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PC Gaming Isn't Going Anywhere
Grimrod writes "Dave Long, one of the editors of GamerDad, has a unique look at the PC as a game platform and how it gets forgotten among the constant barrage of console gunfire in his latest Long Shot column. From the article, 'It might never be like 1998 again on the computer, the year that PC gaming was probably at its very peak, but it's far better than analysts and even armchair soothsayers would have you believe. I got caught up in the hype myself to a certain extent. I started to believe I didn't need the computer for games. Now that I'm back on the inside with current hardware, I realize again how dumb that idea was.'"
declining rapidly, outside of certain genres, since the XBox came out. MS cannibalized a large portion of PC developer resources to bolster their library on the console. Ruining a large number of games in the process(like Deus Ex: Invisible War).
The number of games I wanted on the PC used to be on about equal footing to the number of games I wanted on consoles. Not so any longer.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
He's right. The computer isn't dead for gaming, and in my opinion, will never be overshadowed by consoles. I've pretty much stopped enjoying console games, excluding the GTA's, n64's goldeneye and smash brothers, and my old SNES and nintendo games. Nothing else new on console is worth playing.
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But on the computer I've had tons of games that were tons of fun. starting back with civilization and progressing up through warcraft II, duke nukem, doom, quake, AOE, and then halflife & cs(!)
what makes most PC games so much better than the console games is the amount of personal interactivity with people. I can talk to the people i'm playing with in counter-strike. I can't do that with a console (excluding some horrid voicecom). And it's so much easier to use the mouse / keyboard combination for gaming than a controller (no matter how i try, i can't aim in halo worth a shit with an xbox controller)
but, as of late, i've gone totally retro and dusted off the NES and the atari for some old school fun times
Yeah seriously, I think I'm going to come up with a site that writes meaningless shit about games just to see if I can get on games.slashdot. Then again IGN gets away with that kind of crap all the time, their "feature" on CRPGs lacked anything resembeling content. Then there was that "article" about MMO's not even a day ago... I'm all for games journalism but some of this stuff is ridiculous. Gamerdad needs to stop writing forever.
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Hey, it's my OPINION that dogs have eight legs and make a sound like a car horn every time they take a piss.
PC Gaming is why we have innovation, and why 90% of us buy new computers. I just dropped 1200$ on building a new computer not too long ago, why? So I could play awesome computer games, not so I could more efficiently use Microsoft Word. The fact of the matter is, except for the slim minority of computer users who buy new hardware when their existing is in need of a reformat, gaming is why we buy the latest processor when a P2 will do most jobs just fine.
I got caught up in the hype myself to a certain extent. I started to believe I didn't need the computer for games.
Yeah, me too. I thought that if I stared at the CD and concentrated really hard, that I could play the game purely with the power of my mind.
Damn hype.
...the independent developer community. Folks like Carmack, Romero, Garriot and many others developed games on the various personal computer platforms of their day on a shoestring. These individuals are the ones that, for the most part, made PC gaming great.
In terms of a lot of indie content not being "AAA" grade these days... a lot of the great indie content people seem to be chained by their balls into mod work. If these guys realized their own talent and struck out on their own with a low-cost engine like Torque, or an open source option like CrystalSpace, Nebula, or Rygax, we would see far more successful indie game companies selling their work.
Console manufacturers make money off of these guys through buyouts or licensing once they get really successful. Eventually many companies become "exclusive partners", get locked into multiple-title deals, or otherwise lose their independence from the Big Publisher model of game business. An exception of course is Id, which we all know has a positively unique management situation. Valve also is regaining some cajones in this department.
So there are always indies, and indies are what make PC gaming greatest- past, present, future.
Performing sanity checks on your own beliefs is vital in avoiding poisoned koolaid.
I'd like to preface this by applauding you for posting anonymously: you'll need it.
I'd also like to compliment your ability to totally destroy all potential for constructive discourse by tossing in some ad homenim which groups all PC gamers in the category of "hardcore dudes in their twenties whose entire gaming world revolves around the x86 peecee." Brilliant work, Socrates. Now, on to actually discussing the issue:
Regarding your comment about x86 growth potential: have you ever considered that some people play games because they are fun and not graphically spectacular? With the current and upcoming console platforms, how many developers are there, do you think, who don't sweat bullets over making their game visually stunning like everyone else? How many console games have you come across in the past 2 years that don't do their utmost best to convince you that their graphics are superior, so you therefore want to buy it? It's the exact opposite of what you have described: diehard console developers killing themselves to make the next look better than the previous. If you want proof of this, I give you 2 words: True Crime. It sucked on the XBox, because the developers obviously spent all their time on the graphics, rendering a nice looking game with crappy AI, an unimaginative weapon system, and some of the shoddiest level designs I have ever seen.
And you want to talk about endless streams of 20k titles? Do you know how long they've been making Madden Football games? Since 1989! Then there's the MLB games and the NFL games and NHL games. Goddamn, the list never stops! For the benefit of all /.'ers reading this, please name 4 PC franchises to match this list that mercilessly continue cranking out games year after year.
Finally, the reason why the PC has always had so much gaming potential is precisely because it's not "a mass of diehard Microsoft developers." Without PC gaming we wouldn't have titles from companys like Infogrames, Blizzard, and Sierra, to name a few. Without PC gaming, ID software would not exist, because a Nintendo would fellate you before it would run something like DOOM.
I think it would be really cool if you would qualify any of the statements you've made, but particularly the claim that, "Peecee gaming isn't really going anywhere, it will continue to shrink and become less and less relevant over time."
FTA :
>> Halo 2 especially takes online multiplayer to a
>> new level of fun because of the integrated voice
>> chat of Xbox Live.
Perhaps he actually means: by ripping off ideas that were possible 10 years previously in pc games (i mean i was using roger wilco to play delta force 2 with 50 player servers back before hardware accelerated video cards existed...)
half-life 1 had integrated voice chat 5 years (or more) before halo2 - AND had multiplayer (gameplay & weapons & community) that kicked ass over halo's (the continued popularity of cs proves this)...
I still don't get why people would pay money for xbox live, when you can get all of this and much more on a pc...
then there's the new 'HD' craze that the console manufacturers are trying to promote with the new round of consoles...
yippee-freakin do - my console can now do resolutions that computers do 10 years ago - without hardware acceleration...weee
current-gen consoles can only go as high (resolution-wise) as standard ntsc video resolution, which is the equivalent of what quake1 in software mode could do (320×482 approx)
now, suddenly consoles can do 'hd' resolutions, which are basically what we've had on PC's for the past 7-8 years:
HDTV 1080i 1920×1080 (16:9)
HDTV 720p 1280×720 (16:9)
EDTV 480p 704×480
(source: wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_resolution )
is this really 'that' interesting? i mean 1920x1080 isn't something to scoff at, but by the time the consoles are out and people actually have tv's that can display this kind of resolution, computers will be running dual & triple display games at 2 to 3 times this resolutions, not to mention SLI video cards, dual core 64 bit processors and other PC-only enhancements that are coming down the pipeline...
(sure some of the consoles will have dual-core processors, but they are still nowhere near the processor speed of what we will be targetting as our lowest-end gaming machine in few years...)
consoles are pure marketing bs...mind you, as a developer they provide a single, stable hardware platform to develop games for, so IN THEORY, we can optimize game performance more for the consoles...
Gekido's Lair
I still get annoyed at the keyboard/mouse argument. Yes, it's quicker and more accurate. Few except people with godlike joypad skills could deny that. But why is that necessarily good? People look at me strangely when I ask, but after playing a lot of Quake 3 and then just sitting back to spectate for a second at these guys with incredible hit percentages, bouncing about like rabbits, not failing to hit each other as they did, the whole thing just looks like a farce. It wasn't too bad in futuristic settings, but as soon as the whole thing moved into realistic war settings like Enemy Territory and Battlefield I just checked out completely. Anyone who's fired a gun will tell you that that kind of accuracy is completely off the scale, especially when jumping around. This is not a John Woo movie. Now I crave the relative poorness of the joypad control. It's a great leveller, and introduces far more tactics into the game than any amount of extra HUD that a greater definition can offer.
I recently finally got tired of WoW, and thank God I did. I'd have been upset to miss out on Resident Evil 4, God of War, GT4/Forza, never mind how the new handhelds are building up.
The upshot? Anyone want to buy a Radeon 9800 Pro?
I don't get why people complain so much about the cost of the latest graphics cards and use this as a measuring stick for the cost of PC gaming in general. Yes, the latest graphics cards are ridicously expensive, but they press the prices of older cards down really fast. A card from the last generation or the one before that still run the majority of games excellently for very little money.
Sure, it's still more expensive to buy a PC than a console, but except gaming and media, consoles can't do much. A PC can do whatever you make it do, not just what Sony and Microsoft thinks you should do with it.
He's right, as most peoples PC's are being continuously upgraded and replaced, the market for PC games continues to stay steady, whereas with consoles only being replaced every 7-8 years, they gradually loose their selling power in the couple of years before they are replaced
PC gaming might not be as strong as it once was, but it will be stable for a long time to come
Business Voyeur
yes, Ion Storm were the developers that ruined DX2, but I think it's the Xbox's limitations that forced them to make the wrong decisions. First off, I don't think DX2 could ever meet the level of uniqueness DX had, since there was already DX, so they were bound for an inferior sequel right off the bat. They did make a pretty interesting story, and the graphics/physics system was ahead of its time.
BUT, Ion Storm was forced to remove the more endearing gameplay mechanics because of the knowledge it was being ported to console. For one, the Xbox's physical memory is quite paltry. There is no way that the Xbox could handle the enormous, wide-open levels of the first game unless they settled for a sub-par graphics presentation. Which of course, no one ever stands for anymore (WoW is about the only other major game than DX1 that put substance and style over power and polygons when it comes to graphics).
The other thing was that the game had to be controller-friendly. So they created a dumbed-down inventory system with none of the depth that made the first game's item manipulation fun. They also dumbed-down the character building. The first DX's character building was so in-depth and varied, and had such a strong influence on how you played the game, that it had really combined the best parts of both FPSes and RPGs. DX2, though, just had some arbitrary skills to improve that did effect the game, but not to the level of the first.
So both the limitations of the hardware, and the limitations of the audience of the consoles put very large restrictions on the development of the second Deus Ex. Yes GTA was done beautifully on all systems, but DX isn't GTA. GTA is nowhere near as complex as the first DX. A great Deus Ex sequel could only have been done for PC.
Consoles will always be for the casual gamer that really has no idea about games. Competetive gaming, and the chance of gaming becoming a sport, lies in the computer. No other platform can handle competetive gaming.
-- Design. Create. Assemble. --