265: Punching the Baby Seal of PC Gaming

[Danpascooch]

PC:
1.) Modding (surprised you didn't mention this, it's the single biggest merit PC gaming has over consoles)

It's also impossible (legally) to mod anything. Or upgrade it. Or...lots of other things.

Yeah, if you're paying that much attention to what I wrote, I'm not really that surprised.

Then just referring to my points as idiotic before repeating the same things I said. Not really a case for continuing this discussion.

Actually, I didn't repeat the same thing you said.

There are two types of modding, there are game mods (like the Oblivion gore mod) which are perfectly legal, and in many cases (Like in Valve's Left 4 Dead series) modding is actively encouraged by the developer.

Then there are hardware mods, cheating chips and the like, these are OFTEN (NOT ALWAYS) illegal.

Now, if you were talking about hardware mods, then I didn't repeat the same thing, because I was talking about game mods.


If you were talking about game mods, than you are dead wrong, because they aren't illegal at all, and the misunderstanding on my part was completely understandable, because the statement causing the misunderstanding, is false, and was placed in context that would lead any reasonable person to assume it was Hardware mods.


I assumed you were talking about hardware mods, because I assumed you knew what you were talking about, and didn't say something that wasn't true (that all game mods are illegal).......did I made a mistake in giving you the benefit of the doubt, and assuming you knew what you were talking about?

I am also inclined to believe you meant hardware mods, because the next thing you said was "upgrade" which implies some sort of hardware upgrade when it comes to gaming.

So either way, I didn't do anything wrong here, since you didn't specify which type of modding you were talking about, I assumed it was the one that made the most sense in its context, and didn't make you look like an idiot. Care to address the other points?

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

If you were talking about game mods, than you are dead wrong, because they aren't illegal at all

That's true when a developer releases modding tools but not always true when the modding community goes in and combs over the game code itself to find what they can mod... if they start decompiling code then in several countries they're committing a criminal offense (like, under the US's DMCA).

 

[TheBaron87]

I can't help but wonder, you've been playing PC games for so long, and you STILL have issues often enough to be worth ranting about? I had tons of issues for my first 5 years or so of being a PC user, but I figured out what I was doing wrong and right and better methods and now I might have a slight bug or glitch every couple months that I clear up in a day. What have you been doing this whole time? If you knew how to set up and maintain your OS in the first place, you wouldn't need to troubleshoot so often.

Besides, I'd rather have good games on sometimes-faulty hardware than being stuck with terrible games with no options on limited hardware. Yes, my computer crashes as well. I just had two graphics card crashes the other day playing Starcraft 2, but I identified the problem and stopped running the program that was causing the crashes when I played. This is no more than an inconvenience, like standing in line is an inconvenience before going on an awesome roller coaster. No pain, no gain, but I wouldn't expect a society that invented drive-thru fast food to put quality over convenience.

Now maybe here's your problem:

"My PC was robust: a Dell XPS"

Well THERE is yer problem!

Pre-built PCs are the DEVIL! Seriously, any problems you may have BUILDING a PC are completely offset by you knowing exctly what is on there. Pre-built PCs are loaded up with so much secret and hidden crapware, my god, the only real solution is to format your hard-drive and start from scratch with a fresh install.

PCs are DESIGNED to be built with minimal skill, and the most basic equipment and facilities. They are DESIGNED to be built ON a desk by anyone who has the competence to assemble Ikea furniture or change a busted fuse without electrocuting themselves.

But the thing is Consoles games don't "just work" as their performance is utterly miserable half the time, settling for 24-30 frames/sec. Dedicated servers, they just aren't bloody well there! Console solution is not to make it work, but simply eliminate the things that DON'T work. It's a cop out.

But newsflash: I don't have time to build a PC. I don't have time to build a television, a blender, a fridge, a car. I don't sew my own clothes. I do not slaughter my own cattle. I buy something, I personally would like it to work with minimum frustration.

You don't have these problems? I'm not suggesting you do. I wrote an article. It's full of True Things. People seem hell-bent to dispute my experiences, as if my experiences must be also indicative of their experiences.

He's absolutely right. You don't have /time/ to build a PC? Building one would have taken LESS time than it probably took to write this article. Did you have drafts? Did you proofread? If you just typed it out and submitted your first draft I could see it taking maybe an hour. It usually takes me less than 3 hours to put a PC together from an empty case and parts. You're talking about building a PC like it's building a car. You don't have a single afternoon to put together something that will last you 2 years minimum?

ALL PC GAMERS KNOW PRE-BUILTS ARE CRAP. It's a fact because no pre-built manufacturer can afford to make their PCs good. They would never be able to beat the price of custom PCs by matching their performance, so they go for the cheap stuff and they advertise like crazy and spread lies about how great they are so the masses will buy their crap. Then they have to fill up your computer with adware and programs you don't want so they can get paid by those companies so they can continue selling their junkboxes to ignorant TV-shoppers. Some console gamers spread lies about custom PCs for personal reasons instead of business ones: they know they don't know anything about building or maintaining a PC, they don't want to make the effort to learn, but they don't want anybody to see them as incompetent so they exaggerate the PC's faults to make it look like they "know better." All this adds up to a big stigma over a hobby with a high entry point because nobody wants to admit they don't really know anything about it.

Don't blame the nature of PC gaming for your issues, blame Dell. You wandered into the forest and ate the red berries and now you're complaining that the forest made you sick when anybody living there could have told you the berries were bad for you.

 

[Danpascooch]

If you were talking about game mods, than you are dead wrong, because they aren't illegal at all

That's true when a developer releases modding tools but not always true when the modding community goes in and combs over the game code itself to find what they can mod... if they start decompiling code then in several countries they're committing a criminal offense (like, under the US's DMCA).

I see, so you did mean game mods, I just thought you meant hardware mods since the next thing you specified was "upgrades" and the statement that all modding is illegal is wrong when applied to game mods.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

If you were talking about game mods, than you are dead wrong, because they aren't illegal at all

That's true when a developer releases modding tools but not always true when the modding community goes in and combs over the game code itself to find what they can mod... if they start decompiling code then in several countries they're committing a criminal offense (like, under the US's DMCA).

I see, so you did mean game mods, I just thought you meant hardware mods since the next thing you specified was "upgrades" and the statement that all modding is illegal is wrong when applied to game mods.

I'm not the same person you were talking to before.

'Sides, where I live most hardware and software modding for consoles is perfectly legal*... although against EULAs and void warranties, etc. For example, I could go out today, buy a 360 or PS3, crack open the case, gut it, and fill it with venomous snakes and it would be perfectly legal as long as I had a permit for the snakes.


*Well, not perfectly... if they can prove the mod solely exists as copyright protection circumvention it's bad juju.

 

[vazzaroth]

I hate this kind of article. I'm rather ashamed that The Escapist would authorize something that's ostracizing an entire branch of Gamers like this. I can see the author's problems but I do not sympathize. I've had a number of issues and I've worked through them. Besides, occasional failures are EXPECTED, both on Console and PC. I spent aprox. 2 hours on 3D dot game heroes not realizing there was no auto-save, and bam, Lock at the loading screen entering the 2nd dungeon. (At least I saved my custom model).

Also, I was wondering if he was just unlucky, or if it was his rig. I got the answer about half-way through at the word "Dell". Complaining about a mainstream computer company's gaming capabilities is like saying you got an N-gage instead of an iPhone because they're both gaming phones. Don't buy a computer from the "mass appeal PC" makers if you don't want to deal with sub-optimal gaming experiances (Yes, even they're gaming models. It's all just Marketing).
Furthermore, "Age" is not the main consideration with PCs. I love it when people say "But it's not even that old!", As if every computer component of a certain year was made the same (I guess like Consoles are. Hm.). Just like cars, and, well, everything, there are high end and low end parts that are made at the same time.

Finally, I strongly dislike how the Author disregarded the specifics about developer and circumstances that the game ended up on the PC. As someone pointed out, GFWL is basically a steaming pile of shit and it generally ruins every game it touches, no surprise there if the game breaks so badly you rage-quit. However, the Valve games ran perfect. Again... Duh. Valve makes great games, the are a premium publisher. Most other publishers have inexperienced coders or at least sloppy management/QA.

Point is, I hate reading this type of thing because it just states "Stop playing PC, only play console", when what he SHOULD be saying is "Developers, Stop being dumb and L2CODE!".

 

[Vohn_exel]

This is why I stick to light pc gaming. I know my machine isn't a powerhouse, it's decent for it's time. So, I buy old games, and the steam games I know I can run. Then again, I was a console gamer from age 5 because we didn't have a pc until 1998. Not to mention that my pc is full of games that I never play. This was a great article, it kept me hooked until the end and I agree with it just about every inch of the way.

 

[demoman_chaos]

Console gaming is not immune to locking up, Fallout 3 has died on me many times. Even Smash Bros Brawl has goen kaputzen on me a time or two.

PC gaming is better than consoles for most genres, mostly because of mods. But you have to be able to run something. You can't play Crysis on a Genesis for example, so you can't blame teh hardware for software issues. I don't think its the PS3's fault Fallout 3 has some terrible programming, because it isn't.

 

[Danpascooch]

If you were talking about game mods, than you are dead wrong, because they aren't illegal at all

That's true when a developer releases modding tools but not always true when the modding community goes in and combs over the game code itself to find what they can mod... if they start decompiling code then in several countries they're committing a criminal offense (like, under the US's DMCA).

I see, so you did mean game mods, I just thought you meant hardware mods since the next thing you specified was "upgrades" and the statement that all modding is illegal is wrong when applied to game mods.

I'm not the same person you were talking to before.

'Sides, where I live most hardware and software modding for consoles is perfectly legal*... although against EULAs and void warranties, etc. For example, I could go out today, buy a 360 or PS3, crack open the case, gut it, and fill it with venomous snakes and it would be perfectly legal as long as I had a permit for the snakes.


*Well, not perfectly... if they can prove the mod solely exists as copyright protection circumvention it's bad juju.

whoops, didn't realize you were a different person.

But seriously, it's pretty funny how when I start making some good points, he attacks something I said in a way that makes it so there are two possibilities for interpretation, and in both of them, he's wrong, lol.

 

[Signa]

Reading the article and first two pages of comments I can summarize it and everything between the lines in a few simple words:

Dell, Bethesda, Games for Windows LIVE, Crysis, ATI.

Granted to all your ATI fanboys out there that ATI isn't crap, but I just bought a laptop with an ATI dedicated card, and it just behaves odd for no explainable reason. As for the rest, combining one or more of those other issues listed above is just spelling disaster for your average PC user. I'm lucky enough to have avoided most of those above and therefore have been lucky enough to have the best running PC I can ask for. Even the laptop runs fine despite its inferiority. There is undeniable virtue in having your machine and its programs just work when asked, but there is so much lost when it comes to customization and flexibility when you use a closed platform like the Xbox or iPhone.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I just bought a laptop

There's your problem. Laptop GPUs are underpowered and prone to overheating which can make them act really fucking strange. That's one of the main reasons most publishers and developers categorically state their games don't support laptop GPUs... not because they won't work with the software but because laptop GPUs can act really fucking random and they don't want to have to deal with it.

 

[BustaNinja]

Reading the article and first two pages of comments I can summarize it and everything between the lines in a few simple words:

Dell, Bethesda, Games for Windows LIVE, Crysis, ATI.

Truth. All 5 of those things always have more issues than an episode of Maury. Crysis, when I played it for a while, was always buggy as hell. I'm running a fairly good machine, but I would still have issues.

I know people who constantly complain about ATI's drivers and support. Having had the good fortune to always use nVidia, I really don't know what to say about that, but I will say the the chipset companies are not equal. My dad's laptop and my laptop are exactly the same, save for the chipsets. His is the ATI equal to the 7150m on my laptop. My laptop has just a little bit better graphic output on games. Just a bit, not alot.

Windows Live is always kinda a funny system. It took me about 5 hours to try to patch the Windows Live version I was using with some game I bought. I ended up giving up, and then I got a game for Windows Live on Steam, and it worked great. Its weird like that.

Every time I try to play a Bethesda game, I always have an issue. Oblivion glitches with my game pad and joystick, Fallout 3 had a random crash when I used a certain door to leave a building, and Morrowind had its own set of issues. The games are still fun, and play easier on PC I would say, but I can see where some of those issues might be annoying.

Now, I know more people who have been screwed over by their consoles then computer owners. I have a friend who's xbox hard drive was formatted after some glitch with Fable 3 DLC. Someone else who had connection issues with their PS3 while trying to play MW2. The Red Rings anyone?

 

[snow]

-snip-

I had the same vista whatever screen pop up when I first installed sc2... I said,yeah ok, and clicked proceed anyway. Game works like a charm despite that warning. In fact, it has given me the least problems compared to other games, and I too am running on a computer that meets the minimal.

The only problem I had was some loss of frame-rate, but one quick stop at the options menu fixed that perfectly. If you returned the game without attempting this, then I doubt that it was the game's fault at all.

-snip-

Creating an entire article ending in Fuck PC Gaming because you had a few problems with some games is a bit extreme. I read this crap and as such wasted 4 minutes of my life. Fuck this stupid article, how's that?

Don't like it? Don't read it, you have no one to blame but yourself for the loss of your precious 4 minutes...

It was a display of his frustration with the problems he had, so for you to be offended by this is a bit silly. If he were to say "Fuck PC GAMERS" Then you'd have an argument. It's amazing how easily offended people can get these days.

Instead of lashing out, why not be a good member of the pc community by offering some tips or incite on how to fix his computer/gaming problem?

 

[instantbenz]

If my pc fails or breaks ... I can get a friend to fix it if I can't ... and usually I can pay them with a burger or some such foodstuff. I can't do that with xbox ... they just fail and fail and when you think they won't fail again they fail .... and each time instead of having the opportunity to buy m$ a burger to fix my hard earned piece of (shitty) machinery, I have to take weeks out of my gaming life, send them the garbage and have them fix it. And you're up shit creek if you're outta warranty.

I'm a ps3 and pc guy. I don't plan to change unless I get screwed. Tit for tat.

 

[Signa]

I just bought a laptop

There's your problem. Laptop GPUs are underpowered and prone to overheating which can make them act really fucking strange. That's one of the main reasons most publishers and developers categorically state their games don't support laptop GPUs... not because they won't work with the software but because laptop GPUs can act really fucking random and they don't want to have to deal with it.

It's not your standard affair of problems though. I think updated drivers help since I've not seen anything odd for a while, but when I loaded Borderlands for the first time, some textures were just plain not rendering. Also, it's almost good enough to be called a gaming laptop, so the standard laptop stereotypes do not apply to this one. Maybe overheating might be an issue at some point, but in the case of those instances, it more than likely was not. I've got a nice sheet of lexan beneath it, so it always has maximum in/outflow for air.

I used to be a HUGE ATI fanboy, because I didn't trust all the off-brand 3rd party makers of Nvidia cards, and I tried 2 Nvidia cards that just didn't work at all (probably weak power supply). However, my last card from them was the X800 and shortly after that I just stopped getting good vibes from them. Coincidentally, that's around the time that AMD took them over, and I've always got poor vibes from AMD. I'm not biased enough to recommend Intel over them when some one is trying to build a cheap, dedicated gaming machine, but something about them just reeks of being cheap and shoddy to me. Maybe it's the way they present their "charts" for the advertisements and the lame names they come up with their patented technologies. It's like they are trying to sound and look cool and hip when they should be just presenting the facts of why it's a good choice to buy them. Those words will speak loudly to me instead of looking like snakeoil bullshit.

But I digress. That's not what this thread is about, and nothing I just said above has anything to do with anything more than just opinion.

 

[Ice_Orchid]

"punching baby seals"... wow...
Well this is just about one of the biggest masturbatory rants I ever read (the other being a professor of economics ranting about jeans on TED). 4 pages worth of ranting you hate PC games, and why? mainly cause you have faulty hardware. Did it really need to be 4 pages long? couldn't you waste our time with a non informing rant in fewer pages?

Enjoy Civ V.

 

[sbose22]

There's clearly a hardware problem if half his games crash

 

[AlphaOmega]

This is sacrastic right?

If not, please just get a console because you obviously aren't smart enough to figure out what "update drivers, run dxdiag and error reports" is.

 

[Dfskelleton]

The only games I play on PC are ones that:
I can't play on a console
I get for free on steam
Are games that I have on a console and want the pc version for some reason

Actually, that article describes about every game on my PC. In fact, the onldst PC game I have runs the best.
Quake works perfectly
Quake 2 freezes a lot
Portal can be a bit laggy
Alien Swarm is really laggy
I'm getting Doom 3 for PC, just cause I want to spawn 12 cyberdemons or 30 pinkies.