WARNING: This post is very long!
Moviebob, gotta disagree on quite nearly everything. I highly respect your videos, but I think you should stick to your area of expertise on the console and handheld systems.
However much you may think the PC itself is going to die, it just plain isn't. The internet as we know it is held together by PCs. All the development for the games you enjoy are done on PCs. There are a VAST number of applications that ONLY a PC can do. I use PCs every day for tons of things that are not trivial word processing or web browsing.
As for the state of the PC in relation to games and consoles, many (I cannot speak for all, but I know there is representation) PC gamers are not mad at console gamers for getting all the cool games. I play PC, PS2, Wii, DS, and PS3. Most of my gaming happens on a dedicated system of some kind. The thing which this population of PC gamers is angry about is cross platform games.
Cross platform games you say? What's wrong with that? It means more people can play the game right? Entirely true, but the trouble is that the PC is developed for last. If a game is even going to be cross platform at all, priority will be given to the consoles first, meaning the PC will get what is essentially a console game, adapted so the PC can make it run. The trouble with this, is that the PC has a VERY different set of inputs from a controller. The buttons have to be placed differently to line up with the human hand (for a two button game, z and x are almost always best, but super meat boy devs failed on this one, putting it on a and s and not letting you customize the controls), the lack of an analog stick has to be taken into account (meaning devs need to account for only being able to have characters at one speed when a button is pushed), and the mouse needs to be integrated efficiently as well. The mouse works in a way completely different from any analog stick, making it very efficient for pinpointing something fast, but not very good for moving at a precise speed.
Why is it that the PC is developed for last? Because of two big revolutions in the way PCs work.
1. Microsoft entered the console race. Due to this, they decided to drop gaming support in windows in favor of supporting their console. This lead to developer support largely switching to the xbox and especially the 360. Luckily Microsoft has issued a statement suggesting that they will relaunch PC gaming with windows 8, returning power to the system.
2. The reason they were able to have console success in the first place is their second-party flagship game, Halo. The original halo was the first FPS to ever be widely commercially successful on a console. It spawned the current generation of modern First Person Shooters. It managed to be successful on the console where no one else was primarily due to simplifying the genre. It slowed down the game's pace a lot, to the point where it was possible to play on a console's controller, using an analog stick instead of a mouse. They reduced the run speed, and the rate of fire for both the player and enemies to give the player time to aim. First person shooters before halo let you hold 9 or more guns simultaneously (9 because that's how many number keys there are on a keyboard, and 0 was not included). This is outrageous on a console. Halo limited the number of weapons to 2 at a time, thereby simplifying the game for a console gamer, who cannot feasibly switch between 9 weapons the way a PC gamer could. You pointed out that a console can now have a mouse and keyboard, but next to no games support that. There is literally one game supporting that on the PS3 and that's all I've ever heard of. You can mod your Xbox to use a mouse and keyboard for first person shooters, but it will get you banned from xbox live.
Halo also popularized the concept of immediately regenerating health. This enabled developers to not have to worry about concerns like difficulty curve and pacing over the course of a level or even an entire game. With regenerating health, enemy encounters no longer need to be balanced with regards to each other. Health no longer needed to be placed or hidden around the level. Developers were freed to throw any challenge they want at a player without regard for the context of prior encounters. As long as it was possible to survive said encounter at full health, in it went. This is what lead to the bullet corridor style of today's shooters, because health immediately recovers, making it just a matter of patience to beat any encounter. This is a change that compliments the simplification involved in movement to a console, but it also removes a LOT of the prior pressures in level designing, reducing level design on a console to just leading the player through set pieces and enemies positioned at point A or B. Concepts such as choke points or nonlinear level design went out the window. The only things really required for level design in a console first person shooter now are cover, and points for the enemies to be at. Play now consists of navigating between cover and taking out enemies where they are positioned.
This feeds into my earlier point of why cross platform games are bad from a PC perspective. Everyone switched over to this Modern FPS style that was so well adapted for console releases. The PC gamers are angry, because the genre they previously had a lock on has had all of its wonder stripped from it to enable it to flourish on consoles.
Fact of the matter is, TONS UPON TONS of games are still released for the PC. You just have to take one look at steam's store to see that. The trouble is, they are often sold as a complete afterthought to the developer supported console release, or they are an indie game, and lets face it, most of those are not very good (Some are SPECTACULAR, and there is nothing preventing an indie game from being as good as a triple A title, but really you can't claim that even most of them are that high quality). Traditional PC first person shooters are a dying breed, because Halo and Call of Duty came along and changed everything that made first person shooters good in the first place. Go compare Quake Live footage to Black ops footage, the gameplay is completely different. Quake Live is one of the few FPS left that can truly showcase what the genre is capable of, in terms of strategy, skill, and speed. It is also incidentally a game that could never be played on a console due to those exact things.
PC gaming is not dying, it is more alive right now than it has been in years, however PC gamers are still frustrated, because the industry has forced them into a poor position. Please don't cast PC gamers as raging computer nerds just because some of them are angry. Many of them are elitist, myself included, but I'm personally elitist as a way of channeling my frustration with the industry and the people who support it, others fall into elitism as a natural evolution of the competitive nature of PC games. Is it wrong of us to do this? Yes, probably, but it is not worth demonizing us. There is a reason PC gamers are angry, and it ought to be respected so that we can both form a better gaming community as a whole, and so that better games that accomodate more to their specific audiences are designed.
I apologize for the length of this essay, and thank you for reading it.
Moviebob, gotta disagree on quite nearly everything. I highly respect your videos, but I think you should stick to your area of expertise on the console and handheld systems.
However much you may think the PC itself is going to die, it just plain isn't. The internet as we know it is held together by PCs. All the development for the games you enjoy are done on PCs. There are a VAST number of applications that ONLY a PC can do. I use PCs every day for tons of things that are not trivial word processing or web browsing.
As for the state of the PC in relation to games and consoles, many (I cannot speak for all, but I know there is representation) PC gamers are not mad at console gamers for getting all the cool games. I play PC, PS2, Wii, DS, and PS3. Most of my gaming happens on a dedicated system of some kind. The thing which this population of PC gamers is angry about is cross platform games.
Cross platform games you say? What's wrong with that? It means more people can play the game right? Entirely true, but the trouble is that the PC is developed for last. If a game is even going to be cross platform at all, priority will be given to the consoles first, meaning the PC will get what is essentially a console game, adapted so the PC can make it run. The trouble with this, is that the PC has a VERY different set of inputs from a controller. The buttons have to be placed differently to line up with the human hand (for a two button game, z and x are almost always best, but super meat boy devs failed on this one, putting it on a and s and not letting you customize the controls), the lack of an analog stick has to be taken into account (meaning devs need to account for only being able to have characters at one speed when a button is pushed), and the mouse needs to be integrated efficiently as well. The mouse works in a way completely different from any analog stick, making it very efficient for pinpointing something fast, but not very good for moving at a precise speed.
Why is it that the PC is developed for last? Because of two big revolutions in the way PCs work.
1. Microsoft entered the console race. Due to this, they decided to drop gaming support in windows in favor of supporting their console. This lead to developer support largely switching to the xbox and especially the 360. Luckily Microsoft has issued a statement suggesting that they will relaunch PC gaming with windows 8, returning power to the system.
2. The reason they were able to have console success in the first place is their second-party flagship game, Halo. The original halo was the first FPS to ever be widely commercially successful on a console. It spawned the current generation of modern First Person Shooters. It managed to be successful on the console where no one else was primarily due to simplifying the genre. It slowed down the game's pace a lot, to the point where it was possible to play on a console's controller, using an analog stick instead of a mouse. They reduced the run speed, and the rate of fire for both the player and enemies to give the player time to aim. First person shooters before halo let you hold 9 or more guns simultaneously (9 because that's how many number keys there are on a keyboard, and 0 was not included). This is outrageous on a console. Halo limited the number of weapons to 2 at a time, thereby simplifying the game for a console gamer, who cannot feasibly switch between 9 weapons the way a PC gamer could. You pointed out that a console can now have a mouse and keyboard, but next to no games support that. There is literally one game supporting that on the PS3 and that's all I've ever heard of. You can mod your Xbox to use a mouse and keyboard for first person shooters, but it will get you banned from xbox live.
Halo also popularized the concept of immediately regenerating health. This enabled developers to not have to worry about concerns like difficulty curve and pacing over the course of a level or even an entire game. With regenerating health, enemy encounters no longer need to be balanced with regards to each other. Health no longer needed to be placed or hidden around the level. Developers were freed to throw any challenge they want at a player without regard for the context of prior encounters. As long as it was possible to survive said encounter at full health, in it went. This is what lead to the bullet corridor style of today's shooters, because health immediately recovers, making it just a matter of patience to beat any encounter. This is a change that compliments the simplification involved in movement to a console, but it also removes a LOT of the prior pressures in level designing, reducing level design on a console to just leading the player through set pieces and enemies positioned at point A or B. Concepts such as choke points or nonlinear level design went out the window. The only things really required for level design in a console first person shooter now are cover, and points for the enemies to be at. Play now consists of navigating between cover and taking out enemies where they are positioned.
This feeds into my earlier point of why cross platform games are bad from a PC perspective. Everyone switched over to this Modern FPS style that was so well adapted for console releases. The PC gamers are angry, because the genre they previously had a lock on has had all of its wonder stripped from it to enable it to flourish on consoles.
Fact of the matter is, TONS UPON TONS of games are still released for the PC. You just have to take one look at steam's store to see that. The trouble is, they are often sold as a complete afterthought to the developer supported console release, or they are an indie game, and lets face it, most of those are not very good (Some are SPECTACULAR, and there is nothing preventing an indie game from being as good as a triple A title, but really you can't claim that even most of them are that high quality). Traditional PC first person shooters are a dying breed, because Halo and Call of Duty came along and changed everything that made first person shooters good in the first place. Go compare Quake Live footage to Black ops footage, the gameplay is completely different. Quake Live is one of the few FPS left that can truly showcase what the genre is capable of, in terms of strategy, skill, and speed. It is also incidentally a game that could never be played on a console due to those exact things.
PC gaming is not dying, it is more alive right now than it has been in years, however PC gamers are still frustrated, because the industry has forced them into a poor position. Please don't cast PC gamers as raging computer nerds just because some of them are angry. Many of them are elitist, myself included, but I'm personally elitist as a way of channeling my frustration with the industry and the people who support it, others fall into elitism as a natural evolution of the competitive nature of PC games. Is it wrong of us to do this? Yes, probably, but it is not worth demonizing us. There is a reason PC gamers are angry, and it ought to be respected so that we can both form a better gaming community as a whole, and so that better games that accomodate more to their specific audiences are designed.
I apologize for the length of this essay, and thank you for reading it.
) This better explains my previous rant in a non banning mannor, i like it
