PC gamers can't stop complaining

This is pretty much a dead horse, I was going to write up a novel addressing this, but decided not to, instead here's some cliffs.

Cliffs: PC Gamers spend a lot on their rigs
PC Gamers want the best possible gaming experience, which is why they invest in aforementioned rigs and peruse websites like this in order to make an informed purchasing decision on hardware
PC Gamers know about Steam sales and know they can get games cheap
PC Gamers expect patches and updates for their games
PC Gamers are divided on DRM with the anti-DRM people being more vocal than the ones who just take it
PC Gamers can smell bullshit from miles away
 
50k is not a lot of copies for a big title and hasn't been considered big for a while. The question that needs to be asked is how much does it cost to develop the port and how much profit do they need to make to make it worth while?
 
Kinda nice really. He doesn't know I'm alive (or, most PC users apparently) and, I didn't know Stanislas Mettra was alive until this article. I think that 's what makes the world liveable, not knowing the asshats that surround us. I wish him all the best and I'm sure he's right about not getting any money from me.
 
PC gamers are bitchy. No doubt about it. But to say that people asking for your game is bitching... well then, I'm not sure exactly what he wants... I guess if console gamers ask for a sequel he will consider them bitchy as well? Heaven forbid they have to do some work.
 
he's seriously gonna regret saying that, this story is all over the net now, expect a public apology tomorrow.

what a wanker though.
 
Well, yeah, if your game is shitty, then it will only sell 50k copies and probably not be worth the time and expense to port. If you, as a well-funded developer backed by Ubisoft are unable to sell more copies than some indie games like "Cthulu Saves The World" (100k+ copies in about half a year on PC), then that's a bit fail on your part as a developer, and you shouldn't be using PC gamers or piracy as a strawman.

Piracy - does it exist? Yes.
Does piracy make it not worthwhile to port to PC if you sell 100k - 5mil legitimate copies? Hmm let's do the math here.
 
To make nothing makes no sense. They could at least do a shitty port and take the money and run. Sounds like laziness to me.
 
I don't recall all this bitching back when every game WASNT a console port. Players were happy and friends with puppies and rainbows. Now just RAGE AND <racist fag joke here blalbhalbalh>.
 
silentsnake09 said:
To make nothing makes no sense. They could at least do a shitty port and take the money and run. Sounds like laziness to me.
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Agreed. I will take a bad port over no port at all. At least the amazing and dedicated community can make fan-patches or whatnot for the game. The PC has a bad rap already in the eyes of many developers, they'd be happy to stop making games for it altogether. They think we just aren't worth it anymore and that console development will bring boat-loads of money.
 
AmberClad said:
Well, yeah, if your game is shitty, then it will only sell 50k copies and probably not be worth the time and expense to port. If you, as a well-funded developer backed by Ubisoft are unable to sell more copies than some indie games like "Cthulu Saves The World" (100k+ copies in about half a year on PC), then that's a bit fail on your part as a developer, and you shouldn't be using PC gamers or piracy as a strawman.

Piracy - does it exist? Yes.
Does piracy make it not worthwhile to port to PC if you sell 100k - 5mil legitimate copies? Hmm let's do the math here.
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Cthulu Saves the World was also like $3 or something. HUGE difference between $3 and $50-60.
 
Derangel said:
Cthulu Saves the World was also like $3 or something. HUGE difference between $3 and $50-60.
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I really hope they don't intend to charge $60 for an XBLA/PSN game that they are marketing as a single-A (as in not AAA) game. A more appropriate comparison might be OMD!, which was made by an established developer but marketed as an arcade title for around $15.
 
Maybe when the next console generation is released and is more on par with current PC's developers will work more with the PC. Right now I guess they might be thinking "do we dumb down the pc or console version?". The best thing that could happen is if Xbox 720 is even more "pc friendly" developing for and etc.
 
AmberClad said:
I really hope they don't intend to charge $60 for an XBLA/PSN game that they are marketing as a single-A (as in not AAA) game. A more appropriate comparison might be OMD!, which was made by an established developer but marketed as an arcade title for around $15.
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Oh I am Alive is just a PSN/XBLA game? Well that changes things a lot.
 
Anyways, from what I've read, this game has had a troubled development history with various delays, the project being dropped by the original developers and being picked up for completion in-house at Ubisoft, and being downgraded from its original AAA status to single-A.

My theory: They know the game will bomb, and there's no point wasting further resources on a PC version of a product which will fail anyway. The piracy thing / lack of PC audience is just a scapegoat.
 
silentsnake09 said:
Maybe when the next console generation is released and is more on par with current PC's developers will work more with the PC. Right now I guess they might be thinking "do we dumb down the pc or console version?". The best thing that could happen is if Xbox 720 is even more "pc friendly" developing for and etc.
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Agreed, if developers are going to primarily develop for consoles, I hope the next consoles can have architectures more similar to the PC to make porting easier for them. They already don't want to port many games to the PC, things need to be as easy for the developers as possible. Its a damn shame that games for the consoles are all but guaranteed, but we PC gamers have to beg and pray that the developers shall be kind enough to give us a port, even a bad port at that. Sigh.... :(
 
as much as i hate to say it, this is simply one tiny part of the slow decline of pc gaming.....and it was bound to happen. The number of people who A. give a damn to have anything better than a console, and then on top of that they B. are willing to spend the time and money to get it......well.....you get a pretty small group of people in the big picture and his comments reflect that fact.

pc gaming is only important to pc gamers. those developers can feed you all the bullshit you can eat about how they are developing for pc.....but take a look around at the latest games guys....essentially all ports, obvious ports, and it's nobody's fault, they have to follow the money trail

it even goes further within the console crowd. for instance i am a huge fan of racing games. i gave up pc gaming and went to a xbox 360 for some 1080p 55" couch controller button mashing love and honestly have never looked back. But the Forza franchise has started spending dev time and money adding idiotic shit like car bowling and tag........shit that has nothing to do with being a serious racing game. They do it because they have to in order to attract a broader audience. It's simple economics.
 
That's kind of like saying your buddy won't stop bitching because every time you go hunting, you shoot him. Sometimes there are valid reasons for "bitching".
 
Make shit games for the PC and people will complain, it's not enough to simply make a console game and then port it over because that's not appropriate for the PC.

Most of the bitching is about things that could be solved if developers actually took the time to make a proper PC game, very little of the bitching is about subjective issues like for example class balance and to be honest communities often largely agree on balances that need to be made in games.

You won't solve all the bitching because some of it is unreasonable and we have to acknowledge that as well, but that's not an excuse to dismiss PC gamers as whiny.

Most of the issues are retarded anyway and could be fixed in a matter of days work if the developers actually cared to, and in fact the community often does fix these issues when given the opportunity to with modding tools etc.

Take Skyrim for example, there's a massive amount of whining over this LAA flag in the exe, loads of Skyrim gamers are having endless CTDs and are using LAA flags to set the game to use more memory, something which the community has moaned about ever since Morrowind 10 years ago, and it's STILL NOT FIXED, ten fucking years! Not only do we have to perpetually fix bugs in their engine but they go and dick us over by releasing DRM to stop legit gamers patching their own games, meanwhile pirates download (and patch their own games) without issue.

Yeah so we whine, we whine about developers being MORONS and quite frankly the easiest way to resolve that problem is for the developers to act like normal functioning human beings with a brain that works and actually sort this shit out.
 
PC gaming, for the past decade, has been on a steady decline. As of now, we sit at ~10% of the market, However, that number is growing because of a few factors:

1: When the current generation of consoles first came out, they were ~$500 and it took a ~$1700 machine to produce like graphics. Nowadays, the average $500 home PC is able to run games that look close-to-or-as-good-as Xbox and PS3, and if you spend a little more, you have options like Eyefinity, >HD resolutions, Anti-aliasing and whatnot.

2: The average gamer is learning about PC hardware, and learning that mom's Dell can be upgraded into a pretty decent machine, for less than what it would cost to buy a new console.

3. Battlefield 3. I can't tell you the amount of hardware sales BF3 has spawned.

My predictions: by the next console launch, we'll see PC at a 15-20% market share against Consoles and handheld devices, but once the new wave of consoles launch, it will go back down to %10 in less than two years.
 
silentsnake09 said:
Maybe when the next console generation is released and is more on par with current PC's developers will work more with the PC. Right now I guess they might be thinking "do we dumb down the pc or console version?". The best thing that could happen is if Xbox 720 is even more "pc friendly" developing for and etc.
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I doubt it. They'll probably go back to the excuse that was used after the launch of the 360. "Mainstream PC hardware is unable to run our game, so we aren't releasing a PC version" even though it was blatantly untrue.
 
if I pay $60 for a game I expect that game to work reasonably well right out of the box, to work with my ATI/AMD video card

see where the PC gamers are getting mad?
 
KazeoHin said:
PC gaming, for the past decade, has been on a steady decline. As of now, we sit at ~10% of the market, However, that number is growing because of a few factors:

1: When the current generation of consoles first came out, they were ~$500 and it took a ~$1700 machine to produce like graphics. Nowadays, the average $500 home PC is able to run games that look close-to-or-as-good-as Xbox and PS3, and if you spend a little more, you have options like Eyefinity, >HD resolutions, Anti-aliasing and whatnot.

2: The average gamer is learning about PC hardware, and learning that mom's Dell can be upgraded into a pretty decent machine, for less than what it would cost to buy a new console.

3. Battlefield 3. I can't tell you the amount of hardware sales BF3 has spawned.

My predictions: by the next console launch, we'll see PC at a 15-20% market share against Consoles and handheld devices, but once the new wave of consoles launch, it will go back down to %10 in less than two years.
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not really, not what i see

1. todays console is $99-$199, even with a few games you aren't even at $500, pc gaming still costs considerably more, not to mention, average joe doesn't even know what you are talking about and is not interested in spending more money, more often(upgrades) to have less comfort (compared to a wireless controller and a 360) and more problems (patches, drivers, operating system, yada yada). Bottom line, if average joe can spend $200 and plop on the couch with a controller and be in the game in less than two minutes, he isn't going to go any further.

2. a simple video card upgrade by itself costs as much or more than an entire console....

3. a quick poll of normal everyday average joe people would certainly reveal that the overwhelming majority of people purchased BF3 on a console platform

I'm just so sick and tired of reading the biased opinions on this site, where kids try to claim pc gaming is as cheap and easy as consoles......it's all a pipe dream guys....as you said, pc gaming is on a slow decline, and it's dropping off still. The line between pc gaming and console gaming is blurring day after day.


YeuEmMaiMai said:
if I pay $60 for a game I expect that game to work reasonably well right out of the box, to work with my ATI/AMD video card

see where the PC gamers are getting mad?
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thats why people get turned off from pc gaming, they have to research and upgrade and tinker......
 
nobody_here said:
thats why people get turned off from pc gaming, they have to research and upgrade and tinker......
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lol tinker my you know what tinkering around with settings is not the same as expecting the game to work reasonably well out of the box... I understand that if I want to play inset game title here, that i might have to upgrade and I do not have a problem with that. if I install a game and it crashes due to lazy programmer and then I have to wait for a patch, then I DO have a problem with that and this is the biggest reason I do not buy games at full retail
 
The publishers and especially Microsoft would love to kill off PC gaming for good. Why mess with things like mods when they will gladly sell you DLC and where it will be the only option left to expand a game? :(:mad:

Why have an open platform when a closed platform is better for the corporation's pockets, where you have to pay for online gaming, pay extra for proprietary accessories, pay for DLC already on the disc, etc.

It will be a sad day if PC gaming dies. Or shall we fade into oblivion without a whimper like arcade gamers have? :(

A part of me would like to see a day if tablet and smartphone gaming takes off full blast and the developers cater towards them instead. When console gamers then complain they don't get lots of games they do, or they get
watered down ports and are called "whiny elitists" by the mobile gamers and developers.
 
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YeuEmMaiMai said:
lol tinker my you know what tinkering around with settings is not the same as expecting the game to work reasonably well out of the box... I understand that if I want to play inset game title here, that i might have to upgrade and I do not have a problem with that. if I install a game and it crashes due to lazy programmer and then I have to wait for a patch, then I DO have a problem with that and this is the biggest reason I do not buy games at full retail
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i agree, thats just one more reason people migrate to a console
 
I appreicate the devs response. He basically stopped short of saying the game was made for console gamers only.

The dev knows it's a console game and it doesn't live up to the standards of a PC title, keep it on console. PC gamers will trash it when they find out that the game is a horrible port.
PC gamers shouldn't ask for console trash on their PC just to feel included. Let the devs who make console first games, without giving PC a single thought, keep their games on console.
 
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nobody_here said:
not really, not what i see

1. todays console is $99-$199, even with a few games you aren't even at $500, pc gaming still costs considerably more, not to mention, average joe doesn't even know what you are talking about and is not interested in spending more money, more often(upgrades) to have less comfort (compared to a wireless controller and a 360) and more problems (patches, drivers, operating system, yada yada). Bottom line, if average joe can spend $200 and plop on the couch with a controller and be in the game in less than two minutes, he isn't going to go any further.

2. a simple video card upgrade by itself costs as much or more than an entire console....

3. a quick poll of normal everyday average joe people would certainly reveal that the overwhelming majority of people purchased BF3 on a console platform

I'm just so sick and tired of reading the biased opinions on this site, where kids try to claim pc gaming is as cheap and easy as consoles......it's all a pipe dream guys....as you said, pc gaming is on a slow decline, and it's dropping off still. The line between pc gaming and console gaming is blurring day after day.




thats why people get turned off from pc gaming, they have to research and upgrade and tinker......
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To upgrade to a super-powerful card in the range of a 6970 or GTX 580, yes, it costs more than a console, however to upgrade to a $99 video card, you are looking at better visuals for less. I sense a bit of frustration in your voice, but you need to look at the facts: PC gaming is just about dead, but it has started to slowly build up in the last year. I can't tell you the exact numbers, but major titles are starting to see a ~15% purchase rate on PCs, which is a huge improvement on the roughly 10% polled at the end of 2010.
 
Phrases like "the decline of PC gaming" are thrown around a lot, but is it the percentage of the gaming market that's declining, or the absolute number of PC games being sold? I suspect it's only the former. But thanks to the likes of WoW and The Sims, if you don't sell a trillion copies of a game it's considered a failure.
 
Ubisoft is engaged in an open war on PC gamers, but PC gamers most certainly did not fire the first shot.
 
It's times like these that I wish I could make my own video games. Then I'll advertise the hell out of it until it gets the most hype across the industry. Then before release I'll put on one more ad saying it's a PC exclusive, Macs included.
 
PC gamers like to bitch, lazy developers like to blame piracy. Nothing new here.
 
Climber said:
PC gamers like to bitch, lazy developers like to blame piracy. Nothing new here.
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Let's say if all developers started to focus on making games for tablets. All future "AAA" games are only touchscreen and/or motion control using an accelerometer, etc. The console gamers complain that they are being neglected, getting sloppy ports and no more games are made exclusively for buttons. Would their complaining be called "bitching" as well?
 
I really dont understand how any developer can not make a game for the pc when there building it with one. You dont go out and create the latest and greatest game using an xbox do you. With out all of our want for higher resolution and more fps on out pc your consoles would be stuck in the n64 ages it becsause of pc that we have seen the nvidia 6000,7000,8000,9000,200.mild 300 in laptops,400 and now 500 series card same aas with the ati version but you get my point with out us wanting more the gpu companys would not be so pushed to make somethine newer and better all the time. same goes for our cpu us pc enthusianst be it us gamer web developers movie makers or simple server to hold and send our data the cpu company would be so apped to make something ass fast as they do now.
This is just my opinion and you may or may not agree with it but if a company doesnt want to make it for people who puch the envelope so there games can get better well then dont use what we have made to make your games any more let the console players push the envelope.
 
I also beleive if they would make all these fps shooter like bf3 and cod so us pc gamers can play the console gamers alot woul switch to pc as we have better resolution better graphics and dag nabbit i can no scope snipe a mofo from half a screen away on my pc dam xbox and ps3 user swouldnt even see the muzzle flash crappy 4 series old gpus
 
nerdydesi said:
Let's say if all developers started to focus on making games for tablets. All future "AAA" games are only touchscreen and/or motion control using an accelerometer, etc. The console gamers complain that they are being neglected, getting sloppy ports and no more games are made exclusively for buttons. Would their complaining be called "bitching" as well?
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Stop looking for things that aren't there and words I'm not saying. Developers like to say PC gamers bitch alot, well PC gamers are tired of lazy developers and blaming it on us. Make a great game with a great story and give us options, is it really that much?
 
nerdydesi said:
The console gamers complain that they are being neglected, getting sloppy ports and no more games are made exclusively for buttons.
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This WILL happen.

Everyone will complain about the smartphonization of their console games. :D
 
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