Why PC Games Need E3 Now More Than Ever

There is an editorial posted today at VG24/7 that goes into detail about why PC games need E3 now more than ever. Wait, shouldn't that be the other way around?

It’s a common belief that these matters don’t concern the PC market, what with over 65 million Steam users keeping the market afloat, and the influx of indie darlings making interesting projects on a shoestring budget. Why should bedroom coders give a toss whether their passion project appears on that sweaty Los Angeles show floor? What possible reason could they have for wanting a piece of that action?

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Pointless circular reasoning article.

The indies need the big boys because the big boys need the indies because the...

"Lost" in a flood of indie titles? No. Good indie titles are still coming to the surface. While I agree that what the author describes COULD happen, I don't see us being there yet. Yes, there are a flood of indie games. And 99 out of 100 of them are OUTRIGHT TERRIBLE and deserve their fate. Remaining unknown. When gamers find something really cool, like FTL for example, it ramps up and gets noticed because the few who play it suddenly start shouting over the noise about how damn good it is.

What do you guys think? Am I wrong? Have you played a great indie game that no one else ever even heard of and never got any attention at all?

^ I think you're right, Advil. I dunno about 99 out of 100 being terrible, but I'll agree that - generally speaking - the better titles rise to the top, somewhat like Reddit posts. And like Reddit posts, some may reach the top that are worthless and really don't belong there, and that's okay too. In the absence of a perfect system, go with the best system.

At the end of the day I'd say more choice is better than less. We've seen the alternative to this because it exists on the closed, locked down, corporate homogenized console platforms, that essentially laugh at the idea of "Indie"

Advil said:

What do you guys think? Am I wrong? Have you played a great indie game that no one else ever even heard of and never got any attention at all?

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There are plenty of great indie games that no one's ever heard of. Jeff Vogel, who the article mentions, wrote how there are too many games, but he's also written about the copious work he did to get his games noticed. Just creating a great game won't get people to play it.

Remember, games are very subjective, so if a person posts an RPG in an FPS forum, that probably won't go far. And how many games do you have in your Steam backlog that have never been touched? A smaller group of people making a game out of passion can't compete with the big boys technically, so if you can't suck in your audience in the first 2 minutes of gameplay, chances are nobody will continue to play. And not only that, you have to get people to spread word about your game to people who will listen.

I doubt that a game like FTL or Minecraft became hits purely due to just being good games. There probably was a lot of viral advertising involved and other work behind the scenes.

As far as more choice being better than less, I'm torn. On one hand, I'd like more than CoD vs Halo 2014, but too many games was a factor in the video game crash of '83. Although, I also feel that if the audience was smaller, we wouldn't get all those trash games, and the people making the games would probably put more love into them.

"Indie" games are kind of iffy for me. I mean there have been some really funny ones I've played (FTL you mentioned) and others which aren't super fun but for some reason I can't put down. However once I start playing one particular type I'm noticing lots of others that are recycling the same ideas, one that seems to be big is mediocre graphics (i.e. "8-bit" or "pixels") and mining/craft/building/rinse/repeat.

That said the amount of indie games that I want to play out there seems to be flooded over with the amount of indie games I don't want anything to do with.

The majority of games by big publishers are also terrible.

but..but... won't the PC Gaming Alliance be there!

sfsuphysics said:

"Indie" games are kind of iffy for me. I mean there have been some really funny ones I've played (FTL you mentioned) and others which aren't super fun but for some reason I can't put down. However once I start playing one particular type I'm noticing lots of others that are recycling the same ideas, one that seems to be big is mediocre graphics (i.e. "8-bit" or "pixels") and mining/craft/building/rinse/repeat.

That said the amount of indie games that I want to play out there seems to be flooded over with the amount of indie games I don't want anything to do with.

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Indie games owe their lively hood to PC, as console is all about go big or go home. Minecraft is a Indie game and it's the best selling game ever. That includes PC and console versions.

But Indie developers don't have the budget that big name companies have, so they end up focusing on gameplay over graphics. Graphics are what cost the most when developing a game. Gameplay mechanics in comparison is practically free.

Someone here suggested I was an idiot for hating FarCry 3 without playing it, and it was on sale and bought it. I played the game and wish I never did. It was exactly as I figured it would be. An over the top movie with adrenaline pumped into you constantly. But the game has QTE or quick time events which require me to hit buttons at certain points. Lots of pointless quests that give me money, which I didn't need. Lots of collectibles which I didn't bother. Areas I didn't explore cause the game didn't require it to finish. Enemies would suddenly appear in front of me. Enemies would also be firing their gun next to me and miss, while at a distance they had no problem hitting me.

But the game sold very well and even got good ratings on multiple websites even on MetaCritic. I hoping this was based on the graphics and not the game overall, but I have a feeling that's exactly how people rated this game. If this game had the budget of an Indie game it would be a horrible failure. Cause without all those fancy graphics and animation you would get bored very quickly. At what point do you get bored of killing random human beings in a game like this? At least there were animals in the game, which helped spice things up a bit. And there was a boss in this game, which seems rather rare to see in modern games. But it was seen midway of the game.

Point is PC harbors modern games that focus on gameplay over graphics, which sounds strange cause the PC is the king of graphics. Which is why nearly any PC is a gaming PC. E3 is not a place for PC gaming as it just shows off graphics whoring in games. Which will just get people excited for another Hollywood type sandbox game which considers collecting useless unimportant items in the game as gameplay.

Maybe they would need E3, if the Internet did not exist. I honestly don't care about E3 anymore. It's just a grouping of announcments that would otherwise have been spread out over a month or two otherwise. It's not like I've ever gone to the show anyway.

E3 is not a place for PC gaming as it just shows off graphics whoring in games.

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The irony is double for this as Far Cry 3 is another game misrepresented at E3 since the gameplay footage there shows WAY more foliage than the retail copy. To me this killed the atmosphere some since I wanted to feel like I was in a thick jungle rather than grasslands with some extra trees. Graphics can help establish an atmosphere to a game, but some large companies are just going to pull a bait and switch on that E3, so what's the point.

Ashbringer said:

But the game sold very well and even got good ratings on multiple websites even on MetaCritic. I hoping this was based on the graphics and not the game overall, but I have a feeling that's exactly how people rated this game. If this game had the budget of an Indie game it would be a horrible failure. Cause without all those fancy graphics and animation you would get bored very quickly. At what point do you get bored of killing random human beings in a game like this? At least there were animals in the game, which helped spice things up a bit. And there was a boss in this game, which seems rather rare to see in modern games. But it was seen midway of the game.

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I enjoyed FC3 because of a good acting. Sure story can be told in texts like Baldure's and still be done well, but a good acting is nonetheless appreciated and rarely comes by in today's entertainment. The graphics, or the game mechanic was just extra stuff for me, not to mention some collectables and side missions I didn't even bother.

infojunkie said:

I enjoyed FC3 because of a good acting. Sure story can be told in texts like Baldure's and still be done well, but a good acting is nonetheless appreciated and rarely comes by in today's entertainment. The graphics, or the game mechanic was just extra stuff for me, not to mention some collectables and side missions I didn't even bother.

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The acting was done well, but the story was stupid. To the point where my eyes rolled over in my head a few things. Couldn't stop laughing from the tribe warriors who have mostly white muscular guys with excellent hair cuts. It's like they visited Jersey Shore to populate their little insane click. Oh and the sex scene was pointless. Now suddenly my main character doesn't want to go home and wants stay in an island full of drug lords, murderers, and human trafficking? I would go back home and get my country to nuke the place from orbit.

tetris42 said:

The irony is double for this as Far Cry 3 is another game misrepresented at E3 since the gameplay footage there shows WAY more foliage than the retail copy. To me this killed the atmosphere some since I wanted to feel like I was in a thick jungle rather than grasslands with some extra trees. Graphics can help establish an atmosphere to a game, but some large companies are just going to pull a bait and switch on that E3, so what's the point.

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Most likely because the console version couldn't handle it, and I doubt they want to give PC an obvious advantage over console. Surprisingly the game ran at full settings with my PC, which is really good for those graphics. I did have a problem finding dead bodies of animals I killed so I could skin them. I had a hard time seeing enemies shooting me through the foliage as well. The AI certainly doesn't have that problem. Which means the game engine wasn't that sophisticated. The AI was the worst in this game. Why would they miss me up close, but have no problem pelting me from a distance?

>PC gamers need E3

Nobody needs E3, for over 10 years now every E3 has gone into peddling lies at the consumer

I remember E3 had PC games and I thought it was great. For someone like me that plays both it was awesome seeing all the games being announced. I remember getting seeing Quake 3 and Deus Ex at E3 back in 1999. It was also great seeing all the Dreamcast coverage as well. I remember seeing stuff about Halo before microsoft bought it and thought it was just amazing.

Those were the days, no bitching about PC versus console. It was all about the games.