Are PC developers/ports getting lazy

[tsb247]

I would say yes, they are getting lazy. I wuold also have to say they are getting stingy. Since many companies seem to fear the looming spectre that is, "PC piracy," they seem to be developing more games on consoles and porting them to PC. I suppose that to them, the console is a safer bet.

Whatever their reasoning, the PC gamers always seem to get screwed. Less optimized performance (computationally and graphically), that (Horrible) checkpoint style save system, watered down gameplay, lack of controls, short single-player game, lack of a server browser, simplified multiplayer modes, and the lack of modding capability that result from ported games makes me sick!

I remember when PC games were developed on PCs and had all of the features that made them great.

My best example of a ported game that could have been good was Wolfenstein (the latest release). It's predecessor, Return to Castle Wolfenstein was AMAZING, and coincidentally, it was developed on the PC for the PC. Hell, last time I looked, there were still servers running and to my recollection there were quite a few decent mods developed. The latest iteration was developed on consoles and ported to PC. It suffered from the flaws I mentioned earlier and wasn't nearly as enjoyable or... well... that good.

 

[Inconspicuous Trenchcoat]

There are some damn, damn lazy ports out there. Ones that even keep the memory restrictions of their ported console on them because they're hardwired into the game.

This must be a problem with the FUEL PC port. Every time I crash and it has to respawn me (like 30 yards behind my crash site), it has a very brief but annoying loading screen. I assume this is hard-wired into the game because of a console's lacking memory. I'm pretty sure if it was programmed for PC, it would just repawn me instantly upon command. Other than that though, the port was decent. Although, it took a good while for me to get used to the grass popping up only when I'm 10 feet away from it. Wish they'd included a slider to increase draw distances on objects and foliage...

 

[Monshroud]

PC developers don't really make the games to run on specific cards. They might make the minimum run on whatever card and after that you as the user can fine tune the visuals. Everything from Bloom, SSAO, AA/MSAA, AF, texture size and resolution, screen resolution, DX version - if 11, tesslation on/off, whether the game will make sun rays or not, often how far you can see, how far objects become visible, how much grass there is, etc. So there's not really more work for the developer beyond having a config file to draw the settings from, and also maybe an extra menu to adjust them on PCs. No matter what the game is made for, all these parameters are being set at some point. PC games usually (and they SHOULD) make these settings adjustable.

While they don't code for specific cards, their code has to support a wide variety of chipsets. Now ATI and nVidia have done a solid job on going to a Unified Architecture to resolve many previous issues, there are still certain neuances to each chipset. The majority of those are handled by the engine, and most games nowadays are licensing their engine. The PC side still requires a wider range of graphical and texture support and a flexible engine that handles all the custom settings and still delivers the best possible performance / look. All that takes a lot of QA time and money.

 

[MazeMinion]

Yes, lousy ports seem to be the new thing.

I remember when my brother bought Saints Row 2 off Steam. That game was AWFULLY ported. It got 20FPS max on a dual core with a good GPU that exceeds the game's "recommended requirements".

He got a refund for it.

 

[Wisteso]

The amount of bad speculation in this thread is huge. Has anyone here ever actually ported an application from one API/framework to another? Porting something doesn't introduce memory leaks unless there are MASSIVE changes to the code or a problems in their libraries. Any decent company with xbox360 and PC releases is going to be sharing about 95% of the same codebase between those two platforms. The other 5 percent is just an abstraction layer between the game and the platform API.

There's also no consideration here for differences in the hardware architecture. To imply that xbox360, ps3 and pc should run all games equally well or poorly is really ignorant. It's like comparing an electric car and a traditional car and saying they should drive the same way.

 

[Wisteso]

While they don't code for specific cards, their code has to support a wide variety of chipsets. Now ATI and nVidia have done a solid job on going to a Unified Architecture to resolve many previous issues, there are still certain neuances to each chipset. The majority of those are handled by the engine, and most games nowadays are licensing their engine. The PC side still requires a wider range of graphical and texture support and a flexible engine that handles all the custom settings and still delivers the best possible performance / look. All that takes a lot of QA time and money.

Not really. Given that Nintendo uses ATi cards in their newest systems, and Sony/Microsoft use Nvidia cards, all the coding is done regardless, assuming they're going multi-platform with their game. So it's actually pretty easy to do a direct port to PC as far as the engine and rendering goes. What developers fail to do oftentimes now is allow the extra flex room that they should for higher and lower-end PCs. They optimize the games to run on the hardware level of the consoles, and don't bother to add some of the more basic video options that have been around for decades. Opting to stick with whatever the consoles had those options set to.

I do agree with this. However, the other post claiming that the wide range of hardware has an effect on programmers is just wrong. DirectX/OpenGL/OpenAL/etc abstract away the differences between hardware vendors/models. Some of the hardcore companies are going to employ some tricks to optimize for certain hardware, but this is rarely done since it is often minimal and harder to maintain.

If there's a problem with a specific video card, that is a flaw with the middleware, drivers, or API in use. Developers fixing bugs for specific hardware is a courtesy on their end.

 

[Anachronism]

There are a lot of terrible ports, no doubt, but there are also plenty of good ones. BioWare in particular have been very good with the PC ports of their console RPGs, I suspect because the PC is in a sense their home platform. The requirements are usually reasonable, and they always revamp the interface so that it's easier to use with a mouse and keyboard, which is more than can be said for the PC version of Oblivion. Admittedly, there were times in Jade Empire PC when it was very obvious you were playing a console port, (the journal screen in particular) but it was mostly very well done. It wasn't a port, but it's particularly clear they put a lot of work into the PC version of Dragon Age to make it PC-friendly. It's pretty reminiscent of the Baldur's Gate interface, which is hardly surprising, I suppose.

loL that's 'cuz PC gaming is FAILL lol

What a nice, well-reasoned, correctly-spelled argument as to why PC gaming is inferior. Thank you for sharing your opinion.

 

[warm slurm]

What a nice, well-reasoned, correctly-spelled argument as to why PC gaming is inferior. Thank you for sharing your opinion.

You know I be kidding.

 

[Mouldy Oldy]

And by lazy, I mean lazy in optimising the game to run fast. Graphics have not realy improved in the last 2 years or so, but system requirements still go up, and it is often because its not optimised, has memory leaks, or other bugs.
For example, Black ops runs slower than Modern warfare 1, even though they have about the same graphics.
Are they just getting lazy because they no longer have to bother with optimising since PCs are still getting more powerful?

Sorry to say this, but... you and about 90% of the posters here fundamentally misunderstand the current business model of game development.

Here's how it goes:

10: Pitch to publishers if Independent
20: Wait... No major independent development studios left in the old model
30: If independent, build 'show n tell' alpha release and hope for investment - G0T0 END if ERROR
40: Find investment; run gauntlet of Publisher's middle management. Immediately lose -40 morale. Immediately lose -30 creative freedom. Gain +5 funding

If N0R 10 Then:
10: Major publisher G0T0 "find a dev studio to make brand name you now own as cheap as possible" direct to spec - yes, we're looking at you Spellbound, and you Obsidian [seriously - is there any franchise you can't make a bug fueled horror show?]
20: IF find large community / fanbase / modders, G0T0 30
30: Engage PR / Marketing Department (we're looking at you, 2K games for particularily heinous lying to community here - Bioshock even shipped with a static splash for the Editor in the largest "FLUFF YOU YOU SAD FLUFFING FLUFFERS WE LAUGH AT YOUR MISERY" ever)
40: IF find gullible market engage AND have charismatic front man (we're looking at you Peter, AoC MMO seller, SPORE) then +3000 lie mode to engage +MAX+ hype

IF all successful, G0T0 50

50: Sit down with major AA console rights owner
60: Listen as contractual exclusivity & primary code requirements & non-alienation of core base is engaged by legal means by their very expensive lawyers. G0T0 70 IF Independent with new Publisher. IF subsidary of major publisher then G0T0 110 already, since you know you have no rights anyhow
70: New publisher will do all of this for you, and explain in no uncertain terms "how the business works". IF uncomfortable, G0T0 80.
80: Find non-marketing person to explain "non-alienation of core base"
90: Find out that you now are legally required not to embarrass / hurt the intellectual property of the owners of AA console by releasing same game onto any other platform with greater functionality, graphics, gameplay, and so on into small fine print including the terms "your soul" and "we own it". Watch as PR for "your" publisher enforces this onto you by sending countless marketing muppets coked up who once played Zelda who will enforce that you will never communicate with your game's players, ever. On pain of being fired (we're looking at you, 2K games and so on)
100: IF still have soul, make choice: IF ethical, G0T0 10. IF need to feed family, G0T0 110

110: PRINT: game code. Console primary. THEN port to PC engaging with lines 90




Seriously.

There's a three tier system in the market place: the development team [the people who make the game] the publishers [the people who market the game and make most of the money from it] and the Console Corporate owners.


Here's the hierarchy.

AA CONSOLE CORPORATE OWNER
PUBLISHER
DEVELOPMENT TEAM.



Seriously, you people need to wise up & actually know how the business works before slating development teams.


I can, because there's some FLUFFY loving amazing talent out there going to waste... and then there's people who forget to add frame sync limitations for GPUs more powerful than the Console you're porting from, and who will fry your PC GPU. This type of coder needs firing, not rewarding. [Dragon Age. Yes, looking at you kids there].


Oh.. and the worst part? IF part of groundbreaking development team, watching the high ups being either a) FIRED AT WILL if they don't toe the line or b) Sucking up promotions [within publishers company] / stock options whilst selling your code down the river. We're looking at you, Vanguard.

Oh.. and the best bit is. The people who actually love games, code them, make them and want you to play them?


They get discarded as soon as the product hits beta - you wonder why bugs abound? THE REASON IS BECAUSE THE PUBLISHER FIRES US ALL & MAKES US RE-HIRE.


Jesus wept kids - get a clue. Google "EA Spouse" for some history, or at the very least, look into EA / 2K's corporate history.

 

[Monshroud]

PC developers don't really make the games to run on specific cards. They might make the minimum run on whatever card and after that you as the user can fine tune the visuals. Everything from Bloom, SSAO, AA/MSAA, AF, texture size and resolution, screen resolution, DX version - if 11, tesslation on/off, whether the game will make sun rays or not, often how far you can see, how far objects become visible, how much grass there is, etc. So there's not really more work for the developer beyond having a config file to draw the settings from, and also maybe an extra menu to adjust them on PCs. No matter what the game is made for, all these parameters are being set at some point. PC games usually (and they SHOULD) make these settings adjustable.

While they don't code for specific cards, their code has to support a wide variety of chipsets. Now ATI and nVidia have done a solid job on going to a Unified Architecture to resolve many previous issues, there are still certain neuances to each chipset. The majority of those are handled by the engine, and most games nowadays are licensing their engine. The PC side still requires a wider range of graphical and texture support and a flexible engine that handles all the custom settings and still delivers the best possible performance / look. All that takes a lot of QA time and money.

Not really. Given that Nintendo uses ATi cards in their newest systems, and Sony/Microsoft use Nvidia cards, all the coding is done regardless, assuming they're going multi-platform with their game. So it's actually pretty easy to do a direct port to PC as far as the engine and rendering goes. What developers fail to do oftentimes now is allow the extra flex room that they should for higher and lower-end PCs. They optimize the games to run on the hardware level of the consoles, and don't bother to add some of the more basic video options that have been around for decades. Opting to stick with whatever the consoles had those options set to.

Actually the Wii and the 360 have ATI chips and the PS3 has an Nvidia chip. They are custom chips are while they share some base framework, they are different chips then their retail counterparts. This is a semantics issue though. As PC hardware continues to advance and the console hardware stays the same, the complexity changes and what was easy to do a generation ago becomes a bit more complex as new features are added to PC hardware that developers want to / need to support.

 

[Easton Dark]

I think they're getting better actually.

Look at New Vegas and Dead Rising 2, 2 games obviously made with consoles in mind, yet they run fantastically and many could argue better on the PC.

 

[mindlesspuppet]

Yes game developers are lazy as hell when it comes to PC versions.

Mass Effect 2 had a shit ton of problems on PC, despite the fact that it uses the U3 engine, there's really no excuse other than laziness.

 

[Chibz]

What kind of BS is that? This is 2011, man...pirating games is just as easy to do for consoles as it is for the PC nowadays. We aren't doing developers any favors by just laying back and accepting that 95% of everything they do will be shit.

The piracy of console games will never be as easy and therefore as widespread a problem. That is, unless a console company really drops the ball with their console's DRM, like with the Dreamcast.

That and the fact that there's more risk involved. From bricking your console to having it banned forrestoftime from .

 

[Chibz]

Frankly there's this thing called brand loyalty. Making vastly inferior f\products over relatively small costs damages your image and reduces sales both immediately and into the future.

I think companies like rockstar made it abundantly clear how little they care about the PC gaming community with RDR. This is a little excessive...

It's perfectly reasonable for companies to focus where all the money to be made is. Fact is that if you want the "Ideal gaming experience" set up to buy the version of the game that most of the time is spent on.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

For truly awful ports[...]Saints Row 2.

Oh hoh hohoh...as if the optimisation wasn't bad enough. Then there's the driving controls, which can honestly be compared to a fresh shit in a sandwich, the lack of extra content the consoles got, the lack of support...i just wish Yahtzee could have played the PC version for his review.

I actually enjoyed the PC version, the only problems I had was inventory controls, which I barely used (Cheeseburgers? Bah!) and the pause menu, which again, I didn't use much since I was playing co-op.

 

[e2density]

We have our own great games. Maybe we don't like console games.

Infinity Ward/Treyarch are bad developers. And they are console developers.

ACTUAL PC developers, like Blizzard, Valve, etc, they have made wonderful games, not poorly/cheaply made bad ports of bad games that aren't optimized whatsoever.

 

[Chibz]

ACTUAL PC developers, like Blizzard, Valve, etc, they have made wonderful games, not poorly/cheaply made bad ports of bad games that aren't optimized whatsoever.

Actually, it's not really accurate to call Valve a PC developer (anymore)...

 

[e2density]

ACTUAL PC developers, like Blizzard, Valve, etc, they have made wonderful games, not poorly/cheaply made bad ports of bad games that aren't optimized whatsoever.

Actually, it's not really accurate to call Valve a PC developer (anymore)...

How?
They develop far more for PC than they do for consoles. There's a reason why Steam is a PC thing...

Just because consoles also got Orange Box/L4D doesn't exclude the fact their primary audience is PC.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

The piracy of console games will never be as easy and therefore as widespread a problem. That is, unless a console company really drops the ball with their console's DRM, like with the Dreamcast.

I take it you haven't looked at the Wii at any point the past three years or so. It's completely trivial to mod (in a brick-proof way, even, which can't even be said about Nintendo's official updates) using software only, by tossing an SD card in and pushing a button, basically. It's slightly harder on the more recently released versions, but not much. I only did it so I could run the games I already own off an external drive, because the built-in one is dying and gets read errors from time to time (and I don't use it enough to justify paying $75 to fix it), but it's just as easy to use it for piracy purposes. The DS and PSP have generally been even easier than that. The PS3 has recently become just about as easy. The 360 is a little more work, but that's about it.

 

[veloper]

Sometimes the pc version is much better (metro, games by valve, bioware), then sometimes it's crap (saints row2, gta4).

The average port is pretty much the same experience, but at a higher resolution and playable with mouse and controller (darksiders, arkham asylum).