stories: PS4 has won the next gen, Microsoft pays video bloggers to endorse Xbox One, Vita is on a slow death march, Iwata must go.  I understand anyone can post an article these days and I understand that certain topics equals clicks to websites.  In fact, I understand the desire to follow the links, to read about how your purchase was the right one, to see your "enemy" sometimes trip over its own feet.

But what does victory mean?  Do we really want the other to fail?  What does that mean for gaming as a whole when there are less options?  What benefit do we get if there is one console?

Fool Me Once
I downloaded the Battlefield 4 update this week.  I am happy to report that it seems the multiplayer has settled down a bit.  Though it's not always the easiest to find games to get into (and don't ask me to explain how to balance teams), it seems like we were able to get into the games we wanted.  Searching the Conquest servers got us into a Conquest game.  Actually, I do like how Xbox One sends notice when a party member enters a game.  The games themselves also seemed to run smoothly.  While I have heard pre-teen complaints about lag over games of Domination, I did not notice any shenanigans to report.  My k/D remains woefully short of 1.0 but I am pleased to say my win/loss ratio seems to be trending upwards.

But with progress comes pain of growth?  It doesn't seem like it should have to be that way but that way it is.  When I turned to Campaign, I realized my progress on the hardest difficulty was lost.  I'm not sure how much I completed, but I thought I finished at least six missions.  Talk about deflating one's morale.  While completion of the levels didn't feel impossible, it was a long time investment that I am not sure I want to make again.  The other day, I ran through a couple of missions on the normal difficulty, and while considerably easier, I don't know that I find the story so compelling as to make me feel like I need to do this.  Especially with so much else to play.

I'm hoping some of these issues are ones of up-porting Battlefield 4 from last gen to next gen.  It does make me cautious of what we get when Titanfall is released.