Playing games on the PC is making a comeback

[SharpeXB]

"Video game consoles have long dominated the video game industry, offering a seemingly cheaper and more consistent experience. But not for long.

Sales generated by PC games are poised to overtake those for video game consoles, a monumental shift that is many years in the making, according to data from industry researcher PwC. By the end of 2016, PC game sales are expected to reach $29 billion around the world, compared with $28 billion in sales for the console market."

 

http://www.cnet.com/news/playing-games-on-the-pc-is-making-a-comeback/?tag=nl.e497&s_cid=e497&ttag=e497&ftag=CAD5920658

[Original_Uwe]

WOOT!

[6./ZG26_Emil]

I hope this means we get less lazy console ports and more games made for PC gamers

[Sokol1]

But the E3 2015 PC games presentation at 1/2 days was very boring ... People will stay with console if have seen. 

[johncage]

99 percent of the stuff at e3 was garbage, pc or console regardless. formulaic crap is lucrative. this won't change until people become more intelligent, cultured, sophisticated, etc. so in the meantime, let them gobble up overpriced fast food detritus. i mean fallout 4 looked atrocious, but there you have these losers dribbling over it.

 

only thing remotely original and aesthetically coherent was some smallish european indie game called kingdom come deliverance.

Edited June 20, 2015 by johncage

[SharpeXB]

 only thing remotely original and aesthetically coherent was some smallish european indie game called kingdom come deliverance.

And that Kingdom Come Deliverance looks &$#%ing awesome!

[Cybermat47]

99 percent of the stuff at e3 was garbage, pc or console regardless. formulaic crap is lucrative. this won't change until people become more intelligent, cultured, sophisticated, etc. so in the meantime, let them gobble up overpriced fast food detritus. i mean fallout 4 looked atrocious, but there you have these losers dribbling over it.

 

only thing remotely original and aesthetically coherent was some smallish european indie game called kingdom come deliverance.

 

Oh, how I've missed posts that insult everyone who isn't a flight simmer (and quite a few people who are) 

[6./ZG26_Emil]

99 percent of the stuff at e3 was garbage, pc or console regardless. formulaic crap is lucrative. this won't change until people become more intelligent, cultured, sophisticated, etc. so in the meantime, let them gobble up overpriced fast food detritus. i mean fallout 4 looked atrocious, but there you have these losers dribbling over it.

 

only thing remotely original and aesthetically coherent was some smallish european indie game called kingdom come deliverance.

 

I concur with this as well, there are good games out there but they aren't generally in the mainstream but that's because most people seem to want dumb and easy games just like their TV and movies as well. 

 

I miss the days when the masses didn't have the internet and computers :D

[FlatSpinMan]

I tried the old CoD Black Ops last week as it was only 9 bucks on Steam, and I knee it had been a huge game in kicking that series' popularity into the stratosphere.

 

I liked the idea and presentation of the story, and the settings were cool, but I couldn't believe how frenetic and on rails the levels I played were! I felt like I was on a roller coaster - fun, exciting, but essentially a passive experience. All I could do was look desperately for the flashing Objective tag while blindly, compulsively spraying any thing at all with bullets.

[Uufflakke]

only thing remotely original and aesthetically coherent was some smallish european indie game called kingdom come deliverance.

 

Kingdome Come: Deliverance is basically the only non combat flight sim I follow on a regular base.

I was blown away by its visual qualities. Never seen anything like that.

Gotta say that RPG's are not my kinda game and in case I get bored with the quests I just take a stroll through the villages or go wandering through the woods.

The good thing is though it does not contain soucerers, dragons and witches.

 

Kingdome Come: Deliverance at E3 2015.

 

[Cybermat47]

I miss the days when the masses didn't have the internet and computers :D

You're joking, right?

[6./ZG26_Emil]

You're joking, right?

 

No

[SharpeXB]

No

You miss all those great computer games from 1981? Because those were so much better than what we have today ;-P

[Cybermat47]

No

Okay, fair enough.

 

Personally, I like the fact that there are so many different video game companies, and so many video game players. I simply get bored without variety.

[unreasonable]

Playing games on the PC never went away. It is more that the convenience and standardization of consoles led to a huge increase in the market, most of it in new niches aimed at a wider audience than nerds (displays low numbered nerd membership card). 

 

For instance, I enjoy wargames - tactical, operational, strategic whatever, as long as they are set in a historic context. Have loved them ever since finding my first table top rules set, onwards to Strategy&Tactics magazine hex based games, (1972! Gulp! Winter War - USSR vs Finland) on to Steel Panthers (1995) and beyond. I have spent more time on SPWW2 ( 1999 essentially a big paid mod for the original) campaign battles than I care to remember!

 

Publishers like Matrix have been producing excellent PC wargames ( and some bad ones) all along and will continue to do so, because the graphics requirements are so limited, making a small buyer base economically viable.

 

The key difference now between PC and console games, IMHO, is the ability for community enhancement of the base game through mods. The ability to do that pulls in people who wish to interact with the game in more ways than just playing it as the makers intended, which in turn leads to improvements in the base game and its successors.

 

Making a game specifically for PC and then designing in mod-proofness is bizarre. Designing for a console would seem a much better approach to get the portion of that market who just want to play out of the box. A port to PC could follow if the numbers seem to justify the effort. I am not sure why 1CGS did not go this route for BoS.

Edited June 22, 2015 by unreasonable

[6./ZG26_Emil]

You miss all those great computer games from 1981? Because those were so much better than what we have today ;-P

 

Well I do miss how the gaming industry was before consoles became big, now gaming is like Hollywood (and actually generates more money) and they just churn out buckets of crap and I blame that on the fact too many stupid people have the internet since they are the ones that lap it up 

Edited June 22, 2015 by JG5_Emil

[Cybermat47]

Well I do miss how the gaming industry was before consoles became big, now gaming is like Hollywood (and actually generates more money) and they just churn out buckets of crap and I blame that on the fact too many stupid people have the internet since they are the ones that lap it up 

I won't deny that a lot of games these days are crap, but not all of them. I mean, I'm not into Call of Duty, but from what I've seen, it's good at what it wants to be. And I wouldn't say that the people who play these games are stupid (though some go beyond stupidity), but just into different things.

[6./ZG26_Emil]

I won't deny that a lot of games these days are crap, but not all of them. I mean, I'm not into Call of Duty, but from what I've seen, it's good at what it wants to be. And I wouldn't say that the people who play these games are stupid (though some go beyond stupidity), but just into different things.

 

What I'm getting at is the 'mass market' effect. Like music, film and games once they get in to the main stream they tend to get dumbed down or at least move away from their tradition fan base. Some people don't mind that games known for their excellence are rehashed with less of everything including story line and game play but given fancy graphics and console port type game play because the devs know they will get away with it and the original fans just have to suck it up.

 

Obviously we don't want the terrible graphics of 1990 games but at the same time games were designed for a more niche (nerdy?) customer back then.

[unreasonable]

I agree that it is true that successful small games to try to expand by broadening their appeal, in the process diluting their original qualities, but this is not only also true for music and film as you describe, but for almost every consumer good I can think of. The original properties become a "brand" that can be sold almost independently of any actual product value. Just having what is believed to be popular becomes a consumer value in itself.

 

The good news is that if the original niche is still viable, someone else will make product for it. It is up to the discerning consumer to "let go" of his expectations for a particular series of games..... the developers have moved on from you, you have to move on from the product. Easier said than done, I agree.

 

Meanwhile there have been lots of nerdy PC games over the last few years and in the pipeline - you cannot get much nerdier than Paradox's Crusader Kings, for example. While the Total War series get flashier and more idiotic, Paradox are still flying the Nerd standard with pride.

[6./ZG26_Emil]

I agree that it is true that successful small games to try to expand by broadening their appeal, in the process diluting their original qualities, but this is not only also true for music and film as you describe, but for almost every consumer good I can think of. The original properties become a "brand" that can be sold almost independently of any actual product value. Just having what is believed to be popular becomes a consumer value in itself.

 

The good news is that if the original niche is still viable, someone else will make product for it. It is up to the discerning consumer to "let go" of his expectations for a particular series of games..... the developers have moved on from you, you have to move on from the product. Easier said than done, I agree.

 

Meanwhile there have been lots of nerdy PC games over the last few years and in the pipeline - you cannot get much nerdier than Paradox's Crusader Kings, for example. While the Total War series get flashier and more idiotic, Paradox are still flying the Nerd standard with pride.

 

I agree in part and Crusader Kings does look good even from the perspective of someone who wouldn't normally play a game like that, one of the problems we have now is EA Alpha/Beta & preorder games and even worse Kickstarters which I personally don't like. The reason being is that they play on those expectations especially of the hardcore fans and then typically let them down on release.

 

On that last subject I am very curious to see what happens when Star Citizen is released because there are people who invested thousands in to what I think will end up as an arcade space sim and I think there will be a lot of disappointed people. IL2 is the only game I will preorder from now on, I've been suckered a few times and generally not been very impressed.

 

On the topic of console ports I find it lazy that they do it without enough attention to making a game PC orientated, there are things PC gamers expect from a game especially in terms of playability and depth, the big developers make more than enough money from some of them and should put enough attention in to making two similar games but for each market and not to ram a shiney dumbed down port down our throats. 

 

Back to cool games that no one has ever heard of I still love Combat Missions which started out a long time ago and is still going and anyone who likes WW2 strategy should take a peak, unfortunately because it's customer base is so small it's not cheap.

[unreasonable]

I remember the Combat Missions series and enjoyed them up to a point. IIRC they had the pause for orders then real time execute mechanic (?) This is fine for a wargame (better than I go you go) but it rather disrupted the simulation aspect of having a 3D battlefield. So it ended up being in some ways a less satisfactory wargame than Steel Panthers but not quite a simulation either.

 

The Dominions series were also fun - the graphics were almost in your face non-commercial, but the amazing things you could do with your God and armies of strange creatures were unequalled IMHO.

[6./ZG26_Emil]

I remember the Combat Missions series and enjoyed them up to a point. IIRC they had the pause for orders then real time execute mechanic (?) This is fine for a wargame (better than I go you go) but it rather disrupted the simulation aspect of having a 3D battlefield. So it ended up being in some ways a less satisfactory wargame than Steel Panthers but not quite a simulation either.

 

The Dominions series were also fun - the graphics were almost in your face non-commercial, but the amazing things you could do with your God and armies of strange creatures were unequalled IMHO.

 

CM is turn based you make your moves then it plays out the results over 60 seconds but it can now be played in real time.

 

I'm not sure if I ever played Steel Panthers.

[unreasonable]

Steel Panthers is an old game, top down 2D graphics, units are individual vehicles, heavy weapon groups or squads. The newer versions (SPWW2) come with huge numbers of scenarios, OOBs for every country you can think of and dozens of maps. Command and control limitations are there, but not a focus - if you keep your units in "command range" of their HQs you have complete control of them until they are damaged, routed etc. Your typical battle will have you in command of something like a reinforced battalion battlegroup, up against maybe three times your numbers (or more )

 

The best thing about it (for me) is the campaign mode where you select a core of units that you can upgrade or change during the campaign, which can last for as many battles as you want. Units gain experience and skill over time. The game will decide on a historically appropriate map, opponent and objective depending on the date. For each battle you get points to purchase additional units. If you score less than a draw for the battle you are fired! End of campaign.

 

Working out how to score victories in the battles is not at all trivial: enemy units are all hidden until they are spotted, which may not happen when they first open fire. Battles are a number of turns, you are under pressure to reach your objectives - or hold them. The AI is like AI everywhere: better in defense than attack, better in depicting a soviet style mass attack than a patient probe, but given a numerical advantage it can spring some nasty surprises.

 

I would say now that it is still an exceptional wargame: but it is very time consuming and low on modern style eye-candy. You have to play it a lot to get the best out of the game. I have locked my copy in a cupboard so that I have time for other things!

Edited June 22, 2015 by unreasonable

[SharpeXB]

It's no wonder they credit Steam with this revival. It does so many things that make the experience more user friendly. Consoles are now the platform bound to discs in packages. Steam is like the iTunes Store.

Look at how PC games used to require you to keep the disc in the drive like a console or that they wouldn't patch automatically like every other piece of software you own. That was frustrating.

Also of course this makes it easier to sell more content to people via download.

[SharpeXB]

The one aspect I just cannot understand about gaming on a console is why the controller buttons are not mappable. I can't fathom any logical reason for this and it's the chief benefit of using a PC. Can you imagine a PC game without a key mapping menu? It's just beyond human skill to keep having to relearn control arrangements for identical games like shooters. Or even worse, a flying game where your stick changes from the right side on one game to the left on another.

My only assumption is that console players don't buy multiple games. They buy only one or a few and just play them continually. It's humanly impossible for a player to switch back and forth between different control schemes. That's like someone rearming the keys on your keyboard and expecting you to still type fast. So the console player must not do that.

Edited June 22, 2015 by SharpeXB