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PC Gaming Alive and Dominant
An anonymous reader writes "Ars reports on a panel at PAX East which delved into the strength of the PC as a platform for games, and what its future looks like. The outlook is positive: 'Even as major computer OEMs produce numbers showing falling sales, the PC as a platform (and especially a gaming platform) actually shows strong aggregate growth.' The panelists said that while consoles get a lot of the headlines, the PC platform remains the only and/or best option for a lot of developers and gamers. They briefly addressed piracy, as well: 'Piracy, [Matt Higby] said, is an availability and distribution problem. The more games are crowdfunded and digitally delivered and the less a "store" figures into buying games, the less of a problem piracy becomes. [Chris Roberts] was quick to agree, and he noted that the shift to digital distribution also helps the developers make more money — they ostensibly don't have everyone along the way from retailers to publishers to distributors taking their cut from the sale.'"
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TV is almost dead. Quite the opposite of what "experts" have been predicting for decades.
The console makers stopped focusing on making it a game machine, instead trying to make an 'entertainment center.' If you want to push the envelope in graphics, you need to go to the PC.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
After years of reports that PC gaming is dead while it was clearly booming, should we take this as a sign that it's finally on the decline?
...Maybe not.
big, coordinated marketing efforts. PC has no such coordination. Steam could try to do that, and I think that will still be the biggest contribution of the Steam Machines. Quite ironic if you think, as I do, that the Steam Machine effort seems quite uncoordinated nowadays.
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
I'll get right on that.. After all, stalin was just trying to help the working class!
when people started saying "For Playstation, XBox and Steam" though? It's practically a platform in itself. Kinda like how people called video games "The Nintendo" back in the day.
I have to admit, I like the convenience of Steam. With my Gog copy of Shadow Warrior I've got to patch it up every time I install. My Steam games auto patch themselves.
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Most people who I know that are PC gamers are generally pretty dedicated. They have special keyboard, mice, monitors, routers, network providers, etc. This is isn't even talking about their machines. Minimally they have a $200 video card if not pushing past $500. Then there are the special motherboard, overclocking, crazy cooling systems, even the glowy bits.
That all said, they are not building these systems to play tetris. They are going to get the latest and greatest games as fast as they come out. Then if the game is good they are going to play the crap out of that game.
What probably distinguishes this market from the console market is that gamers typically are chosey about their games. They aren't getting these games as gifts. They are looking at the reviews and the opinions of their friends. Thus the crappy games that typically are pumped out to exploit the fans of various blockbusters (which are 90%+ crap) just won't get much traction in this market. Thus a bomb is probably a total bomb in the PC world whereas there are going to be grandparents, fanbois, and parents who get suckered into buying the latest Harry Potter movie for their little Harry Potter fans.
This would apply all the way down to the bargain bin. Steam has a bit of a bargain bin but I suspect that a Playstation bargain bin at Walmart will do far better than the same bargain bin for PC games.
Quite simply to have a halfway decent gaming rig you are plunking down a minimum of $1200 with many doing a multiple of that. Thus these are people who are proven willing buyers.
And then there is Goat Simulator....
Why would I read books by a bunch of backstabbing aristocrats to immerse myself in the labour movement?
Completely agree. My... uh... friend.... has entire mount points devoted to pirated games downloaded over the years, but there's been no growth on those drives since he's had the opportunity to fund and directly download the games that he wants. Piracy will, of course, always be a factor, but I do not think it's ever been, nor will it ever be, the great bogeyman that distributors make it out to be.
I'll make sure to let the 7,518,856 other people I play Dota 2 with every month know (that number from just loading the game and looking at the unique monthly players figure).
That is, if I can get their attention while they're all trying to be the next team to win $1m in cash.
(Related aside: check out Valve's Free to Play documentary; it's a great watch for some insight into the lives of professional gamers.)
I want to see them state specifically which parts of directx to use, to maximize compatibility with wine and linux. directx ~9 has been out for 10 years now, has support in xp, xbox 360, and better support in linux. i'd wish for a wine/directx graphical display system instead of x11 for some time in the future.
This story is BS. "Crowdfunding", early access and F2P are killing gaming. Developers have learned that they no longer have to complete a game. "Game development" is no longer something you do in order to make a game, it's something you do in order to make your next game, which is also never completed. Why would you ever actually deliver a complete game experience when you can charge $20 and up for a practically empty game engine and a slick trailer?
And don't get me started on F2P games. They're creepy, sad and even the best of them leave you empty. The only grand vision is, "Get a bunch of people playing and hope there are enough 14 year-olds with the password to their parents PayPal account to make it pay. Enjoy the kickstarter money and move on to the next project.
The last 2 years have been the worst for PC gaming since I started playing games on my Commodore 64. I can count the number of actual AAA titles in the past 2 years worthy of the name on one hand.
And console players shouldn't get smug. You're in the same boat. You want to pay $60 for six hours of gameplay? How many hours did you pour into the games of the past? Corporate gaming has figured out that like cereal, you can make a bunch of money charging the same price for a shrinking product. It's why consoles are being sold more for their "entertainment center" features (really a "consumption center") than for the possibility of playing a continual stream of first-rate games for them.
The platforms are fine. It's the gaming industry that is moribund, getting fat and lazy on an increasingly locked-in income stream that has nothing to do with good games.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Does playing lots of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., or Metro 2033, or tetris count?
dormant you are right. PC gaming died a long long time ago. Do a Chevy to the levy ditty on it.
> Piracy, [Matt Higby] said, is an availability and distribution problem.
The way I see it, piracy is an availability and distribution solution, both in the immediate sense, and in how it's forcing industries to grapple with the reality of the internet.
The more effective piracy we have, the more the notion of "intellectual property" is shown up as the oxymoron that it is, and the freer we all will be in the long term.
There are some good info graphics on actual data here. PC has 51% of the playtime marketshare and consoles only have 30%. http://www.superdataresearch.c...
Free to play games are where the big money is now. League of Legends made $624 million in revenue in 2013. They even gave out $14.3 Million in tournament prize money.
Crossfire (a counter-strike clone popular outside the USA) had the most revenue and made almost a billion dollars in revenue last year.
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If you care to think about it, piracy is a lot like rape. You want to control, dominate, and get your jollies. Pirates are rapists.
The control scheme is limited? Really? You can plug PS3, PS4 and wired 360 controllers without any hardware adaptors and most modern games work just fine with them. Wii controllers can be used too if you have bluetooth. Virtually every other controller known to man can be used on PC either with some kind of cheap adaptor. You have joysticks, weird stuff like the Razer Hydra and an absolute plethora of unique peripherals you can use on PC. Not to mention Valve's upcoming controller which looks to remove a lot of the limitations that twin sticks have.
if a keyboard/mouse player interacts with a gamepad player, the match goes to one player or the other based on game genre. For most genres, keyboard/mouse wins; in FPS and RTS, the most commonly competitive games, gamepad is simply not viable.
FPS games designed for gamepad play are slow, often have this gay cover mechanic, and have lots of autoaim.
I started playing APB back when it was first release by RTW and was a 50$ boxed game with a monthly subscription (or something like that), I have always loved the concept of APB and the way you could customize your characters was really done great. The beginning bones of this game was done very well, to me, the original team behind APB seemed to really have their shit together, the game had some bugs, but it was very new, and I always felt like the possibilities were endless if they same team had been given more time on this game.
RTW went bankrupt and shutdown APB Sept 2010, so it sat around for awhile until K2 Networks (G1 or Gamers First) bought the game and re-launched April 2011, I was very excited just to play again honestly, and I still play the game allot, but G1 has done almost nothing to make the actual game better, no new city maps, no little fixes like queues to get in full districts or any other game fundamentals that could be very improved over the years on but never touched. Instead nothing but new cars and car kits, and new weapons.
For awhile the bought weapons were not that much of a deal, if you leveled up the in game weapons were just as good, but now they just don't care anymore and release just about anything for money, lately they seem desperate..
Here is the worst part of this, the most OP weapons are only gotten in a random chanced win in Joker Boxes, they sell the Joker Boxes on the Armas market place, its an in game website you can buy these Joker Boxes for G1C or "C1 Currency" that you buy for real money, each Joker Box is 99 G1C, but the smallest amount for G1C you can buy is 400 G1C for 5$ or you can buy a 25 pack of Joker Boxes for 1980 G1C or about 25$. I know lots of younger kids that spend several hundreds just trying to get a OP gun, I do not see the difference in this from gambling myself, and I am surprised I have never seen a article about the down right shitty ways of sucking the money out of kids in these games G1 does.
So basically G1 just sucks the life out of these games until they kill it in my mind, and only new content for items they sell.
I know I should not even still play the game, but I truly like the game, even thou half the people in this game are cheaters, it was a good game at its core and that credit should totally go to the original creators of the game
FPS" comment at the end is evidence of this).
In the PC gaming world, getting it to run at the highest settings *is* the game. It's like the "bouncing ball" graphics demos on 8-bit systems in the 1980s. The actual software isn't useful or meant to occupy the user's attention for long. The challenge is in *getting it to run* and the joy is in *seeing what my super-cool computer is capable of* in processing and graphics rendering terms.
Running on last year's card/settings? Sorry, you don't get the game.
This is why I stopped being a PC gamer in the late '90s. All I wanted was a better Tetris. What I got was a better bouncing ball demo.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
" control, dominate, and get your jollies".
That actually sounds a lot like copyright run amok...
The console makers stopped focusing on making it a game machine, instead trying to make an 'entertainment center.' If you want to push the envelope in graphics, you need to go to the PC.
PCs pushing the graphics envelope has EVERYTHING to do with there being enough dopes willing to spend 1, 2, or 3x the price of a console system for JUST a graphics card, and sometimes again for a CPU to run poorly optimized games a little faster.
Don't get me wrong, gaming is a hobby and I have money, so fuckit, I have a nice gaming system. But there's a reason you're being stuffed with free to play games, and that's the boatloads of PC gamers who DON'T spend a lot of money.
You name a product, and there's going to be someone out there willing to pay 50% more for something 10% better, but most people are cheap.
When that herd of people playing on bargain PCs moves for one reason or another, the whales alone aren't enough to keep the world from shrinking.
I said come in, don't stand there!
And it isn't because of performance for me.
It's the ackward controllers with gazillion buttons that are utilized in too many games in the form "push the right buttons in this rythm" (and I'm not talking about rockbands etc!)
And I've never accustomed to the damn analog sticks, especially for FPS/TPS sort of games. I'm happy with my WASD and mouse thank you very much.
That sounds like copyright, period.
[End Of Line]
There are some good info graphics on actual data here. PC has 51% of the playtime marketshare and consoles only have 30%.
The infographic you linked doesn't state whether two people on one console count as double the playtime. It appears that a lot more console games than PC games support multiple controllers. When four people play Super Smash Bros. Brawl for an hour on a single Wii console, is that one hour of playtime or four?
I understand Hotline: Miami was a critical success, because lo-res, 2D games equal coolness with indie developers
Other than emulating 240p pixel art styles typical of third- and fourth-generation console platforms (C64, CV/MSX, SMS, NES, TG16, Genesis, Super NES), what other graphical style is practical for a small team seeking to build a portfolio?
This is why I stopped being a PC gamer in the late '90s. All I wanted was a better Tetris. What I got was a better bouncing ball demo.
You're not gonna get a better Tetris. The Tetris Company has made infinite spin the law for over a decade now, and providers of alternatives will be prosecuted.
Also, not every game is played over a network.
Major publishers have started to change this, requiring network connections even for single-player, primarily to deter use of unauthorized copies. See: Assassin's Creed 2, Diablo 3, SimCity 2013.
Cost of a router applies equally to both console and PC.
Not necessarily. I upgraded from wired to Wi-Fi in early 2006 specifically to play Mario Kart DS and Tetris DS because unlike my PCs, a handheld system can't use wired Ethernet. Last time I checked, PCs still came with Ethernet jacks, unless you consider a tablet a PC.
I have to wonder though, do you include the cost of the television when you consider the cost of a console?
Only if the console doesn't support an existing television. My cousin asked for an HDTV specifically for use with an OUYA console, which lacks any sort of analog video output. Nor do I include the cost of the first PC's monitor. But because so few PC games support use of multiple gamepads, I have to include the cost of the monitor for the second, third, and fourth PC in a household.
To not mention the endless QTEs that are meant to pretend the player is playing the game
I've always wondered why these "press X to not die" scenes continue to be named after QuickTime even on non-Apple platforms.
You can plug PS3, PS4 and wired 360 controllers without any hardware adaptors and most modern games work just fine with them.
Gamepads on PC have at least four problems I can think of:
I'm sure these problems have solutions, and I'd appreciate help figuring it out other than "just buy a console; the games are better because developer approval keeps out the riff-raff".
Why would games even need to be KB+M - hostile?
Because of the practical limit of one keyboard and one mouse per PC. I've read reports that few PC gamers have multiple gamepads connected to a single PC, but even fewer have multiple keyboards and multiple mice on a PC (other than the case of a laptop with a USB mouse that the user is using instead of the built-in trackpad). This means multiplayer games using keyboard and mouse are overwhelmingly played over the Internet. But there are several video game genres that don't work well over the Internet. I tried playing a fighting game over the Internet a week ago, and it was full of control lag that the game introduced because you can't dead-reckon as much in a fighting game as you can in a first-person shooter. And forget about party games; those rely on the out-of-game social interaction made possible by putting two to four players in a room. See editorials by The_Netcup and Damien McFerran.
I'd love to know what percentage of games are FPSs... They're cranked out like sausages not because they're the best that the companies can do, but because they can be played using a console controller. Meanwhile a reasonably well-equpped PC has far more power than any console, and features a real (gasp!) keyboard with more than 10 buttons! Game makers do shitty ports of titles to the PC; for example, I still have not played Skyrim because of the PC-unfriendly interface. And they wonder why sales are down.
I think we could see a new OpenGL renaissance, because of Steam OS and OpenGL ES being used in mobile games.
I saw a post on the Unreal engine forums about how they intend to implement first class OpenGL support in the new engine. They really hate the way Microsoft tie DirectX updates with the OS. (You can see this post here -at very end: https://answers.unrealengine.c...)
Also, consider OpenGL 4.4 has had Mantle like features since last year which will only come out in DirectX 12 in 2015.
has always been a much better gaming system than any console. The average PC has far better graphics capabilities and the keyboard combined with a good mouse are far superior than any console controller. Plus a PC can do much more than any game console.
In the past, gaming could ride the coattails of Windows as the desktop OS. But non-managed apps on Windows are under threat: Microsoft clearly doesn't like them and wants to replace them with managed apps, it doesn't like them competing with XBox, and it keeps having huge usability and security issues with them. In addition, the gaming market, big as it is, is a much smaller market than the entire desktop and server markets that Microsoft used to dominate.
So, in the end, it doesn't matter how successful games on Windows are because by themselves, they are not sufficient to feed the Windows OS developers at Microsoft, who have gotten used to much larger revenue and much bigger markets.
Most artists don't expect anyone to actually pay money for their portfolio.
I was under the impression that established video game studios would consider a portfolio "better" if it contains contributions to a finished commercial game. This shows HR that a candidate not only can produce but has produced well enough to sell something. As Jon Evans of TechCrunch put in "Why The New Guy Can’t Code": "So what should a real interview consist of? Let me offer a humble proposal: don’t interview anyone who hasn’t accomplished anything. Ever." If anything, I guess a credit in a commercial game might help elevate a candidate's standing with HR from "we'll hire you if you already live here" to "we'll help pay for your relocation". But then what do I know? I've never been hired in the mainstream video game industry.
The notion that step #1 is, "asking people to pay, no strings attached for what you haven't made" when you haven't made anything yet is relatively recent.
An indie studio needs money to make the first thing. And when there isn't such money, a studio has to fall back to what its artists can put together alongside a day job in another industry, and that often means 2D pixel art.
And installing a graphics card is even worse if your PC is a laptop, if this article by Christopher Null is to be believed.
No more than you have to have thousands invested in a 73" TV and 9.1 surround sound to play consoles. Stupid tautology is stupid.
PC gaming for the win! An MSI GT70-2PC laptop is epic and should be economical to buy in a few years. Put an extreme CPU in it and it'll still be one heck of a computer in a few years. I don't really understand why people by consoles when you can have 1 portable device that does it all. I guess console buyers are drones and people with gaming laptops are individuals, though the gaming laptops with SLI are a bit excessive.
This is why I stopped being a PC gamer in the late '90s. All I wanted was a better Tetris. What I got was a better bouncing ball demo.
There are lots of games for PC that you simply can't get anywhere else (including certainly anything remotely serious in the simulation genre). I play games on PC for the gameplay. If some people want to stare at furmark or whatever and call that entertainment, they can knock themselves out (for bonus points, watch the display on a kill-a-watt when you launch the application).
If I have fun, then I'm getting my money's worth.
the fact that you're not aware of them kind of makes your point seem uneducated.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
Flight sims? better with a keyboard and mouse instead of a HOTAS? You're bugnut fucking crazy. You also just dismiss Super Mario out of hand as a worthwhile game experience so, I don't know what to make of that. I can't sleep, so here goes a screed.
The overall point you're missing is that not all games are designed to be played with a pointing device. Music games SUCK on a keyboard. Fighting Games suck on a keyboard. Mech and Flight/Space sims suck on keyboard. Puzzle games can make wonderful use of a joypad.
Having to design a game where the guaranteed input device is a keyboard and mouse means you're designing games that are limited by the limitations of keyboards and mice. Games like Virtual On and Katamari Damashii don't work on mice or keyboards. They're designed with control schemes that are clearly NOT KB/M friendly. Beatmania doesn't work on a keyboard and lord knows I've -tried-.
Being able to move in non-discrete increments and move the camera also in non-discrete increments is something you can't do with a mouse and keyboard. Metal Gear works really well on a joypad, for instance. When you're not worried about shooting someone in the face, and worried more about sneaking around? The KB/Mouse combo becomes a liability.
The only games that benefit from a KB/M are games where the camera's fixed and being pixel perfect is an advantage. So RTS and FPS work out very well in those cases.
TPS? TPS games benefits from having the camera be on another non discrete control. MMOs that sit in the third person perspective are a mess of modifier keys that change how the mouse interacts with the UI. How MMO players deal with this is really beyond me. Granted, these games tend to also feature auto-targeting systems so you have one less thing to worry about too...
Game design in the aggregate shouldn't be locked into some soulless orthodoxy where you have to design your game this way or else you'll have players at your door with pitchforks and torches because they don't want to learn how to engage in diverse ways. I mean, games like Senjou No Kizuna just wouldn't work on a KB/M setup.
It's bad enough WASD is what ships standard and rebinding to ESDF means a lot of keys get bounced around(Seriously, who has their hands shifted off the home row? Doesn't anyone touch type anymore?). Heaven forbid you're not using a US style layout and suddenly keys aren't where you expect them to be. Poor French players who have to figure out what to do when games don't support rebinding.
There's this bizarre orthodoxy with you PC gamers. If things aren't exactly the way you demand them to be, everything's terrible and somehow no progress can be made. The only progress we can make is more polygons and more DPI on mice. Clicky keyboards too, make them clickier. more of the same! more of the same! It's ridiculous. I can't stand you people. You're what's wrong with gaming. Console gamers, as a culture, do have their orthodoxy, but it's not this bizarre cult like obsession I see with the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
But how much healthier would it be without Valve having such a near-complete dominance over it with SteamDRM?
I am playing more computer games than ever in the last 5 years or so. Part of this is due to deciding to build a new gaming rig, and ignore the new consoles. Part of this is just DOTA 2.
Every now again again at work I find my fingers hovering over the 1,2,3,4 keys... just in case someone tries to gank me I guess lol!
IMNSHO
WoW was such a success that it basically became the center of Bliz's life, influencing everything else it does.
I would try to conjure a humorous analogy of marriage. Back in the day Bliz was single and energetic. Then it got married to WoW. The marriage has for the most part been wonderful for Bliz, and frankly I'm happy for them, but yes, they don't come out for drinks or party as much any more. And we don't like how he's best friend is now that lawyer/banker Activision.
That did what? Not suck? Can you give us a list of 10 F2P games that did not suck and not include DOTA2?
And how much lower is the bar for F2P and why? Clearly, the teams making these games are trying to make money, and if they believe they can make money, apparently there is some value to having people play these games?
So what exactly is "free" as in "free to play"? Ain't nothing free.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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The biggest news from that panel was, IMO, that Chris Roberts said that Star Citizen will be coming to Linux.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny