Bethesda VP: Developing For PC is a "Headache"

[Phishfood]

Dear bethesda.

If I built a road that was only wide enough to allow motorcycles, I would have no reason to be suprised when all the car drivers hate it.

If you design a game that DEPENDS on a particular graphics driver you have to expect people to be unhappy. There is a reason valve conduct a hardware survey through steam. They take this data and make games for the PCs people HAVE not the PCs valve WISHES they had.

Duh.

 

[Smooth Operator]

And that is why you should reach out to existing solid engines (Cryengine) and put your dev time into the actual game build.

But no you spend gobs of money on building new engines that ofcourse will always bring new issues, and the end product is a lacking game on a buggy engine... Rage

 

[harvz]

yes, developing for pc's is a headache (im not even going to touch the 'pirating' comment) but there is a very easy solution...modders, seriously the most dedicated people in the world, heres a solution, give certain modders/groups access to the source (in case of a leak, make sure you leave a way of identifying who's copy it is), give them a little credit in the credits and you can pretty much guarantee that your game will end up extremely bug free with 0 effort and for free.

 

[Callate]

...He's going to go and make me feel guilty I haven't purchased Skyrim for PC yet, isn't he.

I will, I will, I promise... It's just going to be a while... Please don't stop developing cool RPGs for the PC...

 

[Aprilgold]

Thats why you develop with common video cards instead of bitching about how hard it is. Seriously, design the game for a very much standard video card that is commonly bought, or make the game so easy to run on any computer, then just make different video options for those above and below the standard.

But your right, keep catering to consoles because their easier to design, graphically for, since, you know, we all buy games just to see pretty pictures. [Sarcasm Detected, do you need help removing the threat?]
*clicks no*

Skyrim on the PC is a fucking atrocity. It looks horrible, textures are really low quality (especially the snow, when I get to it, I'll provide screenies), alot of stretching to shit, or sometimes they're plain gone. This is when it comes to looks.

The controls? Why is this even fucking released on the PC? The mouse is barely integrated at all, and it makes me want to kill kittens, there are no god damn hotkeys either, from what I can see. The saddest part is that even this layout could have worked with minimal changes, but nope, they didn't spend a week on the PC version by the looks of it.

For shame, Bethesda, and fuck you. And then you come out with statements like these.

Edit for clarification: The reason for my rant is that they've obviously not spent an even acceptable time on the PC version and that's why it's so half baked. When the controls are this fucked up, it's obvious the "hardware diversity" isn't what's causing practically any of the problems.

Thats the second person to give this game critism today. My problem is that they keep building new engines, but since this seems to be a thing for them, WE BUILD A ENGINE, SELL IT, INFINITE MONEY!

The hype surrounding such a large amount of the game was DRAGONS! Once again, they are pushign what the Xbox can do, since thats what they built the game natively on. So obviously its going to be the most playable, but since the hardware for the console is so old, they have to build the engine to push the limits with the game not straining on the console itself.

 

[Stealthfighterx]

Does no one realize the Xbox is just as easy to pirate for? The whole "cry for us, PC games might be pirated" comes off as a completely ignorant statement.

Aside from Gears of War 3, what other console games were leaked early this year? I swear there were others. I'm not calling you out or anything, I really want to know.

Edit: So far it's CoD, Skyrim, Gears of war 3, Killzone 3, Deus Ex, Crysis, Batman (Maybe).

Portal 2 was pirated on the xbox before it came out, and I think Halo Reach was also pirated early but that was exclusive though...

 

[BgRdMchne]

Then it's a good thing that BethSoft is developing for consoles and giving us shitty PC ports these days.
Look at Skyrim; you can't even use the mouse in menus if you have a controller plugged in at all.

And as to the comment about drivers and Rage; if developers would do even the slightest bit of QA, they would realize that the game doesn't work with the drivers that are currently out.

e: verb tense agreement

 

[erztez]

HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
*cough*
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA

That it all.

Seriously though. U mad, Bethesda?

All your games actually ran WORSE on the consoles they were designed FOR, then the PCs they were "ported" TO.
Hmm...idea.
Fire the imbecile who gave this interview and hire a random modder from nexus, problem solved.``

 

[vivster]

î have no problems with ingame or graphic bugs... they can be fixed later...
but if the controls and menus are just not fit for pc use there is absolutely no excuse
they should know how a keyboard looks and how some people might want to remap keys
having unchangeable keys is bad enough... but if those same unchangeable keys stop working when you remap others then there is something wrong with you
i couldn't care less about awesome gameplay if you won't let me control it how i want

 

[CoL0sS]

"From a technical standpoint, yes, the PC is a headache. It just is. A million different possibilities of hardware, drivers, etc. As you saw with buggy [http://www.amazon.com/Rage-Pc/dp/B003ICGL7I/ref=sr_1_3?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1320964960&sr=1-3]' when in fact it's a really solid, stable game," he said.

Made me chuckle XD.
Calling Rage "buggy" on PC is really stretching it. A complete, unplayable shit-port would be more accurate. I tried Rage on at least 6 different computers, and each time a different issue popped up. I'll admit, drivers were a part of the problem (although I couldn't verify it since I returned my copy long ago) but bigger part was them doing an awful job porting the game, Carmack not being completely DX savy, and Zenimax's crazy deadlines (which is why they couldn't push back PC release to work around ATI issues).

To me this sound a lot like lazy bitching. They do realize other devs face same problems with multi-platform titles, even when making new engines?

 

[MercurySteam]

Then there are people who literally build their PC from scratch. Hell, Steam kept spamming me with pop-ups saying 'WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOUR VIDEO CARD IS, BUT IT'S PROBABLY SHIT. WE JUST DON'T KNOW. STOP PLAYING OUR GAMES.'

Considering the fact I'm one of them, though I do have a 360 and I'm impressed with how stable games are on consoles vs. PCs. Apart from graphics hiccups and the occasional lag, consoles make things easier for gamers and developers though I do find it silly that I haven't really played a game that my GTX 570 has really fought with. Perhaps I should get RAGE...

 

[YawningAngel]

No GPU has to right with Rage, it adjusts its quality dynamically to ensure smooth frame rates. Good game though.

And Bethesda's VP is an idiot. DirectX (which his company targets) and OpenGL (RAGE's rendering API set) are both perfectly internally consistent. If you decide on a given set of APIs and are consistent with how you use them, the only thing that can go wrong is AMD or nVidia failing utterly with their drivers, for which you can hardly be held accountable. Nobody I know blames id for RAGE's launch issues.

 

[Yopaz]

Hell, Steam kept spamming me with pop-ups saying 'WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOUR VIDEO CARD IS, BUT IT'S PROBABLY SHIT. WE JUST DON'T KNOW. STOP PLAYING OUR GAMES.'

Really??? This would be one of the few things that I would take personally if Steam would say that to me...

No, it didn't really say that last part. It does have me submit the information on my video card every month or so, though. They keep promising to update their database, but they never do! Panda Rage!

Edit: It really is shit, though. My computer has the power to run literally any game on max settings (Except maybe Crysis), but the video card can't even play most indie games. I would buy a new one, but I have no idea how to install a new card or anything.

If no-one has got back to reply to your edit I want to tell you that updating the graphics card is fairly easy. I would advice you to open up your computer once when you have time to spare and do some searching among the components to learn what they look like and how they are connected to the motherboard. It shouldn't be hard to find the graphic card, it's fairly big often with some fans and the name of the card on it. Once you feel certain that you've found it you can start considering to have it replaced. I am pretty clueless about this kind of stuff, but I know how to replace RAM, hard drive and graphic card. If you still feel uncertain watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ILrq7lMe-0&noredirect=1 it sums it up pretty well, but you might be going to use a more powerful card than the one used in this video so it's a tiny bit more complex.

OT: So it's hard to develop for the platform used to make the game? I wonder how it can be so much harder to do the PC versions when there's a big community out there improving their errors for free.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

It's like this: I travel and can't play on consoles. So thanks to all those developers making good games for PC, you make things enjoyable on my free time.
If a company decides to relegate games to console I have no choice but to stop playing them.

 

[veloper]

So it's excuses for Rage again.

Coding for PC is the easiest thing.
You can throw poorly optimized code at the CPU and the CPU will reorder the instructions for you to execute more efficiently.
If that's not enough, you simply list a faster CPU in the requirements for your program.

You can expect from the PC gamer to have atleast 4 times more RAM than a console, available for your game to use very inefficiently.

On the graphics side you take the 360 version because that's based on directx and then for your PC version choose the directx API aswell, instead of openGL. Take a GPU that's twice as powerful as the console GPU and presto.


Most console ports do actually run better on the PC, even on 3 year old hardware, because the hardware is still overkill.
An average port on an average/mediocre modern PC is stable and runs smoother than the console version.
Rage was just a total cock-up. Next time use directx.

 

[mogamer]

Does no one realize the Xbox is just as easy to pirate for? The whole "cry for us, PC games might be pirated" comes off as a completely ignorant statement.

Much harder, and it can potentially get your Xbox bricked.

For PC, you type ' torrent' and boom. You either have the game or tons of viruses. Or both. Or really nasty porn. Or all three.

I take it you've never browsed the Game ads in your local craigslist, Every third ad is someone wanting to mod either a Xbox 360 or Wii. And nobody with any sense takes their modded console online or gets viruses from pc piracy.

 

[DracoSuave]

Does no one realize the Xbox is just as easy to pirate for? The whole "cry for us, PC games might be pirated" comes off as a completely ignorant statement.

Much harder, and it can potentially get your Xbox bricked.

For PC, you type ' torrent' and boom. You either have the game or tons of viruses. Or both. Or really nasty porn. Or all three.

I take it you've never browsed the Game ads in your local craigslist, Every third ad is someone wanting to mod either a Xbox 360 or Wii. And nobody with any sense takes their modded console online or gets viruses from pc piracy.

So to pirate on console I have to go physically visit some guy, take my unit offline permanently and risk bricking it... compared to 'Use the Google.'

I think some of you aren't aware what 'easier' actually means. Protip: Easier entails less steps.

 

[BgRdMchne]

I think some of you aren't aware what 'easier' actually means. Protip: Easier entails less steps.

How to break concrete (hard way):
1. Buy pneumatic hammer.
2. Buy a compressor.
3. Plug in and turn on compressor
4. Attach hammer to compressor.
5. Break concrete with hammer.

How to break concrete (easy way):
1. Hit it with your hand.

 

[evenest]

people like yourself might understand put there is always at least 1 dick on the internet to every decent person an some idiot to listen to them, who knows some idiot who will listen to him an so on...

I think you have the ratio off by a bit. By my reckoning, it's 3:1.

To answer the original query, the possibility for more variations on a pc can make it more difficult to anticipate what those machines may have on them. Hell, I remember trying to install many a Sierra On-Line game in the early 90s only to have to create a boot disk and/or call the company to get advice on how to run the machine. It may only be my poor recollection, but I think there were fewer options back then than there are now.

 

[DracoSuave]

I think some of you aren't aware what 'easier' actually means. Protip: Easier entails less steps.

How to break concrete (hard way):
1. Buy pneumatic hammer.
2. Buy a compressor.
3. Plug in and turn on compressor
4. Attach hammer to compressor.
5. Break concrete with hammer.

How to break concrete (easy way):
1. Hit it with your hand.

Good rebuttal, it shows the flaw in the argument.

However this is more accurate:

How to pirate on console:

1. Download on your PC
2. Burn onto disc
3. Find a dude to install a chip on your machine
4. Leave your house
5. Pay said dude for said chip and/or said labor
6. Return home.

How to pirate on PC:

1. Download on your PC

One of the steps in console piracy is the entirety of the steps in PC piracy. Yeah, it's easier to pirate on PC. Yeah, less steps=easier.