265: Punching the Baby Seal of PC Gaming

[Baby Tea]

This whole thread is bullshit, because technical issues occur on consoles as much as they occur on PC's.

I'll disagree.
At least, that's not true in my experience.

I was a PC gamer for years and years. Ever since Wolf3D! I eventually got an Xbox, and now I have a 360. I only play the older PC games (Baldur's Gate, Diablo 2, etc) on my netbook, now.

I've had my 360 freeze, that's true.
But my 360 has never needed me to update drivers. Not in the same way, at least. Turn my 360 on and it says 'update' and it takes less then a minute to update.
My PCs over the years? What GPU do you have? What version of windows are you running? Go download, install, reboot. Takes way longer. Undeniably longer.

Never had my 360 blue-screen. Never had my 360 not play a game because it didn't meet requirements. Never had to fiddle with graphics settings to get that 'just right' balance between looking good and playing smooth. Never had random quits to the desktop. Don't have to deal with install times or long patching processes...

I'm certainly not against PC gaming or gamers, but I prefer my 360 because of one reason: It's easy.
I play games to relax. I want to come home, throw myself on the couch after work, and play. I don't want to fiddle with things. When a new game comes out that I want, I know I'll be able to run it. No checking system specs or anything. Just put it in and play.

Again: I was a PC gamer for years. Heck, I still play my PC (Baldur's Gate and Homeworld 2 are freaking awesome)! But I'm just done with the updating, the hardware configurations, the driver updates, the troubleshooting, all of it. I used to have the patience for it, and I don't anymore. I've got a wife, a job, and a bunch of other things that take up my time now.
When I game, I just want to play.

And for those saying 'Well I've played INSERT GAME NAME HERE with no problems! This guy must be an idiot! No, that's false. I can play Baldur's Gate with no trouble, but I bet you any money that searching for 'Baldur's Gate Crash' on google will bring up a bunch of people who aren't so lucky. Heck, put in nearly any PC game with the word 'crash' at the end and you'll find people who aren't so lucky.
That's what I'm talking about.
I'm done with it.

 

[hansari]

You said that you don't have time to build your own PC, to scout for parts need only take 20 minutes a day, buying aforementioned parts and installing them need only take a day.

If you know what your doing but, and I know this sounds shocking, not everyone who plays pc games knows whats going on inside their pc.

"gaming on a pc" correlates with "understanding of computers" to the same degree as "driving a car" correlates with "understanding cars".

~~~~~~

On another note, who can figure this one out?

Half Life 2 plays smoothly on my pc, but Portal crashes 5-6 times before I can finish. Same PC specs, same system requirements for both games, same source engine...

 

[ShrooM_DoughKiD]

You said that you don't have time to build your own PC, to scout for parts need only take 20 minutes a day, buying aforementioned parts and installing them need only take a day.

If you know what your doing but, and I know this sounds shocking, not everyone who plays pc games knows whats going on inside their pc.

"gaming on a pc" correlates with "understanding of computers" to the same degree as "driving a car" correlates with "understanding cars".

~~~~~~

On another note, who can figure this one out?

Half Life 2 plays smoothly on my pc, but Portal crashes 5-6 times before I can finish. Same PC specs, same system requirements for both games, same source engine...

If you don't understand how to install certain parts, find a tutorial on the internet, ask a friend to help or read the manuals that come with the parts. If your games are crashing, maybe it was a bad install of Portal. I guess you've reinstalled Steam or even looked deeper into the problem.

 

[Sneaklemming]

Sounds like PCs hate you.

Good thing anecdotal evidence means nothing, in the grand scheme of things.

It is true however that the PC is high maintenance, like a nice house.

 

[ESCAPIST DELETE THIS ACCOUNT]

I could become a console gamer but then again i could eat shit and im not likely to do either

 

[znix]

PC gaming used to be for nerds who knew how their systems worked. People who had no issue with a quick fix. People who could easily handle and troubleshoot issues on their own.

These days, it seems, some people have lost that ability and simply resort to whining. Which is hilariously funny, since PC gaming is so much easier to get into than it used to be. Gaming companies are jumping through hoops to appease and avert the whiny masses who can't bother to RTFM, yet obviously they're unable to account for every single configuration out there.

Especially when people load their PCs with crapware and think so very highly of themselves and their custom configurations. It couldn't possibly be that they screwed up royally somewhere. Disabled some vital service while "optimizing" their system, or installed some catastrophically incompatible anti virus or firewall. Not forgetting all the trojans so many people seem to magically attract from simply surfing the web. What's THAT all about?

Anyway, PC gaming is easily superior to console gaming. There is nothing positive that consoles do that PCs could not. Slap a controller on a well configured PC and it's practically a console - except for all the added benefits of a PC. Often times much superior to consoles in graphics and handling.

 

[Aisaku]

Looks like either side of the argument won't see the other's point.

Consoles are convenient. They give you roughly the same game experience with the least amount of effort.

PCs are versatile. They can offer a huge amount of ways in which you can improve or somehow tweak how you experience a game. In contrast, you have to be willing to put some effort and learn how to do things yourself.


Both have you investing in hardware, like that nice big tv so the text will be readable or the latest video card so you will be able to see the latest visual effects.

 

[Awexsome]

I've tried to get into PC gaming but I'm close to the author's point of view on this. The only thing that's keeping me from just saying, "Fuck PC's" is that they got some damn fun games on there. I have TF2 and that's just barely how much my computer can take. I can't play most payload maps or ANY map with more than 24 people on it without dropping to three frames per second.

I buy a console. It works. Just as the writer said. I go out and buy a game for said console. It works. Consoles are just far better than PC's for accessability and conveinence.

The pros to the PC's are obvious just by looking all over youtube. Customizability is bigger in about any PC game than any console game. Mods and Skins are fun but even when I try to put some of the simple ones to my TF2 they work maybe 1/2 of the time.

There comes to be a fight between customizability and accessability when you compare Consoles and PC's and for me, the inaccessability of the PC is too much of a liability since all the customizations in the world don't do jack squat if you can't even get the game to run in the first place. (Not to mention the price difference)

 

[znix]

Except appease my ignorant laziness, a point which Aisaku sums up perfectly:

A well configured PC doesn't require additional tinkering. In fact, most computers sold off the shelf with a decent graphics card will typically be ready to run any new game without problems. You may have to uninstall some of the crap that comes preinstalled or simply do a fresh install from scratch, but once it's done once - getting games to play on a PC is just as easy as on a console.

No normal PCs will die with a ROD either or have odd region locks restricting what software they can run. Stuff simply works and often times it's much easier patching up and/or modding games to your liking than it ever could be on a console.

Where PCs tend to go wrong are from people who think they know how to optimize a system, but who in reality are ignorant of what they're doing and do far more harm than good. Then once they run a game, and it doesn't work, they blame everyone except themselves. If the PC tied their hands just like a console does, chances are things would always work.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I've got all those games and none of those crashes, is your hardware maybe a bit old?

Also I didn't like this article very much purely because of the tone. This isn't what I come here to read, it wasn't smart and it wasn't informative. I know it was supposed to be a humorous look at the problem but honestly it comes across as not wanting to do any maintenance work and getting annoyed when it breaks. If you had a console that could play every game ever made you'd expect a certain amount of tinkering too.

sometimes (like myself) your hardware can be too much for it (as in running old ass games), so the game lags insanely and the hardware refuses to run the pile that you call a game.

i built my new custom pc at the end of july, and ive already spent an accumulated 30 some hours forumming and tinkering to get my games to work

(now i love the pc and what it can do) but GOD DAMMIT, the amount of possibilities for errors and bugs is endless on the pc and it really sucks getting new games and not being able to play them till the next fucking day because of technical reasons

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

What amuses me is just how aggressive PC gamers get over such a small thing. One guy posts an article about why he doesn't game on PC as much as he used to and dozens of obnoxious comments spring up.

"You're a troll!" (Because he disagrees with you)
"You're a PC illiterate idiot!" (Despite the fact that he's obviously been PC gaming for a long time)
"If this was a normal thread, you'd be banned!" (He really, really wouldn't; not everyone is as scared of differing opinions as you are, and the mods certainly aren't)

 

[Melon Hunter]

Gaming is just gaming...

How WRONG you are...

That's like saying that a person that watches soap opera all day has the same good taste in cinematography as a person that goes at the cinema to see the newest releases and review them on specialist websites...

Totally WRONG.

I see you've totally missed the point of my post entirely considering you took that way out the intended context.

but okay then.

It's cute how he had to put the word 'wrong' in block capitals. I think we've found the next level up from a PC elitist; a PC zealot. Thank goodness he's been banned.