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Thursday 17 January 2008

Did we kill PC gaming? [Lurks]


Couple of days ago a developer from Infinity Ward, the dudes who make CoD4, posted a blog about an old subject. PC games piracy. This being the same week that Slim noticed that in the UK sales charts, only had two PC game SKUs in the top 40. Bottom line is PC gaming is going belly up and largely it's our fault. Blog snip here:

"They Wonder Why People Don't Make PC Games Any More On another PC related note, we pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing Multiplayer (which was fantastic). What wasn't fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game on stolen / cracked CD keys of pirated copies (and that was only people playing online). Not sure if I can share the exact numbers or percentage of PC players with you, but I'll check and see; if I can I'll update with them. As the amount of people who pirate PC games is astounding. It blows me away at the amount of people willing to steal games (or anything) simply because it's not physical or it's on the safety of the internet to do."



Piracy has always been a serious issue on the PC. Earlier in a platform's lifecycle it's almost helpful as ends up being a reason why people adopt a platform and as the platform becomes more mainstream the actual lost revenue tends is drowned out by the potential of a popular platform. However the PC in the modern age; broadband Internet, torrents etc and publisher's clumsy and pointless attempts to secure software have lead us to the point where pirate games are easy to source, easy to download, easy to install and end up giving you less hassle than an original copy.

I've felt strongly about this for awhile now so I've actually gone and bought most big/good PC games whether or not I thought I'd play them that much. Because it isn't a lot of money for a game and because this particular bit of nasty graffity has been on the wall for some time now. However I'm clearly in a vanishing minority. Even in the clan when we have a LAN party I say "Hey chaps, let's buy this game" and there's people who wont, people who pirate or just the idea of forking out any money at all for software (not just games) is an absolute measure of last resort after you've exhausted all other possibilities.

Course what it means is the game devs have fucked off to consoles and we're basically getting game ports as a parasitic relationship off the Xbox 360 since those platforms tend to be developed in tandem. Naturally enough it means that PC-only related concerns just don't factor. We've seen UT3 actually dump the well executed PC-focused in-game interface/configuration and bring in some console menu-centric monstrosity.



It's doubly frustrating for me because, ironically, one of the best PC games around has been released in a favorite genre of mine - Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. However being a participant of the forums and the modding community, such as it is (not very much), paints a different picture. You've got a developer which very quickly yanked community support people and anyone that was working on significant patches/updates and most importantly, mod issues/tools, off the project right away. They shipped the game with pretty much a broken AI and have no desire to fix it. Instead they'll bash out another mission pack later on, if we're lucky.

Great as FA is. As completely PC-centric as it is. As completely impossibly to do on a console as it is... it sold fuck all. And that's despite a patch after a couple of days of US release dumping requirement for CD. So you can't hold that sort of thing up as a solitary explanation. There's a reason consoles rapidly became the staple diet of the industry.

What does it all mean though? Already more of the clan than ever before have games consoles. Are we packing in PC gaming? Some of us clearly have been already, since they've been attempting to get by with crap laptops rather than customary high-end gaming rigs of old. Taking a look at 2007, much of the very very good PC games were also out on 360. TF2/Portal, Bioshock etc. Only Crysis was PC only and, heh, that was your typical high-end PC game wank fest that runs shit on any hardware anyone actually owns. Even Bioshock I had to install Vista since it outright refused to work on my well worn XP install.

You think, after all these years and all that talk from Microsoft and Nvidia etc, that PC gaming would finally become more plug and play, more reliable out of the box. Well, it's better but it's still a complete pig's ear. Crysis was nothing short of a farce.

It's not all that bad. After all we had a good run playing TF2, even if it wasn't that long lasting. And that's clearly better on PC than on a console but I wonder if that'll be the case next time around? And of course the next generation of consoles beyond the Xbox 360 and PS3 will almost certainly be devoid of the last few remaining hurdles that stop them from being premium online platforms capable of hosting things like MMO games. Big hard drives, that sort of thing.

I think it's a shame. There's a lot of stuff around PC gaming that I like. Proper high-def gaming. Games which don't try to conform to a lowest common denomonator and a gimped controlller. Integration between the computer you're using to do everything outside of the game and playing the game. Hard to think how I'd chat on IRC to me chums on an xbox. The community aspect, forums, mods and all of that great stuff.

Ultimately human nature has reared it's ugly head. It strikes me that as a group we now appear fast ready to ditch the platform that we fucked over and take off to the inferior console platform for no other reason than there's games on the console. Because there we can't avoid paying game developers for their hard work so it's they are still commercial viable.

That's a pretty sorry state of affairs don't you think?

21 comments:


  1. While theres no doubt that piracy is killing pc gaming it should probably be noted that it isn't the only factor. On the development side theres ease of development (I'm talking 360 here), large user base, better platform support etc. Then on the user side there's, ease of setup, living room setting, local multiplayer options, standardised online functionality/downloads and finally theres little graphical difference between pc and 360.



    Cod4's piracy is a good example but I think throwing Sup com into the same discussion is not really fair. At the end of the day its extremely niche and I'd be very vrey surprised if the piracy rates are even remotly similar as I'd expect most people who have it are more hardcore and more willing to part cash to play.



    Incedentally, why doesn't Cod4 have a key server system like all the other online games? Thats piracy for multiplayer wiped out straight away. In some sence they only have themselves to blame imo.

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  2. Any of the reasons you've cited as being better to develop on are easily countered by the fact you don't have an approval process for publishing a PC game and neither do you have to fork over mastering fees, buy expensive development kit or give a slice of the back-end action to the platform holder.

    As for reasons on the user side - sure but those things aren't new. And they're unlikely to suddenly become more important to a PC gamer who's been happy with the PC for years while all sorts of other consoles were on the market. As for no little graphical difference. Sure, maybe not on your PC. However I game in 1920x1200 with an 8800GTX. I find the 360 even on my HD projector to be pretty mank in comparison. More irritatingly I find being cut off from my web browser, my IRC client and having to use some silly toy controller to be a massive pain in the arse. Good for some games, sure, bad for others.

    I can't find a point to agree/disagree with in your second paragraph. RTS games being niche is what the PC is all about. Some of those niche games in the past were the big bold and beutiful games on the PC. There's never been an RTS game as good as SupCom:FA. I'd say what you basically see is an entire genre of gaming essentially fading away because it's not a console genre. Well, excepting for vastly simplified C&C-like RTS games. Everything is becoming dumber, more consolified. Even Bioware basically stopped making RPG games and made a fucking interactive movie cum shit squad based shooter. That makes me sad.

    You 'expect' SupCom:FA is more niche so more willing to part cash? I can't see why. I think many games like this essentially get pirated into oblivion which is why they just aren't made any more. Certainly no shortage of leechers on the torrent sites. They have the same sort of piracy problems but they don't have weight of a mass market to boost into easy profitability. Far from it, I'd say niche games are more likely to be attractive to experienced hard core PC gamers and generally it's these guys, not the casuals, that know exactly how to pirate games.

    This whole thing about using keys to force people to buy to multiplayer. Sure, that works. Course that assumes your entire market for the game is going to play multiplayer. Straight forward statistics show that's not remotely the case. A vanishingly small part of any dual single/multi game end up being multiplayer games. So, what, these guys have only themselves to blame for daring to make a single player game too?

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  3. Is not a secure delivery system ala Steam not the answer here?

    I don't follow these things too carefully so I've no idea how secure Steam actually is, but equally I've never seen any articles announcing that it has been penetrated and its a torrent-esque free for all either.

    Obviously there are politics involved as the "not invented here" mentality can become quite prominent when considering using something built by others, but surely continually pumping out titles on CD/DVD is a complete waste of time; indeed, practically inviting piracy?

    I've never liked consoles and apart from a brief dalliance with an XBox, can't envisage there being a time when I would - not only do I prefer a keyboard and mouse (and the multitude of customised control options that brings) but I like being able to switch in and out of a game and do other stuff.

    So I rather hope PC gaming has a somewhat brighter future - and I hope a much larger effort to use a secure digital delivery system is part of that.


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  4. I don't think the xmas rush for publishing games helps much either. This year saw some great titles released, but mostly all at once. I bought most of the big shooter titles but haven't even been bothererd to look at Crysis for example. They made the same point in the Making of Blade Runner documentary, it was released up against 6 or 8 other major movies including ET, Poltergeist etc.

    I love buying my games on line & will often do so in order to avoid CD in drive checks which I detest. Although pricing needs to be more in line with Amazon than RRP.

    For store bought stuff I'll often use a cracked exe just to avoid the cd check.


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  5. There's nothing wrong with Steam with regards to being a secure online delivery system but that doesn't stop people pirating a game elsewhere so it's not a solution. There has to be retail versions because that's how most games are sold. I've certainly bought more games on Steam but I am a bit fucked off that it's actually more expensive to download it and get no manual/disc etc and it's even released later than retail a lot of the time too!

    Yeah last year was a great year for PC games and all released within a couple of weeks in November. Still, you'd think people would be getting around to the games they didn't get to play in November wouldn't you? The charts show differently. PC gamers just aren't buying games.

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  6. The real problem would probably be that games are getting too fucking expensive, seems like everyone in every business is whining about customers not buying their specific product, but if you check what normal people earn, and their base expenses and compare that with how much music, movies and games would cost together with the shit you need to actually use the media you get rediculous sums. Kids dont earn cash, and now we got parents that actually wants toys, same expensive toys that their kids wants (and are used to them from a far lower age than in the past). The math doesnt add up, profit is bound to drop for each sector. And didnt get played in november? Jesus, that avalance of games will have purchases lined up to spring with any sort of normal economy, not something you can read out in january.

    Then we add the fact that the companies are basically BEGGING to get fucked by making a pirate copy work far, far better than the bought game.

    Btw, numbers over here in sweden still says that PC titles are doing quite ok...

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  7. Agree on price of games. But PC games are cheaper than consoles. You only need to play stuff a few months old to basically buy games for virtually nothing as publishers dump them.

    I also appreciate all the retarded stuff publishers do. Like launching in the US first, as a classic, what do they expect will happen? And shit copy protection stuff, that wont run at all if you have some CD emulation stuff installed. And of course disc protection stuff, not doing digital distribution properly (EA in particular) etc. But these are gripes you could have about any product out there you buy. It doesn't just give people a licence to pirate. Sure it's some of why they do, but by far and away the biggest reason people pirate is because it's easy and because it doesn't cost any money. That's it.

    Yeah I can well believe Sweden is doing okay PC gaming wise because of your funny state-supported PC buying policy and high incidence of broadband etc. But sadly Sweden is a vanishingly small market overall.


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  8. Of course if games publishers ever actually paid royalties to games developers, then developers might be a bit more interested in making games that were pirate proof!




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  9. I've never bought so many games as recently, but this is no excuse for past actions of course.

    Given the PC buying trend, buy when it comes out then sales slow to a trickle, why not use steam (or online download) and sell software 4 months after release for half price. No distrib costs, no cd/manual etc... Once the retail dries up, surely it'd make sense.

    Steam isn't cracked per-se, but individual games on it are Brit. But it's a great medium for managing patches and delivering titles.

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  10. If Macs can have games released for them, then I feel PC gaming, will in some form, find a way to carry on.

    As with the opinions stated in other blogs, I feel that this is just another symptom of consumers calling out to publishers that the worldwide distribution of entertainment media needs a shakeup, so in the mean time with its ease of access, people pirate games.

    It doesn't help either that most developers seem quite eager to sell their integrity away for a quick buck by milking their franchises to death with endless unoriginal sequels; whilst the review media cannot be trusted due to their dependency on advertising revenue.

    The only titles I would have the faith to blindly buy with no feedback or demo, would be from Blizzard and Valve (and perhaps id software), unsurprising then that they are probably the only PC focused developers that are making a nice profit.


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  11. There's so much wrong with that I don't know where to start. Let's start at the beginning I guess. If the PC ended up being like the Mac regarding games, I think that would be 'dead' in any PC gamer's definition.

    I'm not sure sure what that second paragraph means but then you go on to say developers sell their integrity. That's not how it works. Developers make games after they've been funded to make a game by a publisher. It takes years to make games and it costs millions of dollars. Developers don't have the luxury of retaining some integrity when the staff need paying. Publishers make sequels because they represent a reduced risk on investment. Sure they could be more risky and innovative, I think we'd all like that but this is not a developer issue generally. Developers who end up being financially independent tend to come up goods with more risky and innovative games.

    As for reviews. Well, that's true in some cases but as a long-time games journalist I can tell you it's generally not true. And knowing and working with games journalists professionally now, I can tell you that it's still generally not true. Sure things are different on official magazines but if you head over to metacritic you will generally see scores fall in line on review titles along what is a generally accepted consensus on a game. I don't think soft reviews have anything to do with the issue at all.

    Finally you're making the argument that, what, it's because there's no good PC games out there that this is the problem? That's just crazy talk. For a start they are far from being the only profitable PC game developers although I wouldn't even put id in the list, they're virtually an irrelevance now. There's plenty of fantastic PC games. They still don't sell very much. They don't sell very much digitally, where the convenience argument is entirely ripped away, and they don't sell very much in retail either.

    Demos are a standard way of doing business these days regardless of platform. The option of try before you buy is well entrenced but by and large PC gamers choose to steal the full game instead. Various feeble justifications of why they steal games is exactly the same as people who justify ripping DVDs and MP3s of albums etc. They fundamentally have no moral case.

    I mean it's not like you go into the supermarket and say, ooo I wish my checkout chick was a little prettier but since she's not I think I'll just push my load of shopping through and not pay. Don't these corporate greengrocer whores understand what we want? It's their own fault!

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  12. Perhaps it was worded badly and I made generalisations but I wasn't trying to justify piracy, you never can, but more look at reasons of why it's on the increase, besides the obvious ones; ease of access and a low chance of being caught and punished. I just felt that as the cost of producing games rises increasingly into the ten's of millions of dollars, the publishers naturally become more conservative in their funding choices, so there's less risk, which often also means less innovation. This is nothing new, the music and film industries have been doing this for decades, but they 'get away with this' because of the sheer diversity in choice and that the cost of buying individal music and films in the general scheme of things is low.

    So what do we see in today in the modern gaming industry? More sequels and more multi-platform games catering to the lowest common denominator. The strengths of the PC are often ignored because it more about getting a return on the publisher's investment, which raises the question of how does PC gaming warrant the much higher ownership costs than its console brethren, when the perceived quality and depth of the games is dropping. The answer is, it doesn't. Increasing I see my friends take a more casual attitude to gaming because it no longer holds their interest, they also increasingly turn towards piracy because they hold an apathetic view of the gaming industry as a whole.

    How can we improve things? I don't know. Microsoft would probably have to play a pivotal role in any solution, but their gaming interests are now in the Xbox brand. If PC gaming died off tomorrow would we see a significant drop off in the sales of Windows or Office? I don't think so. My one hope is that if the consumer becomes used to legally downloading their entertainment, then the power the big retailers holds over the gaming industry will be severely diminished. In that scenario perhaps moreinitiativeslike Steam will take off where the developers will recieve a greater share of the profits, which in-turn will reduce the stranglehold of the publishers as, without the need to distribute the physical media, you just need a source of funding, it doesn't matter where that funding comes from.

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  13. Spot on, 100% agree. What you're aluding to in the second paragraph, this sort of apathy towards games as a whole, I don't think you need to necessarily lay at the door of games that aren't this or that any more, not good or innovative enough etc. I actually put this down to a kind of information overload fatigue.

    It's not just games. There's so much out there. It's so easy to get. So what do you get? It's not like when I was a teenager and going to a shop to buy a CD was a proper expensive thing to do. And I'd play that CD to death and know everything about it. Now it requires some measure of dicipline just to try give a new album a listen before you drift back into random, radio, whatever in the days mp3 players and hard drives with gigabytes and gigabytes of stuff.

    About MS, I think it's true we see a kind of bias in the company towards the 360 but only because they have more riding on it financially. It's a huge corporation with different business arms. I know the people on the OS side of things, Games for Windows etc, genuinely want Vista to remain a good gaming platform.

    I think that most savvy people that have thought about the issue of digital content long enough come to realise the only smart way to go is to basically get everyting out there, make it pretty darn cheap and just sell a load more of it and make it extremely convenient to use. Publishers in music, movies and games will gradually switch on to that. The problem is there's a capitalistic impetus for the markets to fracture to some degree, so they'll be loads of stores. And they'll all work completely differently.

    You can't make publishers understand they're being twats. They believe their thing is best and can't see that some degree of base homegenisation is bloody useful, like you walk into a record store and buy a bloody CD with cash or with a card, just the same as any other shop.

    So talking about PC games, I think I'd like Steam to ultimately become to defacto retailer because they're the only guys that appear to have made the digital distribution thing not suck. You'd have to have used EA's stuff to appreciate the full horror of it. But would you put up with a bunch of system tray icons for different content delivery systems? Today, if I can't get it on steam I'll buy the DVD and then run the warez crack so I don't need the bloody disc any more.

    I'm not really with you on the 'stranglehold' of publishers though. They're fronting the money. A route to consumers which awards a higher percentage of profits to developers is all very well, but someone had to pay to develop the game in the first place. Publishers don't *just* handle funding of a game. They also general have a hand in making sure the game is delivered in a commercially viable state. Lots of nitty gritty things like 'producing' the game (basically overall project management), Q&A, handling post-launch technical support and of course marketing.

    In the digital distribution utopia some one still has to do all of those things and it's generally much more efficient for games publishers to do it because they have put all those systems in place for many games. A lot of that is simply out of the scope of expertise of game developers. Game developers are, in my professional experience, rather prone to something a friend of mine would call 'hobbyist management'. They love what they do, and maybe they make good games but often they get even basic stuff wrong.

    You'd also have a hard time finding someone to lend a game developer money unless there was a pretty solid business case for the return of it. Publishers represent the entire business of making money from a game. Game developers don't. In reality game developers quite like being owned by some publisher so they don't have to worry about all the other stuff, providing they can keep on as a seperate studio with their own culture. Publishers often like that too, it's a very common arrangement across the industry.

    I wouldn't hold Valve up as a shining light as to how a game developer can do absolutely everything themselves. From personal experience their technical support is pretty much non existant.



    Right now a lot of the games on Steam are actually set up there from a publisher and thank Christ too because that means you can call them up if something goes wrong (Valve wont help you). And with PC gaming, things go wrong quite a lot of the time. From a consumer standpoint the downside of publishers utilising direct channels such as Steam is that the publisher doesn't like to upset bricks and mortar retail. If they do, they might find their games not on the shelf or in a Bad Place. So they can't go selling it direct at some kind of discount. That's why games on Steam basically cost the RRP.

    Well, I surmise that there's a 'get out of bed' issue too. Since the numbers aren't massive and it costs addition money to get it all set up to offer via Steam, they may as well try push the margin out too right?

    That's pretty annoying because it's clearly cheaper for them to offer the product in this way in terms of real costs. Maybe with the death of PC gaming at bricks and mortar retail (there's ONE PC game in the top-40 all-format game SKUs this last week, at number 8) it'll become a moot point. That'll only leave etailers who discount heavily, so maybe we can see some sensible Steam pricing too. Course the etailers may still whinge but in reality they'll sell the product anyway because they're expected to offer it. There's no limit to the size of their virtual shelves.

    They might not be too happy about publicising your game though. And etailer co-marketing initiatives are something publishers will be keen to maintain. Having spoken to one game publisher recently it seemed that for one particular PC game most of their marketing initiatives were along these lines. Eg making sure funky stuff about their game appeared on the right pages of Amazon and that sort of thing.

    It's all a bit of a mess right now. There's clearly change coming but I think I detect perhaps less willingness of publishers all scrambling to invent their own bollocks digital distribution mechanism when the volume sales of PC games isn't that great anyway. So maybe Direct2Drive and Steam will sew it up. Can't say I'd have a problem with that at all.

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  14. I know opinions are split on whether they do more harm than good, but why does there not appear to be organisations like the RIAA (or BPI) and MPAA for the videogame industry? In fact I don't know of any lobby group publically raising the issue of videogame piracy with the Western governments and the WTO. Gordon Brown seems more concerned about children being exposed to videogame nasties, than he is that they may have downloaded it for free. The industry as a whole appears quite laid back about the issue, besides a few grumblings from developers about lower than expected sales figures.

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  15. I dunno if they're laid back. They all do product keys, use Safedisc/securerom like protection schemes, watermark review code and all that jazz. They do what they can, although they'd be much smarter to go and use an online authorised encryption system whereby you only get the encrypted files on the DVD you buy. Interesting Valve have basically announced a middleware solution for all that stuff called Steamworks.

    Hmm there's FAST but I haven't heard much from them in absolutely ages and doesn't seem to have much of a focus on games now by the looks of it. I'd say ELSPA's anti-piracy unit is where it's at. Tjhey seem to have a mandate of action in all the areas you'd expect. You're right though the industry isn't very heavy handed compared with the US RIAA/MPAA and isn't particularly known for public lobbying either. Maybe they just realise that they should keep this stuff low key to avoid the negative publicity from militant end users?

    Doesn't seem to work though. You read columns like this and the forum comments and still gamers often think publishers are unjustly complaining about piracy for a variety of very strange reasons.

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  16. Looking at upcoming releases, loads on the 360 (and many are on the ps3 too), not so much on wii, fuck all for the PC:360 Lost Odyssey End Feb360 Katamari End Feb360 Alan Wake End FebWii Okami March (praps)360 R6 Vegas 2 MarchWii Fire Emblem (This any good?) MarchWii Harvest Moon MarchWii Super Smash Bros March360 Halo Wars March360 Splinter Cell Conviction March360 Ninja Gaiden 2 March360 Viking MarchPC Starcraft 2 (Who knows when)360/PC GTA 4 April

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  17. Alan Wake, R6 Vegas 2, Splinter Cell Conviction are all due on the PC tool AFAIK. GTA 4 on the PC is due six months after the 360/PS3 release date. Ubisoft tend to do sloppy ports, but the others should at least look graphically better on the PC.

    For the rest of 2008 we have Mass Effect, Far Cry 2, Battlefield Heroes (be interesting to see what EA do with this), Operation Flashpoint 2, Fallout 3, Spore and Starcraft 2 (I think its due Christmas 2008). There's probably a few more I've missed.

    2008 is really a big year for the MMORPGs, what with Conan, Warhammer, Guild Wars 2 and the WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King all due this year.


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  18. "Companies with a vested interest in keeping the PC alive as a gaming platform will soon announce a consortium dubbed the PC Gaming Alliance. According to two people familiar with the effort, it will include top industry players such as Intel, Microsoft, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices as well as a number of computer companies."

    "The companies are preparing the announcement in advance of next week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Part of the pitch is that the industry group will keep the PC competitive with game consoles to attract key game developers."

    Source: http://www.mercurynews.com//ci_8238036

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  19. You know, as heretical as it seems, I'm beginning to think that I'm not sure I really ought to care about the future of PC Gaming in as much as what is excellent about the PC versus other gaming platforms is i) the interface for certain games of mouse and keyboard and ii) errr that's about it. Wait a second before you load the flameguns - hear me out.....

    The myriad possible kit configurations of a PC is obviously a huge PITT for game developers and from my perspective, going to multiple lans or playing online where X's system is slowing the game down for others or one just feels a bit jealous one doesn't have Y's fabulous kit and therefore 'your' rendition of game Z is inferior is really an argument for getting the hell off PCs. I'm lucky, I can currently afford good kit, but that's not a structural argument for PC gaming is it and that's even before you add in the incentive of developers not being able blame configuration problems for slapdash first releases. Any Alliance of Developers will not resolve these intractable problems compared to the conformity of consoles.

    Ok there are issues I could be really concerned about; I do NOT want dumbed down gaming because developers think things may be played without the benefit of a desk, a keyboard and a mouse and that therefore they have to avoid complexity of interaction; I do think that playing FPS's on a controller is incredibly lame; I would like a way of making sure we can avoid wireless controller conflicts for sizeable lans. But we're down to interfaces here aren't we not the essentials of the machine. But future lans where we could all bring an xbox and a monitor? Yes please.

    But really, it's all a cpu, a gpu, hd, memory and the gubbins. Do we care what it's called? To do so would seem illogical unless you want to be better off than others and you are mistaking interfaces for the inherent machine. Since PC's will never be standardised it causes conflict, unequal gaming experiences and huge dev problems. The standardisation that consoles confer seems to me to be net net for all gamers a good thing? I don't even really buy that PCs advance the art of game coding because for portions of a console's life there are more advanced PCs available. Well consoles upgrade too and then everyone has to make their code work harder on a fixed platform. The upgrade will come and the fixed-ness means that people have to extract the most out of their code.

    Would I give up my PC gaming today? Like fuck - it's still the most satisfying for me by a mile because of the content on it and my arbitrary luck of having kit. Do I think it's the future? No.

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  20. Hmm, good points, but there's also the context to consider. While being a pretty rabid PC gamer I also have a Wii. The trouble is I don't get on it that much, due to the bottleneck of the household telly.

    I can easily justify a PC for it's more general purpose uses. Adding gaming in is just a matter of buying a capable 3d card really.

    I certainally couldn't justify a second HD TV & console for a 'den' as opposed to a study, and realistically I couldn't justify another (read, pc gaming replacement) console given the amount of time I'm likely to dedicate to it, unless it was plugged into the second input on my PC monitor.Hardly the "10ft experience".

    If the pc gaming killswitch was thrown tomorrow, the most I could get away with would be a PS3 (mostly for the bluray) which realistically would still be a too expensive button to push.

    It's a bit of a ramble but I guess the conclusion is "Peggle FTW!".

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  21. You can take our freedom, but you'll never take our Peggleeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!



    http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=182500

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