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PCs, 2nd class customers?
ScytheKnight
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I've been looking for a place to vent about this for some time now... And this place seems as good as any.
Before I begin let me make something clear. I'm a PC gamer, I always have been, I grew up playing games on the C64 and Amigas, including such classics as Populous, Might and Magic, Elite and Frontier... then advanced to the X86 days where I enjoyed games such as Doom, Syndicate, Wing Commander... then into the early Pentium days, Baldur's Gate, Need For Speed, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D.
However for all my long history in playing PC gamers I am no console basher, I will be the 1st to admit they're fine systems, they're simply not what I'm used to. So this thread is not a console bash fest, I do not do it, nor do I condone it in any way. We all have our own preferences and what we're used too from growing up.
So what then is this about if I'm so careful to place such a disclaimer before I get going? It is related to consoles yes, but nothing that is the fault of console users... No I'm looking at the other end of the spectrum, the developers and publishers. And especially those publishers who got their start in PC gaming, before the console market was anywhere near it's present monolithic stage, and are now treating their PC customers as 2nd class citizens,
This is specifically about multi-platform games. How many of these games have delayed PC release dates? How many of them lack ANY demo for the PC, while consoles get demos weeks or even months ahead of release dates? And then there are DLCs, I'm somewhat a fan of these, a good DLC can really add a lot to a game. But here again PC gamers are treated like they don't exist with dramatically delayed PC versions or even outright console exclusive DLC packs.
Again, this is not the fault of console owners... This drive comes solely from the executives of the games companies. It's even forgivable from newer companies that perhaps got their start on consoles and recently moving into the PC market. But it is absolutely SICKENING that the worst offenders of this behavior are companies that got started in PC gaming, made their NAME in PC gaming, and made a HELL of a lot of money off PC gaming... and now treat their PC customers like lepers. (I'm not going to name names, but I think we can all put names to these companies)
I'm not asking for a war against the consoles... or the stripping of sales for consoles... all I'm saying is treat us the same way, no matter WHAT platform we use because in the end, you still get our money. We gave you the position you have now, now we just ask that you treat us with some respect, not as if our custom is completely irrelevant to you or that you don't WANT our custom because we're not paying for console titles.
Before I begin let me make something clear. I'm a PC gamer, I always have been, I grew up playing games on the C64 and Amigas, including such classics as Populous, Might and Magic, Elite and Frontier... then advanced to the X86 days where I enjoyed games such as Doom, Syndicate, Wing Commander... then into the early Pentium days, Baldur's Gate, Need For Speed, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D.
However for all my long history in playing PC gamers I am no console basher, I will be the 1st to admit they're fine systems, they're simply not what I'm used to. So this thread is not a console bash fest, I do not do it, nor do I condone it in any way. We all have our own preferences and what we're used too from growing up.
So what then is this about if I'm so careful to place such a disclaimer before I get going? It is related to consoles yes, but nothing that is the fault of console users... No I'm looking at the other end of the spectrum, the developers and publishers. And especially those publishers who got their start in PC gaming, before the console market was anywhere near it's present monolithic stage, and are now treating their PC customers as 2nd class citizens,
This is specifically about multi-platform games. How many of these games have delayed PC release dates? How many of them lack ANY demo for the PC, while consoles get demos weeks or even months ahead of release dates? And then there are DLCs, I'm somewhat a fan of these, a good DLC can really add a lot to a game. But here again PC gamers are treated like they don't exist with dramatically delayed PC versions or even outright console exclusive DLC packs.
Again, this is not the fault of console owners... This drive comes solely from the executives of the games companies. It's even forgivable from newer companies that perhaps got their start on consoles and recently moving into the PC market. But it is absolutely SICKENING that the worst offenders of this behavior are companies that got started in PC gaming, made their NAME in PC gaming, and made a HELL of a lot of money off PC gaming... and now treat their PC customers like lepers. (I'm not going to name names, but I think we can all put names to these companies)
I'm not asking for a war against the consoles... or the stripping of sales for consoles... all I'm saying is treat us the same way, no matter WHAT platform we use because in the end, you still get our money. We gave you the position you have now, now we just ask that you treat us with some respect, not as if our custom is completely irrelevant to you or that you don't WANT our custom because we're not paying for console titles.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
H.P. Lovecraft
"The Call of Cthulhu"
Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange.
Full Metal Alchemist.
H.P. Lovecraft
"The Call of Cthulhu"
Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange.
Full Metal Alchemist.
ScytheKnight on
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In the end, they don't get money from a sickening portion of the PC gaming crowd. That goes all the way back to the X86 days (and beyond) too. Yeah, there's piracy on consoles...but it's not nearly as bad.
Not that I love seeing half-assed ports come to PC, mind you. Just saying there's a reason, and for PC gamers it's largely in the mirror.
Lots of people don't want to fuck with PCs. I don't want to worry about driver issues and whether my system's up to snuff to run a game the way it looks in the promos. I just want to buy it, get home and play it. Consoles deliver that. Why do you expect to be treated the same when the platforms are wildly different?
Consoles are a wider market and there are companies promoting them and putting money behind them. Because of that, PC gaming's becoming something that enthusiasts do.
Also, why in the hell would you classify yourself as a 'PC gamer' vs. a console gamer?
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
This is just wrong, it is not in the mirror. I don't have to look in the mirror, my steam account is up around the GDP of belgium, most of the people on this forums I would wager actually buy their games.
There are game companies that don't take the attitude you have here of "ITS THE FAULT OF EVERY PC GAMER" and you know what? They make money on the platform. Piracy aside, porting a game is almost certainly going to turn a profit because the costs going in are so minor, like you only need to sell tens of thousands of copies on the PC before you hit profitability (varying by game, of course). There's no excuse for ports like Mercenaries 2, especially with how much money The Sims brings EA.
Basically what I'm saying is that piracy is absolutely no excuse for a shitty port, all it will do is make your game sell worse and it doesn't matter to the pirates, they weren't going to pay anyway. If a game is a PC exclusive they obviously can't use piracy as an excuse for it being bad, since it should be developed with piracy in mind and offer a better experience to customers.
Edit: Fallout New Vegas, for example, pulled in $73 million on just steam its first month. That's not Blackops Xbox 360 money, but it's nothing to sneeze at pirates or no pirates.
Delaying a game, not releasing demos for your platform, or not releasing DLC for your platform is certainly something I could find myself annoyed by (especially the demo part,) but as long as PC gamers aren't viewed as their primary source of profit, I doubt they'll be quite as concerned about catering to that group.
Honestly, for the reasons Eat it listed, I thought we were going to be seeing a decrease in the PC gaming world a few years ago, but Steam and WoW were able to turn that around to some degree. It's a pretty uncertain market as it stands from what I can tell from the occasional industry person that has a rare moment of candor.
SteamID: devCharles
twitter: https://twitter.com/charlesewise
PC gamer vs. console gamer comes down to certain genres of games simply not existing on consoles. If you like RTS, 4X games, MMORPGs, etc. there's nothing consoles can do for you. In the past FPS was also on that list, and any western RPG. And frankly, I still vastly, vastly prefer FPS and RPG play on the PC as opposed to a console. Not only is keyboard and mouse superior but the modding community tends to come out and add so much to these games.
I only feel like a "second class citizen" when level and UI design are fucked over in a PC release because the game was developed for the lowest common denominator (i.e. consoles that can't handle what a PC can), A great example of this is Deus Ex 2, where the UI is godawful because it has to be workable on a console controller and all the levers are fragmented into tiny sections (a marked contrast from the original Deus Ex with vast sprawling areas).
Things like delayed releases or console exclusivity are money grabbing techniques, and well I can't blame a business for doing everything it can to make money. While I think playing a FPS like Halo is simply a better experience on the PC than the Xbox, I'm not going to begrudge Microsoft trying to milk it for every cent they can. I'm sure the Halo series alone sold a ton of Xboxes, at which point hey I might as well get more games...
It works, I bought a Wii just to get the new Smash Bros. If I could have just bought a USB controller and a copy of the game for the PC, I would have. But I had to grab a console to play online with friends and later I ended up getting other games that caught my eye.
Gaming on the PC will always be better, in terms of graphics, sound quality, interface and sheer adaptibility it is just better. That comes at a cost however, reliability and hardware issues are a complete bitch for people who don't know what they're doing. I've always thought about it like the difference between an F1 car and a Toyota Prius. Sure the F1 car is superior in performance but the Toyota doesn't need a team of engineers to start it.
I personally think the effort is worth it, but I completly understand the attitude of people who don't.
If you want bleeding edge or games with mods you run into issues though
Now to answer some of the posts...I may sound like we (PC gamers) treated these companies as a charity case... but the simple fact of the matter is is that it was PC gamers that gave these companies their opportunity to be the massive players in the industry they are now.
Piracy is no excuse, and there's no excuse for piracy... I think that's succinct enough.
And yes, there any many people who don't want to constantly worry about if their rig can handle the latest games, or can't afford the upgrade cycle and thus go for consoles. I have no problems with that, in fact those are very valid reasons for going for a console in the first place. But why does that mean that those of us who CAN keep up with the upgrade cycle have to put up with being treated as an afterthought?
EDIT ADD - And yes Casual occasionally the shoe is on the other foot. But this is more about the companies that do this of habit, it happens with almost every multi-platform game they are involved with. I'm not naming names because i don't want this to degenerate into a flame war of any sort... but again I think we all know the companies I am referring too.
H.P. Lovecraft
"The Call of Cthulhu"
Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange.
Full Metal Alchemist.
Do Microsoft really think that the Halo games are as good or better than other famous fps games on the pc that they'll get people buying the 360 just to play the series?
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Yes, they do, and sales figures tend to back them on this (look at X360 sales before and after Halo 3's release, for example).
Anyway, if a company is making less money on the PC, they're going to put less effort toward it. This ain't rocket surgery.
Sure, we miss a few titles or DLC here and there, but we also get a fuckton of exclusives (from AAA to indie) and the overall quality of multiplat ports is on a steady incline. Capcom's awesome ports are especially surprising, being japanese and historically console-centered. Oh, we also have 25 years of older games to play too.
We are also on a quite confortable tech plateau. PCs have surpassed consoles in tech long ago, so you can have games running a lot prettier and smoother than the console versions with 2 year-old machines. Plus REAL 1080p@60fps, plus much better lighting (Dx11) plus far superior DD options, plus great gamepad+big TV support...
I really can't complain about being a PC gamer. I just shrug when Activision shits on my carpet. I've got a humongous backlog that would make any full console library blush in shame.
PS: I have a 360 and I'm gonna buy a PS3 one day.
I guess I'm in the minority, then. I really want Red Dead Redemption to release on pc, but I'm not going to buy a console just to play it.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
There's a few reasons. One is time; it does take developer time to port a console title to a PC (or just to test a multiplatform title for the diversity of PC hardware), so console stuff can be released sooner than PC. Sometimes publishers will have an exclusivity deal with MS/sony/whoever for the first few months (the GTA games come to mind, can't think of other examples offhand), and the release for one platform or other is delayed for that reason.
Piracy plays a role here too. It's hard to know whose estimates to trust, but a relatively huge portion of the PC playerbase is pirating games. We can't say that every (or even most) pirated copies represent lost sales, but some certainly do. Major titles, even those with strong the crypto measures that frequently really suck, are cracked and available via torrent days after commercial release if not sooner. If companies can delay that even a little while it means more money for them, and releasing the console version a couple months early is an easy way to do that.
edit: in the specific case of halo, it's highly possible microsoft looked at the sales figures for halo 1 and 2 for xbox vs. pc, and decided porting 3 over to PC wasn't worth the trouble.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Entirely in agreement here - it's never been better to be a PC gamer. My 'rig' was bought 2 years ago for less than what a PS3 cost at the time, and with the addition of a gamepad can:
1) Play every single new release thrown at it at max or near-max settings, barring the occasional godawful port.
2) Access a staggering array of titles (being essentially the most backwards-compatible platform in the world).
3) Buy games at frequently 10-20% of what they'd cost me on consoles.
4) Do everything else really well. Watch movies, browse the web - all of this becomes so much easier and faster when you have a decent processor, multitasking and a surfeit of memory. Everyone owns a PC of some description - this is largely just better at doing everything you'd use one for (admittedly not usually with portability) and represents not that significant an increase over the base price.
I agree that the PC's seen its share of shabby treatment recently, but it's difficult to despair too much when it's coming from devs like Epic (who've failed to make an interesting game since UT2004) or publishers like Activision. The fact is, the PC is seeing more ports than ever before (in the PS2-era, the idea that 80% of all major titles released would be ported to PC would be laughable), and of a higher quality than ever before (a decade ago, the phrase 'console port' instantly invoked feelings of dread). There are notable exceptions, but I'm still amazed that I've been able to play 99% of the games I've been interested in recently by just owning a PC and Wii.
Finally, there's the fact that game development has sort of plateaued in the last few years. Development budgets are finally reaching the point where having more powerful hardware to work with doesn't really equate to a quantum leap in possibilties - if it isn't going to make your game sell a million more copies, it's probably not worth adding in. On the plus side, this means that hardware is becoming obsolete much less quickly, and stuff can still look really nice.
The biggest problem that I see is that there's too much competition from free games. Websites use flash games as promos, and hobbyists give away their own games because they just enjoy making them. It's hard to earn a profit when so many people are giving away quality content for free. I'm actually surprised that the PC game market is still as strong as it is.
I was thinking a bit about making my own PC game. However, it would have to be all in 2D. Do you think anyone would pay money for a 2D game from a no-name developer, these days?
You aren't owed something from developers just because you play on a certain platform. You gave them money for a product. Some companies are now using that money for other things. It happens. Companies go where they feel they can make the most profit.
And, really (while I'm not really in the know as far as PC gaming goes), what entities besides Activision Blizzard and Steam/Valve are really making a killing in the PC market exclusively? Correct me if I'm wrong (seriously...correct me if I'm wrong in assuming this), but most major franchises are on consoles nowadays, right? It doesn't surprise me in the least that companies aren't focusing on PC games as much as they once did.
Yes, ports to the PC tend to be half-assed. So do ports to a lot of different platforms - that's just the nature of that beast. A few publishers are shifting more of their business over to the console market for a variety of reasons (some rational, some not) too, but I don't see how you think that's some kind of assault on you personally?
Try something for me: download Steam and browse through the marketplace.
The PC gaming market is booming, dude. It's in better shape than it ever has been. If publishers choose to miss out on it because their lawyers are scared of the pirates, fuck them. We're better off without them. It means that the indie scene, which is currently pumping out a lot of really awesome titles, aren't being crowded out by the big fish.
That is a very good point. Of the group of friends that we have lan's with, three people have pc's that were built four years ago and they're still able to play most games quite comfortably. They choke on games like GTA IV, true, but you can't expect a dual core pc with a 320MB 8800 GTS and 2GB of memory to play a game that was written for a console with mutiple cores.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Also, the hoops involved with DLC can be pretty annoying. GfWL for example doesn't seem to download a .exe or something which you can pack away and have easy access to, instead it forces you into a be-online-to-use situation with a mess of files (at least this was my experience with Arkham Asylum)*. With EA titles, I've had bad luck with DLC (for example, Pinnacle Station cannot install if you've patched your Mass Effect or installed BDtS which comes with the game), I also had to sign up for both EA and BioWare site's just to get BDtS. I find the experience of registering for pubs/devs unpleasant, because I couldn't be less interested in being registered with 'em. As I understand it, the Dragon Age and ME2 DLC even acts of a sort of online-always DRM, because you need to be connected to EA's thing in order to authorize/use them (and your saves won't work without those items).
Other than that, I don't see much of a difference between PC and console treatment, porting issues aside.
*Previously, I was using an offline profile and I had zero issues to speak of with GfWL. Now I have an online account which can't go back offline, unless I want to be unable to access my saves on any GfWL title or my DLC, all because of one game.
Something to understand: DRM, mostly, is for the lawyers / insurance companies. Publishers don't want to risk being made legally impotent in terms of theft due to negligence in protecting their own property.
I agree it's dumb and inconvenient, but that's the way it works. Publishers (for the most part) know that they aren't going to stop thieves, but if they don't even try they'll run into insurance problems.
But right now I can go on Steam and get infinite hours of play time. I suppose that maybe some companies aren't pandering directly to me? I don't really care, though. I've got a few hundred hours of spectacular stuff to play right now, and it doesn't seem like people in general are abandoning PC development. Large-scale AAA games are, by definition, going to pander to exactly and only the largest market. So yeah, System Shock was PC exclusive, but Bioshock was a port. Because they are a company that employs a gigantic number of people and they need to go where the money is.
But I mean, you could play an 8-hour session of AI War every week for years and keep having fun, or any number of weird independent things. You could also play plenty of things that are either good ports or were developed with PC in mind. I mean L4D and TF2 were on console, they just didn't matter there. Plus, free stuff is possible on PC, while consoles still have an iron grip on content.
Basically, at least I'm not spending a full year exploring the intricacies of Command and Conquer... before finding out Red Alert wasn't coming to Mac.
Well, yeah, thats no secret. Doesn't make it, as a consumer/customer, gamer and fan of product any less infuriating to deal with. If anything, it makes it more infuriating. Shoveling crap onto my lap to keep... who happy? Stockholders, I guess?
Its hard to validate it as an insurance policy, because they've basically bought a poodle and called it a guard dog. Nothing is going to be protected and no one is to going to buy that your security system was ever going to stop anything.
back when Dead Space 1 was released, the PC version was delayed a week. PC gamers were upset a bit, but mostly just grateful to have a PC release. most figured out how to tweak and improve the game, and went on to enjoy it.
Dead Space 2 was released just over a week ago. This time, the PC version got a concurrent release with the console versions, and was on DD sites as well as retail. aside from a few activation hiccups, most people had a really good experience. no game-breaking bugs, and the complaints from the first game about sensitivity scaling were fixed. Then we find out that certain newgame+ unlockables aren't triggering properly. they're a nice bonus, but nothing vital. PC gamers have pretty much shit all over the EA forums about it, despite EA saying they know about the problem and are addressing it. i'm talking really really horrible stuff that i won't even link to.
when i start talking about mebbe toning down the rhetoric, seeing things from the developers' perspective, it doesn't seem to register with them. frankly, if i was a developer, i'd be leery of PC gaming simply because of the caustic fanbase. i feel it's definitely gotten worse over time. we've lost that understanding that PC gaming is about developers and gamers meeting in the middle. with so many hardware configurations out there, it's virtually impossible for a developer to make a bug-free game, so the community has always had to step in with fixes of their own.
now, it just feels like PC gamers expect the game to fellate them and if everything is not perfect, they just turn into open sewers about it, and then use that fact to "justify" piracy. that can-do let's-work-together-and-fix-this spirit is long gone.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
err... what is it you think they're insuring? Developers/publishers aren't getting a payout from an insurance company when people pirate games.
DRM is about delaying a crack and making it more of a hassle. If you have to wait 2-3 weeks to pirate a game you want, you're more likely to buy it. If pirated software is enough of a pain to use (at least initially), you're more likely to buy it.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Indeed, DLC is probably one of the major sticking points in PC gaming lately. You have:
1) "I don't want to pay for DLC - you used to give this stuff either for free, or in full-blown expansions that had far more content."
2) "I want the extra content, but I'm not prepared to pay 50-100% of the price I got the base game at to get it." (PC games tend to get discounted rapidly and DLC is sometimes insanely late a la Minerva's Den)
3) "I want it and am prepared to pay for it, but am not prepared to cripple my base game to access it." (see Borderlands with Dr. Ned, and any GfWL game).
All perfectly reasonable, really - but it does make the PC somewhat hostil territory in which to peddle DLC. The only times I'm really happy with it are when it's bundled in GOTY editions and doesn't require online to activate (like Fallout 3), or is heavily discounted and on Steamworks (where it's forever tied to the base game, and doesn't need to be managed seperately).
Nope - it's mostly about insurance. Publishers aren't looking to get an insurance pay-out, you're right - but they do want to be able to insure their property, and insurers won't talk to them unless they are doing due diligence.
Indie devs on Steam, folks that contribute to the Humble Indie bundles, iOS devs, and XBLIG all point to "yes".
.
Island. Being on fire.
again, what is it that is being insured against?
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
It's been said before, that as long as people use PC's, there will be PC games. Right now consoles are hot, eventually the pendulum will probably swing back the other way, or some sort of equilibrium will be found.
Thats some BS right there. I shouldn't have to waste 30 minutes on some bizzare ass work around so my son can progress the story. Patch that garbage man, it's been...what...7 months now?
3DS: 1521-4165-5907
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Live: Kayle Solo
WiiU: KayleSolo
Honestly, the thing you're describing is present and increases with an increasing fanbase, but it isn't limited to PC gamers, it happens across all platforms. I mean, you should see the amount of rage that gets rocked up when there's any discrepancy between even console versions. I'm talking minor stuff like framerate issues or occasional crashing, and it gets blown into gigantic flamewars about how the devs clearly focussed on one platform and not the other.
Typically if we're talking console only games it tends to happen more on the PS3 side (hence the running jokes about the SDF), but that's only really because the platform is a bit harder to program for and often does end up with more problems on ported games, resulting in fanbase howls of how they were "betrayed" by the devs. If the inverse were the case, you'd see just as much raging on the 360 side.
Crikey, I remember one time that John Carmack made a throwaway comment that the PS3 architecture was less intuitive to program for and it was harder to get id Tech 5 getting consistent framerates on it (he said it took him about a couple of weeks more to hammer it down or something). The result was pure nerd-rage, including constant, and I mean constant complaints that John Carmack was lazy and simply an idiot who didn't know how to program proper engines like other PS3 devs such as Guerilla and Naughty Dog.
Let me repeat that. John Carmack. Is lazy. And doesn't know how to program a good game engine.
That's the kind of idiot you're dealing with here.
Also PC gaming gives you
So go on Steam and avoid feeling like a second-class customer, and in fact revel in a uniquely-PC present experience of buying a game when you get home and having it ready to play after you've ordered your pizza and cracked open some beers (depending on your internet connection)
I think death of PC gaming is the wrong way to put it
The only games that aren't on PC are games where there one or both console makers stop the publisher from porting it. I mean we get most games from the consoles + the PC games.
Shitty ports seem to be becoming less and less common, which is a fantastic thing.
you're right, i remember the uproar when valve was talking about how they didn't like programming for the PS3. i guess i'm just depressed by amazingly shitty fanbase behavior nowadays.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
That was a fantastic GOTY. Every other game with sizable DLC that I've seen with a GOTY is somehow flawed. Even the Oblivion GOTY leaves out tons of stuff (instead its on a second "Knights of the Nine" retail pack) and the Fighter's Stronghold never even saw a retail release. DA Ultimate contains the bigger packs but none of the little goodies that you'd have to be a real life treasure hunter to have acquired all of them. Borderlands GOTY contains tokens, so you can download the DLC, just the regular game on disc. I expect a ME2 GOTY won't be very pretty, either.
Thats not really a PC issue, though. Thats just shitty packaging jobs across all platforms.
How many copies did Starcraft 2 sell worldwide on launch weekend?
Something like 1.5 million?
Consoles still don't have anything that rivals Starcraft 2, WoW, League of Legends/DotA, or Civilization 5, just to name a few.
And it's not like consoles don't have to deal with crappy ports of PC games. It's less common now that hardware is finally catching up (compare HL2 on the PC vs HL2 on the XBox 1, for a last-generation example) but we still occasionally see games like Dragon Age: Origins where the PC is really the best version.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.