but doesn't everyone like to play with cars?

First noticed on Rampant Games, the news that Auto Assault is shutting down.

Makes me a little sad, but then - I wasn't paying for membership either.

I'm not sure why, really. I played trials once or twice. I had a fairly good time. I drove around making vrooming noises and banging into stuff and knocking it over. A friend of mine and I tore around the racetrack quest and he won even though my car was much faster, because he was sticking to the course carefully and I was taking all the jumps and wandering around recklessly, so I was never getting that far ahead, and then near the end of the run I banged into something and by the time I could get myself back in line and pointed at the goal again, he'd already won.

It was fun. But I guess it wasn't *compelling* fun. Everybody likes having toy cars and pushing them around the floor and banging them into dominoes and knocking stuff over... but nobody buys a subscription to it.

Also, the sound of tires grinding can really give me a headache after a while.

However, to some extent this is part of what puts me off online games. My ability to play the game is totally subject to someone else's whim. The company goes under? They decide to shut down the game? Sucks to be me. Like all those poor bastards who paid for Uru: Ages Beyond Myst only to have the online part shut down before it really got off the ground. (Although I think they reopened it again later, or let the fans host it, or something. I forget.)

If I pay for a game, I like having ownership. I don't like the idea of the game developers being able to rewrite the code and functions of something I already have and enjoy. And I certainly don't like them being able to take it away.

This doesn't mean I never play MMORPGs - I'll talk about the one that I did pay for later. But I buy a lot more offline games than online. Because I DON'T TRUST PEOPLE.