You may have paid for SHIII but you havn't paid for GWX 3 or SHIII commander. You also did not pay for all the good work our modders have done to make this the best sim ever.

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All I can say is that I play SH3 with GWX and Commander, plus a bunch of other mods, and I have experienced a CTD once in a very great while but not nearly enough to make me quit playing.

I don't know what the problem is you're experiencing, but my experience has been quite good.

Where have I complained about what modders do? I've said before that I think the modders are top guys. my beef is with developers who have now sold 4 unfinished games under the same title. I guarantee you disappointment when SH5 is released because Ubisoft know suckers will buy any old junk and stupid enough to make excuses for it to boot!

You're one of the lucky ones. I wonder how many others who like me just walk away because we haven't the time or the patience to fix things which should have been done right in the first place. Judging by the amount of gripes on here my guess is a lot.

I'll say it again - gamers need to stop accepting shoddy second rate products. If you buy a game and it doesn't do what it should do, then don't pay for their products until they up their game. If more people did this then we might all start getting games which don't need fixing before you can use them.

Well, I only had CTDs when I had conflicting mods enabled... Also I run this on a Vista system... Only had an issue once when I tried to install it, due to StarForce... long time ago.

Although I agree with the essence of your points, in that a lot of games are released 'unfinished', surely you can see that what you're asking is for every person who plays games and every person who might buy a game for a person who plays games to just stop, just like that. Sure, it'd probably work in theory but in practice, it will NEVER happen. You'd need to stop at least 40% of gaming consumers from buying games. Do you have ANY idea how many computer games are sold each year across the PC, MAC, Handheld and console market?

Nor do I, but I can't wait to see what you plan to do to convince 40% of them to stop what they're doing. Quite a crusade that'll be and likely to make you famous, or maybe, a laughing stock.

Bottom line, modding was born from unfinished and buggy games. If all games were perfect then maybe we wouldn't have modding... Hmm, now there's a thought, not something I'd happily live without to be honest. Computer games are relatively a young phenomena, I was alive and playing pong when it came out on the Atari 2600 in the eighties and the balls were square!!! Give me round balls I said, just I didn't, because it didn't occur to me at all.

As technology develops, methods improve and computing power increases, you'd think we'd see an improvement in the quality of the offerings. Alas this isn't true and the reason? It's not the developers, they do their best to fulfil their vision of what is a good game. That vision may not be the same as the next man and that next man will invariably complain about it. More jump on the bandwagon and then someone makes a mod to fix it. So modding is a valuable commodity for gaming.

No, the real reason why games are released so hurriedly and in an unsatisfactory state is due to the publishers. These are the guys who put their name to the title and who will take any flak that gets thrown at the title. They also have a liking for profit, one thing that a good developer won't consider as they work on 'their' masterpiece. But the publishers will constantly press for a projected release date, and you can't say 'it'll be ready when it's ready' as that publisher will take one look at you and close the joint bank account, waving as they go. A developer without a publisher gets no work done because they have no money to do so.

You are blaming the developers, and that is wrong, blame the publishers as they will hype up a title and will often force a release date out of the developers. When that comes around, it gets released finshed or not, and this is where you come in, buying a game and getting frustrated by it due to the publishers wanting their payoff and not caring about the developer or the consumer.

Nowadays you increasingly see a new software title being announced by private developers that comes with no release date, few and far between updates and it can be years before the game is released. These are worth waiting for though because they have nobody standing over them with a cheque, threatening to snatch it away if it's not done by such and such a date. 'It's ready when it's ready'. This is when the developers have the chance to nurture a title into near perfection, with no pressure.

Unfortunately, while there is constant demand for games, there'll be developers trying to cash in, and as long as that happens, developers will never release a full package, as they are often not allowed to.

So as I said at the beginning of this longer than intended post, your point is correct in essence, but a total boycott of the gaming industry will only hurt the developers and force publishers to pile on even more pressure to get title's released, and we'll be back to Pong again, with square balls. You're seeing the problem far too simply and your arguments don't stand up to the big picture.

If you want great games, be prepared to wait a long time for release, but don't expect everyone else to wait, because they never, ever, ever, will.

No, you'd just stop getting games. The profit margins for almost all PC game developers are slim, especially when compared to the console developers. I've watched more than one excellent franchise die because of this and I'd really hate to see Silent Hunter go as well.

Both of the previous authors are dead on. Most programmers, graphic artists and others you title "developers" are artisits - and to an artist his work is NEVER done (to his satisfaction). I know - I have several relatives that are artists! The publishers are in business to make money - so they project how many sales to expect, give a percentage of that for capital and expect the rest as profit. Once the "developers" start getting close to that projected capital figure, it is publish or die - and we get the result. SOME publishers wil give a bit more of the projected sales to the actual development, and take a bit less profit - or hope their original estimate of sales was too low - but that is very rare.