Victim of Technocide
- Thread starter Shamus Young
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Har har, very funny. Nonsense, but funny.Cheeze_Pavilion said:
More seriously, this little exhange gave me pause for thought and I did some digging. I found this:
http://www.webmediabrands.com/corporate/releases/02.11.06-gamerep.html
Note the date - 2002! That report is based on the US market, and from what other info I could gather it seems the average age is slightly younger in the global market taken as a whole, but even taking that into account it seems I'm well behind the times.
That article drew similar conclusions to mine - that content would have to mature - and yet it seems we were both wrong. Seven years after that was written the content hasn't matured at all (unless "matured" just means more blood and sex). I guess I can forget the idea that "Serious Games For Grown-ups" will ever materialise on consoles. Oh well...
Sorry for going OT, Shamus.
Having been around for a long time, I still remember the drunken conversations in the pub where I was the only person not really excited about the release of Windows 3.1.
Also the time where my techy friend told me that 3dfx cards were a waste of time, and then wondered why I started thrashing the hell out of him at Quake, because I could actually see the incoming rockets.
I wouldn't say it was the GPU that killed it though, rather the final stake through the heart.
Going back to the earlier days and the all encompassing genius that was around Elite. (A graphical shoote em up trading game in 32k???? That's nearly a millionth of normal hard disks now) It was the pressures of fitting things into the miniscule memory that really brought out the genius to the games market. Titles like The Last V8 (By the preformed Codemasters) and Kickstart which included stunning tracks by Rob Hubbard, graphics just on the side of visible but gameplay off the scale. And all because you simply didn't have that much to work with.
Knock it forward to today and you only really get the genius like L4D or GTA:VC in titles that have had an entire company dedicated to them. (Titles like The Path not withstanding), so recuperation of sales has become more important than player base. That's why the consoles took off, and were saturated with characters to sell them. (Even Commander Keen never really represented the PC)
People like things simple, and they were prepared to wait 7 minutes to load in a game as long as it was there to play and not to dissect. Atari's cartridges showed that, (4K a game!) but ultimately the push towards the computer illiterate, started by Windows WYSIWYG, that killed the PC. Once you've homogenized the product, the peripherals have to follow.
Sony can't do an RTS to save their life (and can only just cope with an MMO), but if they can throw pretty characters at you, why should they? Same with Nintendo.
Also the time where my techy friend told me that 3dfx cards were a waste of time, and then wondered why I started thrashing the hell out of him at Quake, because I could actually see the incoming rockets.
I wouldn't say it was the GPU that killed it though, rather the final stake through the heart.
Going back to the earlier days and the all encompassing genius that was around Elite. (A graphical shoote em up trading game in 32k???? That's nearly a millionth of normal hard disks now) It was the pressures of fitting things into the miniscule memory that really brought out the genius to the games market. Titles like The Last V8 (By the preformed Codemasters) and Kickstart which included stunning tracks by Rob Hubbard, graphics just on the side of visible but gameplay off the scale. And all because you simply didn't have that much to work with.
Knock it forward to today and you only really get the genius like L4D or GTA:VC in titles that have had an entire company dedicated to them. (Titles like The Path not withstanding), so recuperation of sales has become more important than player base. That's why the consoles took off, and were saturated with characters to sell them. (Even Commander Keen never really represented the PC)
People like things simple, and they were prepared to wait 7 minutes to load in a game as long as it was there to play and not to dissect. Atari's cartridges showed that, (4K a game!) but ultimately the push towards the computer illiterate, started by Windows WYSIWYG, that killed the PC. Once you've homogenized the product, the peripherals have to follow.
Sony can't do an RTS to save their life (and can only just cope with an MMO), but if they can throw pretty characters at you, why should they? Same with Nintendo.
You and your friends are atypical and that makes your comment nonsense, assuming that by "a lot" you meant "a representative proportion" (and if you didn't then your post is relegated from "nonsense" to "pointless").Cheeze_Pavilion said:Wow--did not know that me and my friends are funny nonsenseonelifecrisis said:Har har, very funny. Nonsense, but funny.Cheeze_Pavilion said:
Bigger now than it's ever been? I wasn't talking about casual games... are you? There's the SIMS, WoW, and casual games... and... what else?Cheeze_Pavilion said:
LOL, this should be easy...Cheeze_Pavilion said:
I'll need a timescale for when you and your friends were "young" and playing PC games. You said you were playing StarCraft? So that gives me 1998 as a rough guide.
A quick google for "number of homes with pcs in 1998" found me this article:
http://news.cnet.com/Use-of-Internet,-home-PCs-surging/2100-1040_3-223399.html
As you can see it says that 40% of homes in the US had PCs in 1998 (and I think it's safe to assume that the US was ahead of the rest of the world in this respect). The same article says that a year later, in 1999, only half of all home PCs had Pentium-level processors. Pentium processors were entry-level for PC gaming in 1999, so that means that only 50% of home PCs were capable of playing games in 1999. Assuming it was also 50% in 1998 that means that while you were playing StarCraft four out of five homes didn't have a PC that was even capable of running it.
Next I changed my google search to "number of homes with gaming consoles in 2009" and the first result on the list was this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologyreviews/videogamereviewsandpreviews/4248136/Video-games-eight-out-of-ten-homes-own-a-next-gen-games-console.html
8 out of 10 here in the UK, so probably more like 9 out of 10 (if not 10 out of 10) in the US. Do I need to drill this point home by explaining the math to you? I'd describe you and your friends as "priviliged" although, given how oblivious you are, maybe "spoiled" would be more accurate? XD
Thanks, that was fun.
Yeah... OK... Europa Universalis, released in 2001, is certainly a testament to modern day PC gaming being "stronger than it's ever been". /sarcasmCheeze_Pavilion said:
Next in your list is Victoria which (Wikipedia informs me) was an RTS back in 2003... but I'll grant you that the RTS genre is in a fairly healthy state these days, even if that is only thanks to the fact that console gamers outright refuse to plug mice into their machines thereby forcing developers to come up with... how should I put this... novel ways of using a controller to play RTS games. Anyway...
Civilization and Sins of a Solar Empire are good examples but the two years between their releases mean they're spread a little thin, especially once one discounts the dust-gatherers in your list.
Mount & Blade? Come off it.
Now rather than taking this as an invitation to produce a "better" list of un-heard-of games, why don't you accept your own challenge instead: proof/source.
Try reading my posts before replying. I'm not going to quote myself, either read and reply or just don't reply.Cheeze_Pavilion said:
As for the math: at most one in five homes in 1998 had a PC used for gaming. Nowadays all homes have consoles. Therefore even if all PC gamers from 1998 now own and play consoles they would only consitute at most 20% of the console playing demographic, which makes them (i.e. you) atypical, like I said.
Thanks for supplying the various numbers and numerals missing from your previous post, but I'm still waiting for proof (with source) of anything you've asserted. Or is your whole argument basically "here is a handful of games I like, QED"?
I completely disagree with Shamus. Back in the day when we played DC or Sim City 2000 nobody used his computer for email and stuff like that. Except for people that bought it for playing. Saying that the GPU is responsible is just..wrong. Call up Dell and buy a PC for around 1000$ and you get a very good machine which can run any game that is out. 1000$ is a lot? True, but back in the day PCs weren't cheap either. Actually for 1000$ you would get a computer that would last half as long (remember how much you payed for that geforce 4? it was junk after 6 month, unuseable after 12. buy a graphiccard today and it is junk after a year, unuseable after 2 and a half). There was just simply no "bad" version without certain incremental parts. I remember paying about 400$ for a 4GB harddrive. And that was a good price. Prices dropped, PCs got more advanced, operation systems got stable finally. there is no need to upgrade our hardware/os for an office pc today. back in the day, there was, windows 3.11 -> 95 -> 98 -> 2000 - those were huge improvements. But today we have XP, which is cheap and reliable. No need to upgrade anything or buy Vista for that matter, it will support everything until the computer breaks down. Oh yeah and of course, gaming got more casual and accepted, just like any other hobby. 1970 watching a zombie-movie made you some sort of socityfreak. Nobody cares now, it's pretty okay with everybody, maybe even popular. Same goes for gaming. And if things become popular, they become less complex. GPU is not the reason why pc-gaming is in decline, its the reason why it got so far.
Of course, no one who a: isn't a billionare, or b: has common sense, actually buys the $400 graphics card, considering the next model down is often less than half the price, and gets a difference in frame rates of about 4 FPS. Using the highest possible price is a flawed argument. Of course, even ~$180 is a lot of money for a normal user.Virgil said:
With that said, I think that this article is completely right. Now no matter how you want to game, you need to get specialized hardware in the form of either a console or an upgraded PC. The days when you could use an "everyman" pc to do major gaming are long gone. (Though I gamed for years on a pc that was far less than "everyman", I doubt many other people enjoy playing exclusively pre-2002 games. I just upgraded last year.)
You're actually not that far off, strange as it sounds. Microsoft is intentionally trying to raise the minimum bar of PC hardware capabilities, because it's in their best interest to have better hardware to run their OS, and also in their best interest to see gaming become more accessible to the general public.man-man said:
People that games on PCs almost invariably run Windows, and many of the games they play don't run on other OS's. If they can get more people to play games on PCs (instead of generic web-based games) they can decrease the chance that those people will switch to another OS. And to do that, they need to make sure there's a better minimum hardware standard, and make things easier (hence the dedicated games section in Vista, the built-in benchmarking, etc).
But that's not the "latest pixel-accelerating toaster oven" - not my words, hisLiverandbacon said:
I didn't claim that it is logical, just that it is true.
There's also Europa Universalis: Rome and its expansion Vae Victis, the latter which came out just a few months ago. Hearts of Iron III is being released this year by Paradox, not to mention the point and click adventure genre hasn't been this healthy in years (Ceville, Vampyre Story, The Experiment and the upcoming Syberia III for instance).Cheeze_Pavilion said:
As someone who played through the glory years of the PC, I find this article to be an astute and accurate rundown of the platform's major weakness, cost and accessibility. Luckily, I keep a pretty bright outlook for the future: Game graphics have seemed to reach a plateau, and now it's time for the big-dollar GPU's to slim down in price and yet still deliver the goods on the latest games. The implementation of better integrated video chips would be excellent towards this end, as it has been a long time since the average video game player was a hardware hobbyist as well. Making the PC a turnkey gaming platform again could be wonderful.
Unless people are ripping numbers out of their arses, this thread is full of a lot of sad and/or ignorant people. Unless you're buying a Dell (in which case... lol,) there is no reason why you should really spend anywhere over $1200 or so for a new box.
Since the economic downturn, video card prices have plumetted. Processors are holding steady at about $200 for the most economical ones. It's now cheaper than it ever has been to fill your mobo to the brim with RAM. For under $300 you can buy a 24" LCD Monitor. Where are people spending $2400+? WATER COOLING? Hah!
My box, which runs Vista Ultimate, can run Crysis in DX10 at near-top settings, cost me exactly $1000 2 years ago. Now my box would likely only cost about $700-800. Currently, I have yet to find a game that strains my computer to the extent of playability and it likely won't happen for quite a few more years.
The problem is that when it comes to PC building, there's a lot of "wizzing" contests going on, and if you take advice from the wrong people you could be fooled into believing that buying a good PC could cost you an insane amount of money.
These are the people who are running a Quad Core Processor, 8GB of RAM, 2-3 Video Cards, Water cooled (when passive is quieter AND cheaper), all the while using Windows XP 32. They're completely oblivious to software bottlenecking and likely are just buying the most expensive parts they can find on newegg so they can brag about it to their friends (or if they have none, message boards.)
I think it's these people that are ruining gamers' perception of PC gaming, because many believe you require such a machine to game. But it's far from the truth.
Since the economic downturn, video card prices have plumetted. Processors are holding steady at about $200 for the most economical ones. It's now cheaper than it ever has been to fill your mobo to the brim with RAM. For under $300 you can buy a 24" LCD Monitor. Where are people spending $2400+? WATER COOLING? Hah!
My box, which runs Vista Ultimate, can run Crysis in DX10 at near-top settings, cost me exactly $1000 2 years ago. Now my box would likely only cost about $700-800. Currently, I have yet to find a game that strains my computer to the extent of playability and it likely won't happen for quite a few more years.
The problem is that when it comes to PC building, there's a lot of "wizzing" contests going on, and if you take advice from the wrong people you could be fooled into believing that buying a good PC could cost you an insane amount of money.
These are the people who are running a Quad Core Processor, 8GB of RAM, 2-3 Video Cards, Water cooled (when passive is quieter AND cheaper), all the while using Windows XP 32. They're completely oblivious to software bottlenecking and likely are just buying the most expensive parts they can find on newegg so they can brag about it to their friends (or if they have none, message boards.)
I think it's these people that are ruining gamers' perception of PC gaming, because many believe you require such a machine to game. But it's far from the truth.
I resent that last comment. The PC doesn't sit in a retirement home talking about the good old days. Because the PC is still pretty great as a games platform and there are great games that come out for the PC exclusively even though there aren't that many. But other than that the article is pretty interesting take on why the PC isn't the ultimate platform. I guess developers who want their games to sell on the PC as well should try and make games with graphics that are extremely scalable or which have low end graphics in the first place i.e. like world of warcraft or like sins of a solar empire. Game developers have to stop being the graphics rock star when it comes to a platform like the PC, and so far I can think of only three developers who do this i.e. Valve, Ironclad Games, Blizzard.
+1 point for doing some research. Minus a thousand for being needlessly combative and personally insulting. There is simply no reason to act this way.onelifecrisis said:
And while I'm replying to onelifecrisis, this applies to a lot of other people in this thread. This whole discussion is full of way more venom than is needed for a discussion about technology and market forces. Discussions about gaming, its culture, and technology are fun. "Ha ha ur dumb I win lulz" isn't. I would encourage everyone to stop taking this stuff so personally.
Case in point to what I was talking in the last comment: There is no reason to get upset about this. I took a hyperbolic jab at the PC as a gaming platform. If you disagree with my conclusions then by all means, post your thoughts. That's what we're here for. But if you feel like I've personally insulted you, then the fault is with you.Speedster4Life said:
To those who have been taking about World of Warcraft as proof that PC gaming is just dandy: I think you're proving my point. The biggest PC game out there is over three years old and is now aged enough that it WILL run on integrated graphics cards and standard laptops. As an earlier commenter pointed out, I think stagnation in the GPU market would be a massive boon to the PC.
I never said that PC gaming sucked, it that there weren't any good games, or that people who used the platform were closet rapists. I just said its influence had diminished. ("Influence" in this case being big-name titles and press attention. Arguably both are emergent properties of underlying shifts in platform usage.)
I never said that PC gaming sucked, it that there weren't any good games, or that people who used the platform were closet rapists. I just said its influence had diminished. ("Influence" in this case being big-name titles and press attention. Arguably both are emergent properties of underlying shifts in platform usage.)