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What can we do to save PC gaming?

LewieP

By LewieP,
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Shimmyhill

Shimmyhill

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What games are you playing and on what PC? Your experience is the antithesis of what mine has been for years.

The latest game i played was at a friends ( i dont own a gaming pc and he was having problems with it) and was GOW. It needed a GFX update so i put it on and the game worked but his extended desktop stopped working. I rolled back the driver and the game wouldnt work. It brought back memories of Farcry and Nvidia at the time who had drivers that didnt work indoors - FPS drop or ATi drivers that made all the cs models balloon up or even the days when a flash light in CS was our best weapon as it would make people on old ATi drivers FPS die for just long enough to kill them etc. My point was that in DOS days you got it working with a boot disk and that was it the game worked.

But i digress, my point was even with these barriers to entry PC gaming hasnt died and it never will.

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Masu

Masu

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DOS WAS trickier, and more reliable assuming you knew what the hell you were switching off when you were trying to free up that upper memory :wub:

These days its simpler, if only for the single reason that at least sound cards share the same library now :D remember NOT purchasing games because they weren't Soundblaster compatible?

Today, though, it is easier to play games on a decent PC setup. The question is really should be: is it worth saving the PC games scene? Apart from the keyboard and mouse setup (yes yes yes get a 360 pad, even playing field, stop whining) what has it to offer really? Crap server system (ok its mostly "free" when you get it working when you know how to connect to decent non hacked servers etc etc etc) but what does it have to offer the gaming industry?

Mom and Dad (and Gramps and Lil Sister Suzie) have no idea how to connect to 255.34.23.35.36:9 in CSS: They dont even know what CSS IS!

Keeping various drivers updated is a pain in the ass (it has been eased of late with that Windows Update, but then there is Microsoft Update to confuse matters.. then what about Linux? Or Mac?)

Having to sit at a desk to play (STILL- despite wireless stuf! Have you tried using your mouse on your knee when PC is setup to the big LCD TV? even loading up windows and playing a *ahem* movie is a complete pain. Trying to play games on it, especially FPS's, is uncomfortable at best.)

The games MAY not even work with your newly-purchased Behemoth! (How many developers have attempted to label a product "future proofed" in order to make excuses for poorly-written memory hungry software? How many sales reps will even now assure the unknowing customer that "Intels' latest on-board Graphics" are all they need for a multimedia extravaganza?)

The problem is, its unlicensed.

The BEST part is: its unlicensed.

PC gaming is set for disaster at some point soon, consoles will replace them for simplicities sake.

Mass Market is the only future- and the PC is simply too complex for Messers Smith and Smith.

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layten

layten

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PC gaming is set for disaster at some point soon, consoles will replace them for simplicities sake.

Mass Market is the only future- and the PC is simply too complex for Messers Smith and Smith.

Quoting this, so in ten years time we can all have a laugh.

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Rudi von Starnberg

Rudi von Starnberg

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The mass market is all on PC. From World of Warcraft to browser-based games that all the old folks are playing, they're on PC.

If anything, consoles are for those who are more interested in games. The 'hardcore'. Just... varying levels of hardcore, if you like.

And yes, I know about the Wii. The success of 'small' casual gaming companies on PC still showcases where the mass market is focused.

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womblingfree

womblingfree

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The mass market is all on PC. From World of Warcraft to browser-based games that all the old folks are playing, they're on PC.

But these are also reasons PC gaming's in trouble. The games that demand a high spec machine that few people have are competing with games that run on every machine in town. Flash based games, stuff like Bejeweled and Desktop Tower Defence are hugely popular but hardly instill confidence for ploughing millions into development.

Warcraft's another problem for developers looking to sell subscription gaming, with everyone and their mum signed up to Warcraft who's going to pay a monthly subscription for another game?

Steam's the best thing to happen to PC gaming in years but it's hardly on-message for what Microsoft envisioned for the future of GFW. Nothing they can do about it though, luckily for us.

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TehStu

TehStu

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Warcraft's another problem for developers looking to sell subscription gaming, with everyone and their mum signed up to Warcraft who's going to pay a monthly subscription for another game?

That's because dullards keep writing WoW-u-likes, thinking it's an automatic winning formula. They don't realise that WoW just took existing ideas, dumbed them down and added polish. Games don't have to be behemoths like WoW to succeed either; EVE has, I believe, 200k subscribers, 250 staff and an ever growing player base.

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Mogget

Mogget

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The question is really should be: is it worth saving the PC games scene? Apart from the keyboard and mouse setup, what has it to offer really?

I recommend reading the preceding 13 pages in this thread.

Keeping various drivers updated is a pain in the ass

I can't remember having any problems in the four years that I have owned my current PC. I switched from Catalyst to Forceware when I upgraded my graphics card (Radeon 9800 Pro --> GeForce 7600GT), but I haven't needed to update the drivers all that often.

HINT: only idiots upgrade their graphics drivers every time that a new version is released.

Having to sit at a desk to play

Awful, isn't it ? :unsure:

PC gaming is set for disaster at some point soon, consoles will replace them for simplicities sake.

I refer you to layte100's comment at the end of Page 14.

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Talk Show Host

Talk Show Host

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I'm not an expert but wasn't Diablo popular before WoW? or was that not an online one :unsure:

Mainstream popular? No. PC gaming has never been mainstream popular and surely not as mainstream popular as console gaming has been. It is actually a sign of how shitty PC gaming has become that a single game like WoW can have such an effect and monopoly on a platform that has the largest install base on the planet. PC Gaming is dry of ideas and new IPs that make it worthwhile. If you want to play an MMO or the odd RTS here and there, sure go buy one. But that is not enough to make me go buy a PC gaming machine. In addition, PC games have the last two/three years broke every fucking record there is when it comes to 'unfinished, buggy software'. It's -almost- all shit then in PC land.

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Gwynster

Gwynster

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But these are also reasons PC gaming's in trouble. The games that demand a high spec machine that few people have are competing with games that run on every machine in town. Flash based games, stuff like Bejeweled and Desktop Tower Defence are hugely popular but hardly instill confidence for ploughing millions into development.

Warcraft's another problem for developers looking to sell subscription gaming, with everyone and their mum signed up to Warcraft who's going to pay a monthly subscription for another game?

Nobody has a high enough spec machine, but yet everyone's playing WoW. Great fucking work, Marlowe.

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Gwynster

Gwynster

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Having to sit at a desk to play (STILL- despite wireless stuf! Have you tried using your mouse on your knee when PC is setup to the big LCD TV? even loading up windows and playing a *ahem* movie is a complete pain. Trying to play games on it, especially FPS's, is uncomfortable at best.)

I hope everyone else reads bizarre strawman posts like this and disregards everything else he says as nonsense.

How to fix this problem: STOP BUYING CRAP WIRELESS GEAR, DURR.

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MK-1601

MK-1601

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I hope everyone else reads bizarre strawman posts like this and disregards everything else he says as nonsense.

Noted and /ignored. If you're going to post inane opinions, at least present them in a way that isn't painful to try to read.

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Gwynster

Gwynster

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Mainstream popular? No. PC gaming has never been mainstream popular and surely not as mainstream popular as console gaming has been. It is actually a sign of how shitty PC gaming has become that a single game like WoW can have such an effect and monopoly on a platform that has the largest install base on the planet. PC Gaming is dry of ideas and new IPs that make it worthwhile. If you want to play an MMO or the odd RTS here and there, sure go buy one. But that is not enough to make me go buy a PC gaming machine. In addition, PC games have the last two/three years broke every fucking record there is when it comes to 'unfinished, buggy software'. It's -almost- all shit then in PC land.

It was new ideas that made PC gaming worthwhile?

I thought it was space marines that did, at least for the last 15 years. What caused the shift?

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Gwynster

Gwynster

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No, games did. All kinds of them. Now there's mostly shit, buggy shit compared to the past, with a few exceptions here and there of course.

Which is more down to hugely inflated development budgets requiring early releases. That's not really specific to the hardware, just to the publishers who can demand stuff gets released as you can always patch it later. Only then when it gets patched nobody cares, because it was too shit to pay full price for in the first place.

All this is is a poorly managed market. There's no technical basis to anything anyone's said, it's just overfed publishers treating an evolving industry the way it always has done.

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