Jimquisition: Why PC Gaming Gets Away With It

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Lemme know when you've got a setup for under $350.

Okay by this point you're starting to move the goalposts.


PC gaming is not for everyone; I happily admit that. The best price/performance point is still a few hundred above a console of this coming generation. That being said, I'll never trade the ability to rebuild, repair, improve and even change the fundamental workings of the unit for anything.

Plus, bear in mind that most big gaming PC upgrades, when they do occur, tend to only do 3-4 items:

The Graphics Card
The CPU
The Motherboard
The RAM

Some times, only the Graphics Card needs to be updated and as long as its the same socket (currently PCI-16X) then you don't have to change much else. Memory is cheap so a good option is buy twice as much as you need and unless the new ram sockets happen, they can happily transfer to new motherboard/cpu combos.

Your first PC will always be the most expensive; because then you're buying keyboards, mice, monitors, hard drives, optical drives, the case, the OS and the power supply. However most of these devices are capable of seeing you through many other upgrades so you don't have to purchase them again. I've been using the same keyboard for nearly ten years, and the same monitors for nearly 5 years. The only reason I'm using new hard drives is because I wanted an SSD.

Also, the PC is vastly more versatile than a console. Sure, I've paid a good premium to play games. You know what else I can do? I can edit videos, music or images, I can write my own games, I can get mods, I can video chat with people, or voice chat or go to forums or I can type up a CV while a video plays on one screen, a download is running on another. That's a big one too; is the ability to do passive updates. If Win7 and half my steam library decide it's patch day, I can still do other things while the various downloading bars are filling up. Fuck I can run a business from my gaming rig, I can't do that with PS4 or X1.

If all you want is games, consoles represent the least money spent, and least fuss for maximum return. That is how it should be. A PC is a larger investment, but your capability is greatly expanded.

 

[DoPo]

If I can take my copy of Descent or FX Fighter and make them run decently on my Windows 7, quad core PC, I will admit the superiority of the PC as a platform in terms of preserving past games for future generations. Otherwise, it might have some advantages, but it is not better than most consoles in that regard.

FX Fighter works with DOSBox [http://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=1250&letter=F]. As Descent seems to, too [http://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=998]. Or you can just grab a source port of it [http://www.dxx-rebirth.com/] that not only works on modern systems but works better. You also have the option of using a virtual machine and running the games in their (more) native environment. Slightly more complicated in that you need to get the OS but still an option.

I can't say how well they'd run but my guess would be - sufficient.

Any chance of a list of all the games shown in that video? I recognised Witcher 2 and Portal 2 but none of the others. Particularly interested to know what that 'dude walking through frozen time mid-explosion' thing was as it looked really cool.

2:10 - Assassin's Creed: Revelations, I believe
2:31-2:44 - Legend of Grimrock
2:54-3:12 - don't know
4:20-4:31 - I think it's Army of Two but I may be mistaken
4:47-5:20 (the frozen times clip) - Quantum Break, I think it's an Xbox One exclusive, though it may be coming to other platforms - at least it was announced at Microsoft's press conference at E3. There is, I believe, a TV show, too and the game is based on it - you might be interested in that.
5:20-5:35 - Castle Crashers
5:35-5:56 - Killer Instinct
6:20-6:40 - Fez

 

[infohippie]

People still order on day 1 and pre-order?!?!

I stopped doing that when Diablo 3, Mass Errect 3 and a few others failed to live up to expectations while simultaneously costing the earth and requiring stupid restrictions...oh just remembered Battlefield 3, stupid web browser launcher tied to origins. So yeah if you want to buy 1st day steam is probably not the best, though a lot of the time you can pre-load so it's ready bang on the day without doing anything.

CD Projekt RED are still around. It's pretty safe to preorder anything of theirs because you know they are going to look after their customers. You can bet your ass I'm going to be preordering The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk when they are available for preorder. And you (so far) can't go wrong preordering an Elder Scrolls game. But apart from Elder Scrolls and CDPR releases I'm fully with you on the "wait and see" strategy. Dragon Age 2 was the last Bioware game I preordered, and as things currently stand it might also be the last Bioware game I ever buy, too.

 

[Subatomic]

I don't really post on The Escapist, but can I just say that Steam is an absolute rip off when it comes to new games. In fact over in Ireland Gamestop can undercut Steam with a physical retail copy of a PC game by ?20 euro. I never understood the myth about Steam being this bastion of excellence and the main reason to own a PC.

Sure, it has those great sales and they are great, but if I want a game upon release I would have to wait up to a year before it becomes anyway affordable on Steam.

Honestly, with Steam. I really just don't get it. Someone enlighten me, please.

You get taxed by the EU if you use steam for some reason. They don't like steam and are willing to tax the hell of what you buy from them.

Yeah, I don't get why anyone would tax internet purchases either.

Some people try to get past the taxes by having an American sell them for cheap, but steam is legally bound to ban them from the service for tax dodging. A serious crime that can drag Valve into an EU court.

That's nonsense, there is no such thing as "EU-taxes". Each member state levies their own taxes, so by that logic Steam's prices should be different everywhere (which they aren't). Also, the UK is part of the EU too, and generally has much better prices than the countries using the ?. Steam is simply terrible for buying newish AAA games in most of the Euro-zone, as it is undercut by pretty much everyone, including Amazon, retail chains (which still sell a decent amount of PC games on the continent) and other digital stores.

 

[Sonntam]

You're a hypocrite Jim Sterling, and this is the last time I will watch one of your videos.

Because if you actually gave a shit about console gaming and if you actually hold Steam and its ilk with the reverence that you suggest then you would be arguing for the console experience to improve, not to fucking stay the same.

If Microsoft is introducing new steam-like DRM into its console, then argue for the rest of the console experience to be improved to a steam like quality. Argue for better indie games, better prices, better everything.

But all people can do is ***** and complain so this next generation will be the same shit as the last one, 60 dollar games with slightly better graphics.

Congratulations. Your irrational fear has helped to further stagnate what is already a stagnant culture.


Because personally, I like to have a little FAITH in people, in companies, to improve the experience. It's easy to be a naysayer and to ***** and complain for views, but it's hard to actually push for positive change and to keep pushing for it. If Microsoft's plans were not good enough for people to buy the console, then push for them to improve the experience to a point where the plans become irrelevant as opposed to simply doing the unimaginative push for them to go back to status quo.

You are allowed to have as much faith as you want but the reason stuff like this scares people is because companies have already proven that they CAN NOT be trusted with these things besides only about three things in Microsoft's "Future of gaming" would have actually pushed the industry forward the rest would have sent it to the dark ages.

Yes "companies" cannot be trusted and yet Jim is saying trust companies like Valve and Projeck whatever (GOG.com). Again, it's a double standard.

I mean really, one of the reasons that Jim cites for Steam having more value than the consoles is the fucking trophies that Steam ripped off from Xbox Live? Really?

Fact is nothing Xbox was planning would have affected my gaming experience negatively in any way. I might be the exception given the fact I rarely trade in used games, but I wouldn't have noticed a difference.

If for example people had said "no used games? And still 60 dollars? Are you kidding me?" If they had pushed for more incentives to make the console more attractive then hey, maybe Microsoft could have been persuaded to drop first party titles to 50 dollars. Then Playstation could have been persuaded to follow suit. Then there'd be no used games but it wouldn't matter because the base price for games would have been as cheaper or cheaper than used games anyway and everyone would have profited.

Instead, Playstation does pretty much the same thing they did last time. And microsoft is forced to do pretty much the same thing as well.

You seem to imply that if we trust Microsoft it will improve our chances for not being disappointed? That Microsoft will add cheap sales simply out of good cheer, hey, why not?

Microsoft had plenty of time to show new innovative, cool features. So far we have seen family sharing (which is but a glorified demo), facebook connection and Kinect. Neither are very new or very impressive.

You ask people to wait and expect glory from Microsoft, but while Valve and Gog have proven themselves through the years: Microsoft didn't ever offer such low prices as Gog and Steam do. Once and once did Xbox servers go down, while people have learned that Steam servers stay always up.

People do not trust Microsoft, because they fail in every aspect that Steam and Gog excell at.

I love innovation, but given our experience with Microsoft I have troubles imagining what Microsoft could add to Xbox to make it appealing. Even Microsoft itself seems to be hazy on what they could offer to gamers.

 

[Revolutionary]

I get why people love gog, but steam has the sexiest client, everything just works from your desktop, and the selection of games and ease of browsing greatly exceeds other digital distribution systems.

 

[wolfyrik]

I was hoping he would make a video about it. I gave up on explaining it on forums. Now I can just link to this video.

So, basically, "PC is an open platform that needs the added security. Consoles are closed platforms that do not deserve any more security."

I'm still mad that retail PC games just come with Steam codes now. I remember being able to install... hell. Even Fallout 3 on multiple people's computers at once, and now everything is bolted to a single account instead. Fair enough, I guess, there's a demand for Steampowered games, but... yeah. I'm still annoyed about that.

I guess people like me installing Fallout 3 on multiple people's computers at once are sort of what justified that. Again, the openness of the PC platform dictates that gates have to be closed somewhere. The fact that you can just literally copy the files of old PC games over with absolutely no hassle at all really does make DRM a necessity, and since it is all circumvented eventually anyway, it makes making that DRM appealing in some way to buy into even more of a necessity. Steam's greatest achievement is that it has made people WANT games to use Steam; it has made people WANT a DRM-flavoured copy of their games. Huh.

As a supporter of Steam (maybe even a fan), I do agree that Steam exclusivity is bad for us, and that the retail option should remain. Sadly, it seems that publishers won't release a game on the PC without some anti-piracy measure, and Steam seems to be the most consumer-friendly that they'll accept.

Well precisely. I loathe to defend any kind of DRM but if it has to be done, I'd prefer it to be Steam rather than anything else I've seen so far. Such as Origin are just the spawn of satan and should never be allowed to see the light of day. I actually quite like steam, the sales and connectivity are pretty cool, the forums and data validation/repair tools are are damned useful and the community tools are available if you want to play a game along with your friends, even if you're in different parts of the world and on a single player game!

Once again Jim is right, the consoles don't need it and they abso-facking-lutely haven't done anything to deserve or demonstrate that they can be trusted with it. Infact, this xbox debacle only demonstrates to me that, quite the contrary, they absolutely can't be trusted.

PS. Jim I think you need a salute, something to further the theme and to give us an alternative way to demonstrate your all too frequent correct....ness.
You know like the film Cats and Dogs? "Cat's Rule!" type thing....

 

[Subatomic]

The explanation steam gives for wonky prices in Europe is taxation. Might be regional or federal, but in the end it doesn't really matter. The taxes under cut any savings steam gives you.

Its a reason tax dodging in steam is even a thing.

That they say it is so doesn't make it true, especially as it conspiciously mostly applies to AAA games. Case in point: Doublefine had no problem with adjusting the prices for their games on Steam after gamers complained about the unfair conversion rates between $, ? and £, and lots of indie / smaller games have a relatively fair conversion rate. I don't know whether it's Steam, the publishers or the retailers that insist on the $ = ? bullshit, but it certainly has little to do with taxes. (taxes do of course play a small part, as European prices are always including the VAT, in Steam's case most likely at the VAT rate of Ireland as that's where their European holding company is located).

 

[jmarquiso]

The explanation steam gives for wonky prices in Europe is taxation. Might be regional or federal, but in the end it doesn't really matter. The taxes under cut any savings steam gives you.

Its a reason tax dodging in steam is even a thing.

That they say it is so doesn't make it true, especially as it conspiciously mostly applies to AAA games. Case in point: Doublefine had no problem with adjusting the prices for their games on Steam after gamers complained about the unfair conversion rates between $, ? and £, and lots of indie / smaller games have a relatively fair conversion rate. I don't know whether it's Steam, the publishers or the retailers that insist on the $ = ? bullshit, but it certainly has little to do with taxes.

It's not taxes. Steam just doesn't handle multiple currencies very well, though it does seem to be due to publishers. AAA publishers do not adjust their prices for them nearly as much, whereas Indies seem to pay more attention to that.

Retailers seem to have more freedom to do so, probably to compete with Steam and Amazon.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Yeah, I must be one of the morons who still don't get it either. I have used Steam since day one (HL2) and it annoyed the shit out of me then, and it annoys me now. And I still don't see why they get a free pass.

1) You don't own the game. You NEED Steam in order to play. Internet/Steam/Ban hammer comes down, you can't play anymore. Not to mention that my account is Australian, so no, the sales don't appeal near as much. GOG still shuns this DRM and ownership model: you pay for it, you download, it's yours.

2) Does anyone else not realize that Steam's DRM is actually WORSE than what XBONE had proposed in a way? So you check in every 24 hours. Right, you're gaming, your internet goes down, bang you have 24 hours to keep playing and hope the outage ends. If you're playing Steam, you're out. But I can switch to offline mode!! WRONG. You need to be online to do that! So all you can do is wait until your router or the internet or whatever is back on. The only thing "offline" mode is good for, is if you are going to travel with a laptop, or moving your desktop to some region (or room) which doesn't have connectivity, or if you can preempt your lack of internet.

Honestly, even for Steam, unless you are going multiplayer and they want to stop you from modding or cheating, that's fine. But otherwise, you should only need one authentication.

 

[Magmarock]

Wait... you can migrate from gaming platform on PC? For FREE?

Since when?

EDIT: And System Shock 2 might not be the best example. Have you tried playing it on a modern OS? Good luck with that...

System Shock 2 on GOG works perfectly fine they patched it so that it would.

As for migration I think you miss heard. He meant meant that if you don't want to deal with Steam/Origin you can use GOG or Gamers Gate instead without paying anything. With consoles you're stuck with whatever provider they give you.

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

You can also start Steam Offline, unless you need a multiplayer game, it won't require to be connected, so its DRM is not as orwellian as most people like to accuse.

 

[Tanakh]

1) You don't own the game. You NEED Steam in order to play. Internet/Steam/Ban hammer comes down, you can't play anymore. Not to mention that my account is Australian, so no, the sales don't appeal near as much. GOG still shuns this DRM and ownership model: you pay for it, you download, it's yours.

2) Does anyone else not realize that Steam's DRM is actually WORSE than what XBONE had proposed in a way? So you check in every 24 hours. Right, you're gaming, your internet goes down, bang you have 24 hours to keep playing and hope the outage ends. If you're playing Steam, you're out. But I can switch to offline mode!! WRONG. You need to be online to do that! So all you can do is wait until your router or the internet or whatever is back on. The only thing "offline" mode is good for, is if you are going to travel with a laptop, or moving your desktop to some region (or room) which doesn't have connectivity, or if you can preempt your lack of internet.

Quick notes because your post is full of mistakes/anachronisms:

1 ) You also don't own it with GOG, both steam and gog only give you licenses to use the software, I hope you have that clear. When you get the ban on Steam (99% of the times due cheating on MP), you can still play all your games, it just prevents you to connect MP servers that don't allow cheaters. Finally you can have digital backups of your games on DVDs if you want, tough you will still need steam.

2 ) This is totally wrong. If i remember right it used to be somewhat as you said long ago, but it has been years since you can just go offline whenever you freaking want with zero requirements, or at least I can, haven't asked my friends.

 

[jmarquiso]

Steam does NOT get a free pass. It offers other services to sweeten the deal. It keeps adding them, from Marketplace to Friend's List, to Chat, to UGC to screensnhot sharing, game groups and the rest. Not all of them are good (Game Hubs only got good this year). However, because they offer competitive services, they do really better. I cam use Steam Mobile to keep in touch as well. Hell, I can even install my games across computers without limit.

If you get banned, you get banned from forums, or from VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) servers. You do not get banned from your games.

That said, Humblebundle and Gog.com do the same- they offer DRM Free as a competitive service. That's *their* competitive edge.

I really hope one of these services figures out a way to do digital lending, returning, and used sales that pleases retailers and publishers. That will shoot past Steam (provided Steam isn't the one to do so - they appear to be heading that way) in terms of competition.

The XB1 - a device I actually like, mind you - did a piss poor job of explaining what they offer in return for having to deal with accounts and all the other stuff. Instead, they presented it as a feature.

And the thing is, I understand where they're coming from and why they did so. But you know, if they marketed it to the HTPC crowd more than the console gaming crowd they'd have faired far better.

 

[Madman123456]

Gog.com has games that you can buy, download and play, no matter how old. Some of the really old games come with a dosbox setup but they'll work fine and smoothly.
Some of the dos emulations aren't very efficient but i'd have to dig through my old computer shit for a few days to build a machine that's slow enough to make that noticeable.

And there are so many old games out there that you could probably skip this entire next generation and never run out of games.

 

[J Tyran]

Such as Origin are just the spawn of satan and should never be allowed to see the light of day. .

Origin is not so bad actually, the myths about it being "spyware" have been completely debunked. It only accesses the files it needs, people saw it accesses the users document file and freaked. Steam does it too, they stash driver and preference profiles and saved games folders and other things in there. People looked for evidence on the way it communicates with its severs.

They found none.

People are spreading myths because of EA hate, EA have even been trying hard with Origin too. 50% sales on games and other special offers, EA still maybe shitty and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to defend them but they seem to be learning. Dumping online passes and things and slashing prices, the Origin client itself is pretty inoffensive. It does not match Steam in functionality yet but bits and pieces are being added and changes are made all the time.




Take off your EA hate goggles and judge Origin on its own merits.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

1) You don't own the game. You NEED Steam in order to play. Internet/Steam/Ban hammer comes down, you can't play anymore. Not to mention that my account is Australian, so no, the sales don't appeal near as much. GOG still shuns this DRM and ownership model: you pay for it, you download, it's yours.

2) Does anyone else not realize that Steam's DRM is actually WORSE than what XBONE had proposed in a way? So you check in every 24 hours. Right, you're gaming, your internet goes down, bang you have 24 hours to keep playing and hope the outage ends. If you're playing Steam, you're out. But I can switch to offline mode!! WRONG. You need to be online to do that! So all you can do is wait until your router or the internet or whatever is back on. The only thing "offline" mode is good for, is if you are going to travel with a laptop, or moving your desktop to some region (or room) which doesn't have connectivity, or if you can preempt your lack of internet.

Quick notes because your post is full of mistakes/anachronisms:

1 ) You also don't own it with GOG, both steam and gog only give you licenses to use the software, I hope you have that clear. When you get the ban on Steam (99% of the times due cheating on MP), you can still play all your games, it just prevents you to connect MP servers that don't allow cheaters. Finally you can have digital backups of your games on DVDs if you want, tough you will still need steam.

2 ) This is totally wrong. If i remember right it used to be somewhat as you said long ago, but it has been years since you can just go offline whenever you freaking want with zero requirements, or at least I can, haven't asked my friends.

Ah, thanks for clearing up a few of those things. Maybe since I've used Steam for so long I just got used to some of the bad stuff, to the point of even confusing with Origin.

Yes, I used the wrong wording, you definitely don't "own" in either case, but what I mean is it's yours, once you've downloaded it and keep a copy of it, you just install and play no matter how, I mean this is true DRM-free in any sense of the word. I can, however appreciate why there needs to be at least an initial authentication, to stop people sharing willy nilly. But digital backups that still require the agent to authenticate only remove the hassle of downloading again, which only matters with huge games.

The stance they take on Multiplayer and banning/cheating is very good, if you can still play your games but are banned from cheater-controlled servers that is something I didn't know. I thought that's not the case with origin, so I probly should've researched first. Not a big concern for me though, since I don't think Steam ban you for stupid things like complaining on a forum or whatever.

About the offline mode, well I tried to play Binary Domain two weeks ago and it didn't let me, it actually said I had to be online before I could even fire up the platform. So I'm surprised at the news, I'll go and give it a crack tonight. And the bullshit hoops I had to jump through to get Max Payne 3 to work was ridiculous, though I'm not sure if that was Steam's fault or Rock *'s effing "Social Club" so I'll let that one go for now.

 

[Monsterfurby]

People seem to miss one point over and over again, when it comes to the "companies can't be trusted" argument:

Folks, companies are not nations or causes. You don't rally under their flag or sing their anthem with your hand on your chest. You cannot, well, should not be 'loyal' to a company just because it is said company. Companies exist to make money, but that does not mean that any scheme to make money is justified.

The key thing here is value. Does Valve exist to make money? You bet. Like Microsoft, they are not a charity. At the same time, however, Valve, from Jim's perspective which I agree with, offers bettwe VALUE to the customer for their money. Better service, better communication, better games, better offers.

This is NOT about standing for the cause of 'your' gaming system of choice or whatever company you wish to protect - this is about your individual interests and your perception of value. You pay money for something, that means it should be worth it, to you. Value MUST also be positive - bullying customers into buying an otherwise low-value, high-price product like Microsoft tried to do is NOT a legitimate move because any intelligent customer will see that as a sign of him/her not being taken seriously and draw conclusions from that for the future of said product.

tl;dr1: Nobody asks you to trust companies - in fact, it's better not to, which has been Jim's point over and over again - but to look at value offered versus cost.

tl;dr2: Get out of your fucking trenches, both sides. All you gain through infantile ad-hominem attacks is the creeping realization that you might have wanted to study to pass fourth grade instead of posting in defence of your favourite company/system in such a pointless fashion.