265: Punching the Baby Seal of PC Gaming

[Enigmers]

My PC has failed less often than my XBox 360 (0 versus 2). I was told that Consoles were basically fool-proof and needed little maintenance; why is it that roughly 54% (the most common number I've seen was actually 54.6%) of XBox 360 owners have had to send their consoles back to Microsoft?

Maintaining a PC is exponentially easier than many of you suggest. Here's what I do:

1. Play games (repeat this step several times daily.)
2. Wait for a friend of mine to tell me about nVidia's new drivers, if they're significant (Otherwise, see step 1.)
3. Download and install said drivers. (This will halt your step 1. For about six minutes.)
4. Return to uninterrupted Step 1 for several months or longer.

Oh, I cleared the dust out of my PC once, I guess. I'd do that with my consoles too, but opening them would void the warranty.

I understand my experiences don't speak for everyone, but I don't notice myself putting particularly more time or effort into PC gaming than any of my PC-gaming friends (and, from what I know, none of them have had any major issues either.)

 

[Low Key]

I have a piece of shit NVIDIA GeForce 7100 card and Fallout 3 (with tons of mods) rarely crashes on me. I wish I could give more insight on the matter, but I can't.

 

[mjc0961]

Yeah I've been there too. Here I am browsing Wikipedia one night and I find that some old game I loved is on Steam. I look on Steam and it's only $5, so I get it. And my brother gifts me Deus Ex once I have my account set up. Here's the fun part: Neither game plays any sound. We spent all day messing around with drivers and settings and anything we can think of and nothing worked.
EDIT: Just to save anyone else some time, what The_root_of_all_evil just said below worked somehow. Also I'm really PO'd right now that I'm certain we tried that before and it did nothing. BLAAAH. But yeah, thanks man, at least now I can play.

Now, other games on my PC had sound. Command and Conquer 3 bought from the EA Store had sound. Older games like Doom, Roller Coaster Tycoon, The Incredible Machine, and Fallout all play sound. I even managed to dig up our old CD copy of the game I originally signed up on Steam to buy, and low and behold, it worked perfectly, sound included.

It made no sense but apparently Steam hates me! But that can't be right, Steam is just a storefront, right? And my brother sometimes came over here to this computer and played his Half Life 2 and Sam & Max titles no problem in the past. Maybe it is just those two games, let's try some of these demos in here. Mass Effect 2 demo... Won't launch. Okay. Here's some demo for some indy game I've never heard of... Won't launch. WTF. My brother brings his external HDD back and tries his Half Life 2 and Sam & Max and so forth again. Won't launch, won't launch, and won't launch. What in the fucking hell?!

So, yeah. I can't figure this out. Apparently Valve and Steam just hate me. So I went back to my PS3, 360, and Wii, where all I have to do is pop in a mere game disc and HEY LOOK! The fucking game launches and I get to play it with sound. No wasting a day trying to figure out what the hell ails this damn computer.

I'm not trying this on some Walmart Dell or eMachines either, before someone wants to say that.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Yeah I've been there too. Here I am browsing Wikipedia one night and I find that some old game I loved is on Steam. I look on Steam and it's only $5, so I get it. And my brother gifts me Deus Ex once I have my account set up. Here's the fun part: Neither game plays any sound. We spent all day messing around with drivers and settings and anything we can think of and nothing worked.

Open your DuesEx folder, go in to system and open "deusex.ini"

Find the section that says: [Galaxy.GalaxyAudioSubsystem]

In that section their will be a line that says "Latency=40"
Change it to read "Latency=60"

Close the file (saying yes to save)

Restart DeusEx and the sound works fine

Found by Googling "Deus Ex Sound Problems"

But the real problem is that PCs use kazillions of different configurations, and good old Micro$oft won't fix their compatability errors. So it's the Xbox developers who are causing all these problems.

 

[Timbydude]

I have to pity you, Chuck. I totally agree with your article, but you have to understand that PC elitists really can't be reasoned with. Ever.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE playing games on my PC. When it works, it works better than the 360 or PS3 could ever hope to, and that's just on my (somewhat expensive) laptop.

But people are just being ignorant if they don't recognize the rampant problems befalling the PC market nowadays. Most new PC games are just ports of console versions that often refuse to run on half the rigs you throw at them. PC gaming is inconvenient and annoying. And, as has been illustrated in these comments, there's just this attitude of "if you don't understand the ins and outs of the system you're using, you don't deserve to use a computer".

You don't have to be horrible with PCs to be unlucky with compatibility issues. Yet, most of the people responding to this article just go "You are so unintelligent, you lowly peasant," as they condescendingly wave to you with the pinky finger protruding from their glass of fine wine.

"Go build a PC! What? You can't build a PC? What do you mean you'd rather use the time it takes to research that for other things? What, pray tell, could be more important?"

Consumer products are designed to be enjoyed with base-level knowledge, and they are not meant to require painstaking hours of research and troubleshooting to use properly. For example, do I really deserve to have to update a plethora of drivers constantly when I can just pop a game into my Wii/PS3/360 with absolutely no hassle?

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

You don't have to be horrible with PCs to be unlucky with compatibility issues. Yet, most of the people responding to this article just go "You are so unintelligent, you lowly peasant," as they condescendingly wave to you with the pinky finger protruding from their glass of fine wine.

OK...

I've had some horrible compatibility issues in my time. I've some games that never have worked, but I've never seen someone do that.

If you want a game just d/l the demo, check google for "[game] problems" and try a few out. Sure you might lose a few hours to fixing something, but that's way in the minority.
[edit: mjc0961's problem might not have been fixed, but this time it's worked. Crysis on the other hand, ugh...not even going there]

For that, you get a huge bundle of payoffs, like free DLC, PC exclusives etc.

While the PC fanboys 'may' flick their pinky at you, they don't hurl expletive laden insults like some of the console fanboys 'may' do.

Anyway, fine wine isn't as good as a proper beer.

 

[L33tsauce_Marty]

So this article was just someone whining about PC gaming? Gee, that's worth a read.

 

[Sightless Wisdom]

This article is troll fodder. There are a great many PC elitists about the Escapist and they will defend the platform to the death. Personally though, I'm almost on their side.

I have no problem with you being angry when things don't work, or writing an article about or anything of the sort, but I do have to point out that it's not the computer's fault. It's almost always human error that causes these kinds of problems...but I'm sure you knew that.

 

[wadark]

This article is great. And this is why I avoid PC gaming wherever possible. There are a few titles that I will continue to play simply because they only come on PC, but for all else, its consoles, and basically for every reason that chuck outlines in this article.

My example: Starcraft 2. When I finally got to my computer, I popped in the disc and let the installer start. 2 hours later it finally finished. Ok, long install times aren't so bad. I load up the game, for some reason, the game has shifted 50% to the right on my monitor, so I have the left half of the game showing up on the right half of my monitor, the rest is black.

So, just because it sometimes works, I close the game and reload it. This time a popup informs me that my drivers and DirectX might be out of date. Updating GFX card drivers, simple enough. Updating DirectX.....not so much. Navigating Microsoft's website might as well just throw you into a labyrinth.

In the end, it required 4 update downloads, 3 restarts and a lot of swearing...and I'm fully aware that this was a MILD experience by comparison.

I told this to a couple friends of mine who suggested a) that I switch to Mac (which I cannot even remotely afford), and b) that I should never have bought a dell and should build my own (which I also can't afford, and for that matter don't even know how to do).

Hell, all I want to do right now is make WoW run a little better on my PC but even something that simple is another labyrinth of graphics cards, memory, and I don't know how many other components. God forbid I were to make my own...

 

[romxxii]

PC gaming problems boil down to insufficient resources - not enough RAM, running too many things in the background even if you have enough RAM to meet the game's requirements, running at high settings when your GPU can't handle it, having a crap OS like Vista. One thing to remember is that a game's minimum system requirements means you can play that game at the lowest graphical settings. If you want to play at medium to high settings, try to match or exceed the recommended specs.

Oh and the XPS, unless you customized or got the higher end versions, isn't that powerful. I'd say midrange for gaming purposes at best. Tweak your settings till you get the best performance; most PC games have some sort of benchmark utility to let you get the best balance of visual goodies and high framerates.

Oh, and if all else fails, you most likely had a bad install. Yes it happens. Reinstalling should fix it.

PC gaming really isn't that much of a chore if you know what you're doing.

 

[chuckwendig]

You don't have to be horrible with PCs to be unlucky with compatibility issues. Yet, most of the people responding to this article just go "You are so unintelligent, you lowly peasant," as they condescendingly wave to you with the pinky finger protruding from their glass of fine wine.

"Go build a PC! What? You can't build a PC? What do you mean you'd rather use the time it takes to research that for other things? What, pray tell, could be more important?"

Consumer products are designed to be enjoyed with base-level knowledge, and they are not meant to require painstaking hours of research and troubleshooting to use properly.

That's close to my feeling -- ultimately, I try to put my feet in the shoes of a casual user. I have friends who aren't particularly PC-savvy, but they get new computers and they walk into Target or buy one or two PC games, and then get home and... what? Have to jump through hoops just to make a piece of software work? Feel like the money spent on the PC is wasted? Instead take the time and effort to build their own PC just so they can play a $30 game? Ask around on a forum and be called idiots because they own an HP, or a Dell?

To me it feels like we're long past the point where these issues should be ever-present, yet it seems like they're only worse.

Some of the most strident PC gamers appear to have built up an indestructible and ever-shrinking niche, but then rail against anybody *calling* it a niche.

It's a shame, because while PC gaming has its faults, it is a unique platform and offers great benefits -- despite how people have read it, the joke of the article is that I clearly *do* play PC games and intend to keep doing so regardless of my frustration.

But increasingly, it offers those benefits only to the truly devoted. Or, rather, the truly zealous. Hence, the console market grows, and the zealous grow more ardent about their console hate, and the cycle continues.

My zwei pfennig. Feel free to discard at your leisure.

-- Chuck

 

[Timbydude]

You don't have to be horrible with PCs to be unlucky with compatibility issues. Yet, most of the people responding to this article just go "You are so unintelligent, you lowly peasant," as they condescendingly wave to you with the pinky finger protruding from their glass of fine wine.

OK...

I've had some horrible compatibility issues in my time. I've some games that never have worked, but I've never seen someone do that.

If you want a game just d/l the demo, check google for "[game] problems" and try a few out. Sure you might lose a few hours to fixing something, but that's way in the minority.

For that, you get a huge bundle of payoffs, like free DLC, PC exclusives etc.

While the PC fanboys 'may' flick their pinky at you, they don't hurl expletive laden insults like some of the console fanboys 'may' do.

Anyway, fine wine isn't as good as a proper beer.

I'm not saying that anyone does that in a specific case. I'm saying that whenever anyone makes the perfectly legitimate complaint that PC gaming is more frustrating than console gaming, the majority reply is "You don't know what you're talking about".

While it's true that most issues can be resolved from a basic Google, there are those rare issues that just can't be fixed, and it's incredibly annoying when those pop up.

Two examples from personal experience:

1) Jade Empire: Special Edition. I bought it over 3 years ago on Steam, and encountered a game-breaking issue for which no fix was available until 2 months ago. It had to do with the fact that I have 64-bit Vista; in other words, I really couldn't have done anything. Now, is it fair that I had to wait three years (during which time the game's plot was spoiled, anyway) to play a game for which I paid full price?

2) Mirror's Edge: It's just plain incompatible with SLI. It "works", but seeing as how the screen repeatedly flickers during play, it's not quite for me. I could disable SLI and play with one video card, but then I'm stuck with mediocre performance on middling settings; that's not why I bought a $3000 computer.

 

[JordanMillward_1]

Damn I love you Chuck!

 

[chuckwendig]

Damn I love you Chuck!

Why, thank you, sir.

And thanks all, for reading.

Thanks even to those who think I'm an addlepated dipshit, or who want to stab me in the face with a stick of RAM.

-- Chuck

 

[chuckwendig]

The issue here is not one with the games or the platform, but of a PEBKAC nature. Dells just aren't built to game. It's like buying a Geo Metro and trying to win the Daytona 500 with it. Just ain't gonna happen. And you'll probably crash. Even with Fallout 3's known crashing issues it's still quite stable on my machine with more mods than I care to count active. It doesn't crash for me.

Ehhhh. I'm not sold on the comparison -- unless you want PC games to be a very minor niche, then they have to offer a common denominator less crazy than "Daytona 500."

Wanting a Dell to play a game feels more like wanting a Geo Metro to drive on the highway. Maybe it won't be the best at the task demanded, but it it'll still do it.

-- Chuck

 

[NewClassic_v1legacy]

Hey guys, I've been looking through the thread, and I'm noticing a lot of particularly heated opinions coming up in regard to the merits of PC Gaming over the merits of Console gaming, or vice versa. While this is a perfectly valid discussion, I'd like to remind you guys that debate and argument are separated largely be tone online.

So, if you'd all be so kind, try to keep the discussion light and easy, and don't take it personally when folks disagree with one another. I'd rather if things didn't get too out of hand, especially since this discussion has so much potential.

I appreciate it guys.

 

[romxxii]

This article is great. And this is why I avoid PC gaming wherever possible. There are a few titles that I will continue to play simply because they only come on PC, but for all else, its consoles, and basically for every reason that chuck outlines in this article.

No it's not, it's no different from any sort of anti-PC whinging I've heard before, and I've worked in bloody tech support and build my own systems, so I know what I'm talking about.

My example: Starcraft 2. When I finally got to my computer, I popped in the disc and let the installer start. 2 hours later it finally finished. Ok, long install times aren't so bad. I load up the game, for some reason, the game has shifted 50% to the right on my monitor, so I have the left half of the game showing up on the right half of my monitor, the rest is black.

That alone tells me you should've replaced your DVD drive a long time ago. 3 disc installations should take about no more than an hour.

So, just because it sometimes works, I close the game and reload it. This time a popup informs me that my drivers and DirectX might be out of date. Updating GFX card drivers, simple enough. Updating DirectX.....not so much. Navigating Microsoft's website might as well just throw you into a labyrinth.

Actually, the latest version of DirectX you'll need usually comes packaged with your latest game. Say, Starcraft 2.

I told this to a couple friends of mine who suggested a) that I switch to Mac (which I cannot even remotely afford), and b) that I should never have bought a dell and should build my own (which I also can't afford, and for that matter don't even know how to do).

You don't have to build your own system. Dell's website offers customization options. Make sure you get the system that lets you pick decent GPU and memory options.

 

[Paddin]

I have the same problem as you Chuck, in which whenever there is a Steam sale I buy everything in sight.

"Indie Game pack? £5? I've never heard of any of these games.. add to shopping cart"

"Rome: Total War? £2? I don't even like RTSes.. oh well, it's only two quid"

And so on and so forth till I am surprised when my credit card gets rejected for having no money on it.

My first laptop I bought was a pre-built Dell one for £300. Before I get stoned to death for stupidity, I was twelve. I assumed it worked the same as it did when I bought my Gamecube: You buy the console, you buy the game, game goes in console, game works. However it surprisingly didn't work with hardly anything, and the games it did work with were riddled with issues.

I wasn't going to take chances with my second one, so I scanned the internet for a month for a good price. Eventually I found my current laptop, normally £800, reduced to £500. Bought it and its served me fine.

I have been playing Team Fortress 2 a fair amount and a problem that keeps surfacing which annoys me is sometimes, rarely, I will load the game and it will freeze randomly while loading. Either while loading the main menu or loading a map. It gives me no reason and googling "Team Fortress 2 loading freeze" got me nothing. It is irritating, but rare, so I should count myself lucky in that sense.

 

[mxyzplk]

Great article. My PC gaming has tapered off over the years for the same reason. Seems like every time I get interested in a new game, it ends up requiring hours of dicking around to get running (more, if you take the "buy a new computer! And build it yourself this time!" ignorant advise from the technowonks). Now, I look at a tempting new PC game like Starcraft II, and think about buying it, but then I think "Hmmm... Am I going to need to upgrade something... Or reinstall my OS so that things are 'clean enough' for it to run... Never mind, the XBox and Wii are sitting right here."

People whining about PC gaming dying might want to stop advocating for it having an even higher barrier to entry and instead advocate for it to get better. If something like a Dell XPS, mass produced more than about any other PC, is too "edge case" for a game to work on it, then it's about time for PC gaming to die.