PC commerical games = dead (?)

What was the last commercial PC game you bought from a retail outlet?

It was Call of Duty 2 for me. Since then there has been nothing of interest in the shops.
PC World shelves seem to be full of World of warcraft, Sims 1,2,3,4, Sims Dating, Sims dancing, Sims snoring, Sims bonking, Football managers, and a 15 year supply of Norton AV boxes.

* Is it the amount of hassle needed getting the game to run (drivers, tweaks, patches)?
* Is everyone waiting for DX10 to be some kind of magic wand which'll revitallise the PC's dire commercial game situation?
* Are the newer games too demanding for the average PC?

Maybe I'm too old and games have lost their appeal. I much prefer something with a 'pick up and play' approach instead of 1GB eye candy, 20 minute install/setup, and glitchy gameplay.

In fact, I'll probably not upgrade the PC again for a very long time (if ever) which is going to leave me out of the picture anyhow.

What say you?

Sim2:Pets here

although I got Quake4, SWAT 4, WORMS 4 and Far Cry on budget :). I normally wait for a demo and if there isnt one I will wait for the game to come out on budget to see if I want to get it, after all if they cant create a demo the game might not be that good.

NeverWinter Nights 2. It was fun for the first 15 hours and then started to become a spectacularly repetitive hack and slash dungeon crawl. Since then I really haven't gone back to it.


Nope.

Nope.

I'm just waiting for a game I want to play.

It doesn't help that I prefer turn-based RPG's and strategy games to realtime. I'd rush out and buy Supreme Commander if it was turn based, but since it's not, that'll go by unnoticed by me. I might try and pick up a copy of NightWatch. I keep promising myself I will but it's annoying having to buy off EBay because retail stores won't stock it. That plus I think it's going to infect me with StarForce unless I buy some obscure European version which might have been released by a publisher who didn't want it.

I am spending less on PC games.

However, in 20 years from now what we have now will be like what we have now compared to a Spectrum.

I am so looking forward to future gaming.

Imagine gaming in 40 years - oh yeh - self touch.

Never mind gaming, I'll be rotting away in the OAP home getting a kick out of online dominoes.

I'll be 47 in 40 years from now.

PC games now take up a tiny little space in most videogame stores, I remember when the Amiga section took up the same amount of space, and then I remember the Amiga space disappearing...

Last game I bought from a store was a week ago, "Rome: Total War", but I was only in the store to pick up a console game for my kid and Rome was marked down.

i bought Armed Assault, cause i've played Operation Flashpoint a looong time. But you are right, there are only a small number of games which look appealing to me. testing the demos filters some out - in the end there is only 1 or 2 titles left (or even no title). sigh.

Re-bought Diablo 2 Gold (D2 + LoD) today for 10 Euro. It's as much fun as it was when it was released. Another games than that: World Of Warcraft. Unreal Tournament 2004 and RTCW Enemy Territory. There aren't that many games out ther for the Mac anyway =)

I think that PC gaming has grown very stale; countless bland FPSs, cliched, uncreative medieval RPGs, "me-too" RTSs, and the occasional game that is a mix between them.

World of Warcraft (it was cheap during the expansion-pack launch, decided to give it a try >.>)

And most recently, Trackmania United...

Regarding production, I'd say the patching/drivers would be the biggy, since it appears companies like EA Games & Ubisoft seem to have huge amounts of problems with PC-releases of their multi-platform games regarding both game bugs, performance problems, and compability support.....

World of Warcraft, bout it from self. in a super market.

F.E.A.R (about 1 year ago) and I was bored stiff after a few hours, haven't touched it since although I do plan to at some point as I've heard it gets better towards the end.

It's incredibly rare that I don't finish a game and I vowed never to buy another PC game after playing F.E.A.R.

I much prefer console games, they have a much better control scheme as they're designed for a specific controller. They're also tuned to the hardware whereas PC games can be all over the place in terms of performance. That's how I used to like games, from arcade machines to the C64 and Amiga, they always played exactly as intended on every machine they were designed to run on.

The next game I'm really looking forward to is Bioshock but I'll be getting the XBox 360 version, not the PC version.

PC gaming is dead as far as I'm concerned, most PC games I'm interested in get ported to consoles anyway.

One of these days, they will realize that you can't just release FPS, RTS, and grand-fantasy RPG games. Because you miss out on huge cross-sections of gamers.

The trouble is, that these genres are all "perfect" at what they do. I don't mean they are perfect games, I just mean that it is sublimely natural to play any of these styles on a PC. New genres require learning to play all over again.

The basic controls of a game aren't the gameplay, don't forget that. The gameplay between Oblivion in first-person mode and the gameplay in doom 3 are NOT even close to the same, even though the controls are 90% the same.

What these genres/play styles do, is afford anyone who has played an FPS to play any other FPS without having to relearn everything. All other game-types have to be mouse/arrow heavy to be playable anymore.

What is happening, is most of the games in these potentially great control-schemes treat the controls like gameplay. They thing that as long as the controls work, they have a decent game. So 99% of, say, FPSs are more-or-less clones of eachothers in different settings. I'm killing people in europe... No, in the future... No... in the past... But you are still killing hordes of worthless bad-guys.. and eventually it all melts together... But a good number of the people who buy the games, they might have bought 2 or 3 other games in that genre before. Some, this is their first. So the cycle continues.

One day. The money-guys will realize they can tap into whole new genres by letting their really good teams work on creating new types of games. A little extra money here, and in the near future a lot will roll in.

I haven't bought any PC games for about 3 years. :-\

Last game I bought?
I think it was Guild Wars, when it first came out..
Played it for a few hours.. couldn't compete with WoW, which I had bought earlier, so I stopped playing it just after a little while..

Settlers 2, about 8 years ago.

Last one I bought was 'Dawn of War', which has excellent playability, but nothing has really grabbed me since.

Bored of WoW, and pretty much all the shooters around.

Just waiting for Spore, in the vague hope of it living up to the looks / hype.

Other than that, the Xbox360 has been the main focus of my gaming attention these days.. I never thought I'd play on a console more than a PC, but we live and learn.

Serious Sam 2 (for £2.99 bu tI got £2.50 with my game card so it cost 49p!). Haven't played it yet

I think people look for too much in games these days. I've always played games to beat them, finish them even when they were a little boring or seemed repetetive.

I learnt this from growing up playing the C64. You had to wait an age to play the game and once it started you had to make the most of it.

I buy a lot of games and enjoy playing all of them. Pc games are way better than console games anyway, imo.

:)

Yeah I finish them too but I make sre I get good ones (based on reviews and my taste) so that finishing them isn't a bind. I finish all the casual games that I review on www.binaryjoy.co.uk too.

BF2142, and still playing it. I still play Counterstrike:Source very often as well (been playing CS as long as it's been around).

I am enjoying going up in ranks, slowly unlocking more weapons and trying them out. The maps get somewhat repeatitive, but the unlocks make it worth it.

I think PC games are certainly dying - PC games sales are supposed to slowing, probably due to the fact that more people are buying consoles.

Mac games are supposed to be increasing slightly.

good, good, more potential for us indie people :)

People will always want to play games on computers, so if the AAAs go, they will turn more to shareware stuff.. Yay

I went console crazy and didn't play many PC games between 2002 and 2005 ass the Xbox got all the good ones first. but

I have been playing them more and more. It ended up being in part because I hadn't upgraded my puter in about 5 years and I couldn't get the full experience of PC games.

The past year I've almost exclusively played PC games, I started playing Oblivion again with a bunch of gameplay and visual mods. 640x480 almost all the eye candy turned up.

FEAR was one of my favourite FPS games last year, that was awesome even if the bad guys were mostly clones of the same 5 guys. The AI was decent for an FPS and I actualy enjoyed it. Most FPS bore me to tears.

Oblivion was great, Gothic 3 good, but the combat is flawed and eventualy you get bored with the bug

Medieval II is awesome, had to OC my vid card and CPU to get good framerates out of that.

My biggest problem right now is that my 2 year old PC doesn't quite cut it when most games run at 1024x768 minimum res

PC Games are dying because the big companies dont take risks with thier games they stick to tried and tested sales. Look at Sims/Sims 2 there is already talk of Sims 3, and all the other games with 'sequels' that is really a 'rehash' of the game levels and from a different characters viewpoint.

Then theres the steam fiasco, it all damages PC Gaming as a whole.

Agreed EdzUp! I agree with you completely. They are the ones ruining it for themselves.

What they need is someone to take all their media and make a real game.

I haven't bought a game in a while, last one I got was FEAR. I keep seeing boring releases and nothing new ... I will however be interested in Space Force 2 and Homeplanet when they're released ... oh and Halo 2 (the original Halo is the only FPS I play as well as AVP2).

Call Of Duty 2 on day of release. Still playing it every day (is multiplayer, is good).

With my setup, I'm lucky to have even that working to an acceptable level, so I dare not even think about anything newer. On the other hand, my PlayStation2 is still as capable as it ever was, so I can quite happily buy games for it off the shelf as I need to.

I don't see myself buying another PC game until I can upgrade my machine, and I don't see that happening in the next 12 months.

Dammit Janet - I might just have to write the games I wanna play, myself.

I keep meaning to buy COD2.

If you don't have Call of Duty1, go grab the Call of Duty: Warchest pack, includes all the Call of Duty games released on PC (which is essentially CoD1, it's expansion, and CoD2) on 2 DVDs.
(was funny when I went to pick it up a couple months ago, was $38, yet the stand-alone Call of Duty2 beside it was $47.)

@Jim-

Yeah I think you're too old ; )
...but seriously, I hate to say it I think you become jaded. I used to love games but I've seen it all before... a million times. Back to the old 'Blood' thread... that was the best blast I have had in ages. I completed the first level (had to cheat to do it. That is one tough game), but I can't hack playing another.

You make me laugh complaining about a 20 minute install. Don't you remember back in the day when a game could take that long to load? : )

'Still playing it every day (is multiplayer, is good).'

Heh, my experience of COD2 multiplayer is;
-saw a figure off in the distance, then I died.
- got closer this time. Managed to toss a grenade, then I died.
-managed to fire a shot. Think I hit the enemy. He looked at me and I died.
Really, after 3 - 4 times of this I just despise multiplayer.

As for PC games, it's all about cherrypicking. Like most, I'm sick of rehashed sci-fi/elves and orcs. But there are a few I'm looking at;
SilentHunter4 (although I haven't 'finished' SH3 yet)
Stalker (but not first release as I suspect it'll be bugridden)
Codename:Criminal Convictions (interesting story/gameplay)
Bioshock - an original style and setting (SystemShock-like)
Medal of Honor Airborne - cause I'm not averse to a bit of WW2 FPS.
Since they're so cheap and I haven't caught them yet -
The Dig/Full Throttle

And of course, Spore.

I can totally recommend all COD games.

I recommend any Source Engine game as it is easy to steal the media - especially the animated characters.

The last game I bought was an old title called Jagged Alliance 2, purchased off Steam. And in fact the title before that was Uplink, again off Steam. And before that, the excellent Psychonauts, AGAIN off Steam. A worrying trend?

I quite like Steam for the fact I can pay for a title and download it in a few hours, rather than having to fit a trip to a games shop into my daily routine. In fact I've never understood why people complain about Steam - it's only screwed up a couple of times for me, and it's a fantastically easy way to keep my games patched, and to see what else is a potential weekend waster in the shop pages. I hope to see more online distribution for games, and hopefully get more revenue to the people that matter, the developers. (Unfortunately in the case of the older titles I've purchased, sadly the money may only be going to the evil publisher / rights holder of these older titles).

I'm interested in Armed Assault, ArmA, as I played Op Flashpoint a fair bit. Is it any good?

And yes, as others have mentioned, it's worth having a look round the indie titles produced here and elsewhere if you're not keen on some of the stuff you see in shops.

The last game I bought was TrackMania United. The next game I'm going to buy... for the PC? Doesn't exist yet. Console games are just more fun and lasting than the latest EA 'you've done this before' fest.

I was going to buy Spore, but the whole Command & Conquer:The First Decade fiasco has planted a nail in EA's coffin, wrt my wallet.

Last year I got Oblivion, Sonic Heroes (for PC), Serious Sam 2, and the Rome Total War expansion Pack.

Last month I got Battlefield 2142. And last week I got Vanguard : Saga of Heroes - which was taking up the majority of my time until I got the Wii on Sunday :p....

Last game for me was Oblivion.

I did buy Rayman and Zelda for the Wii, along with Metroid Prime for the GC (aka, my Wii :) and Bards Tale for the PS2 last year, though.

Haven't played any of them enough, sadly.

Excellent Choice....you'll enjoy that one.

oh yeah, Company of heroes is an awesome game, how did I forget that. Great RTS, like a proper modern C&C with top graphics :)

Made me like RTS games again after all these years.

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade.

None of the above. For me, it's lack of novelty. If "you've played one, then you've played them all" is true, there's no reason to play more than one.

While I realise that Stuart Campbell isn't exactly everyone favorite person, he pointed that one out almost 7 years ago. Quote: "When my old magazine Amiga Power closed down, I had a bit of a rant blaming Amiga owners for the machine's dismal software catalogue, because for the last few years of the Amiga's life they'd bought nothing except tedious sims and football management games."

..i dont think so..

>What was the last commercial PC you bought from a retail
>outlet?

No one lives forever

But I purchased Painkiller: Black edition online, and I'll be buying Warhammer 40K Dawn of war Anthology next.

Andy

My last, Sims 2 Pets.

But Supreme Commander is preordered and Spore preorder isn't possible yet.
I only buy like 3 games for PC a year I've to say. Most games come from online portals where they are shelled out at discounts (direct2drive.com, metaboli, gamesload, ...) or just fun games I buy on steam.

But when I look for fun games, I normally prefer my Wii and PS2 for them ...

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - pre-ordered it on Amazon two days ago, it´s FINALLY going to be released on March 23.

Before that, the last games that I bought were "Gish", "Call of Duty 2 (for Mac OS X)", "Civilization IV (for OS X)" and "Civilization IV:Warlords (for OS X)".

The next ones that I will buy as soon as they are out will be "They Hunger: Lost Souls" and "Crysis".

Discworld Noir (old adventure game, on ebay) in 2005.

Before that:

- Frozen Throne (2003)
- Warcraft 3 (2002)
- Monkey Island 4 (2000)
- Starcraft Battlechest (2000)
- Descent 3 (1999)
- Grim Fandango (1998)
- Monkey Island 3 (1997)

...Making about 8 games in a decade. :-?

(Still more games than music CD's...)

Kingdom Elemental (not from a store - online (it's a blitz3d game too!)) a month or two ago

Dungeon Siege - exchanged a load of old Xbox games for this at a reduced price, played one session ~1 hour and grew bored with it pretty quickly and gave it to someone else instead

Sacred Plus - same as with Dungeon Siege - played for about an hour the gave it away, bored with it.

Console games - I only buy the old 80s,90s collections of arcade games now - they usually have something familiar yet as good as original in gameplay considering what is so prevalent now, and they're instant action - no sitting through tutorials, cutscenes, dialog trees.

People's blitz demos - some of these are quite good and are pretty much 'instant action' as they load up straight away into the game environment and quit with 'keydown(1)' when desired.

A pc for me is the only choice for fps until consoles get a mouse for a controller (mabe they have, dunno. if so do games support them?).

Those analogue joypads are anal compared to a mouse for 1stPP games, you cant turn fast enough and the accuracy sucks(and yes, i have attempted hours of practise). Cant say for the wiimote as i havent tried it.

Last game I bought was actually last week, 'No One Lives Forever 2'. It was on offer for AU$1 in a bargain bin...

I think it's down to three things - Consoles having not only matched PCs for gaming power but have surpassed it, online play via consoles and "web 2.0".

I think the whole "web 2.0" movement has redefined the role of a laptop/desktop computer these days; more and more often I find myself going to YouTube, Wikipedia or even YTMND for my entertainment. I still play games, but because the PC has now become a more general purpose 'entertainment centre' then PC gaming has suffered. Couple that with consoles dedicated to gaming and it's hard not to see a downfall of PC games.

It's why recently I've become ever more interested in getting that homebrew kit for my DS...

PC gaming will never go away, but in the future I think it'll become like the Mac situation, riding along on console ports and good old freeware/shareware games. Not a utterly bleak future...

Hmm... lemme see... the last game...

Oh, yes. That's easy. I am not purchasing games in the shop anymore. So the last game was Holiday Bonus, but that's not what this thread is about. Anyways, I prefer to buy indie games. They are generally much more fun then bloated "commercial" games.

Barney

Psychonauts from Steam.
And Naked War.

Best games I've played in years.

Oh yes, Half Life 2 Episode 1.
It's brilliant, but not as good as those 2.

There was a time when I would build a new PC in order to play the newest games but these days I can't really justify the cost due to there being very few games worth upgrading for =/

Yeah but the pace has slowed these days. Your PC will play the latest games for a lot longer than it used to, though admittedly not if you want all the bells and whistles turned up.

The thing about the games today is they are just yesterdays games with better graphics on the front. Admittedly they look better and seem more interactive but they are just the same old "go to x press y to unlock z, this will allow you access to a" then it starts all over again.

On a space game front once you have explored everywhere and done everything there is to do the game looses its luster VERY fast.

Windows is a dead next gen gaming platform, just buy a console instead. PCs are for retro games and emulators, the only things that don't suffer from backwards compatibility issues.

> Settlers 2, about 8 years ago.

LOL me too :)

That 3D version of Monkey Island 5-6 years ago, or whenever it was. Was such a pain in the ass trying to get it to work without crashing, I gave up and haven't bought a commercial PC game since.

The problem is finality. Buying the game is the end of the process for consumer-meets-developer in most cases. When you have monthly pay-games, you exoect new things every month... At least you should.. I find it unexceptable that there isn't new gameplay in a game like WoW each month.

We, as designers, should be investigating user-built and emergent gameplay a lot more. Not just user-made content like will be in Spore. Eventually, you'll have seen enough that the game itself gets boring. Imagine if the gameplay was user-built. With some sort of constraints.

Not just level editing, or item creation, or anything like that. But whole new abilities, and skills, and weapon-types. All based on a set of rules that afforf balance. Or which are counterable effects that aren't interchangeable... For example. A fire shield can't just have a lightning jewel replacement to make it a lightning shield. The whole mechanics of the device would have to change.

Same goes for weapons and effects.

More 'parts' means more gameplay altering effects. So regular parts additions, which would essentially be code objects in game-material form.

That is the obvious future that no one wants to investigate.


Important to note.. Something like this isn't doable on a console... At least not without a real Hard-drive munching drain.

'PCs are for retro games and emulators, the only things that don't suffer from backwards compatibility issues'

Yeah, like I really want to play an in-depth sim like Silent Hunter3 on a console...

Yeah agreed on that front - multiplayer sandbox stuff must be the future. Perhaps 95% of Half Life 2 players will have tried to create objects using the grav gun - that same 95% would probably spend over half an hour customising their character's hair and teeth style in a MMORPG.

I've come to the conclusion that all games are either about creation or destruction, and each of these suits a different personality. Whilst destruction is clearly a market that has been catered for, perhaps developers need to focus on the creation side of games.

Personally I'm looking forward to Spore. I'm not convinced it'll be an amazing game, but hopefully it'll push people in a different direction.

PCs are still the best though for strategy titles like Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis, Civilisation and other empire building / world conquest games.

Hell ya! EU3 is out, but I like HOI2 more :D

Age of empires 3

FEAR MY ARMY OF ROCKET LAUNCHERS!!!!!!

Just wait for Supreme commander

I thought of taking my MUD in this direction. To create a framework combat system that allows you to define your own techniques based on a number of attributes with associated costs. Sort of like creating your own spells in Morrowind.

In the end, I think that it's just not possible to achieve any kind of real interesting balance. Invariably there would be imbalances - I mean, if the top MMO designers, who are undoubtedly very intelligent, can't achieve balance with a fairly limited # of skills and spells how would it be possible to achieve balance with an essentially unlimted # available to players? And, unlike a game with limited skills and spells where you can tweak a single ability to alter the balance - how do you tweak such an open ended system? You could adjust the weighting of a particular attribute, but that would effect tons of skills then.

More more more isn't always a better philosophy. Look at Daggerfall - 1000's of cities but the average player probably never visited more then 15.

The key, for MMO's at least, is to have much more dynamic worlds. Players need to be able to make a lasting impact on the world. There should be no static content. All content should emerge from the worlds laws interacting with player input. Designers just need to overcome the fear of handing their creation over to the players.

See.. The trouble with a sandbox is that there is no risk, and no reward beyond self-satisfaction. You really need player inspired creation on all fronts to have a really outstandingly long-lasting PC title. Perhaps with players of various talents being able to make different things.

Coders might have access to code building-blocks to create new kinds of motion-play, in some kind of metaphorical construct.

Artists will be able to modify how things look, spore-style.

Builders will be able to make levels, and give them function with archetypes.. and in a perfect game. The coders could create new archetypes. For example. Creating a toy, like a ball, that can bounce around. Apply that same logic to some enemy. Or parts of the world.. that "Bounce" archetype could be used all over, and it wasn't ever intended to exist.

Perhaps, being incorperated into a weapon.

You can have a game about both destruction and creation. For example, Ultima Online lets you build houses sims-style and that is creation. It lets you kill mobs, which is destruction. The same can be said about a game like Oblivion... or better, Morrowind, where you could more easily 'dress' your house.

Personally. I enjoy those aspects of a game more-so than I enjoy combat.. But I like the option. Because without the option, i feel like I am being limited.

The moto of the next gen PC title should be.

"Unlimited"

Last commercial game I bought was Day of Defeat. Awesome online WW2 game but I haven't played it much lately.

What? Except Second Life?

Boring?

I think you missed the point, FlameDuck...

Second life is NOTHING like what I described. It isn't a game, it is just a 'place'... there is no goal, no risks, no rewards. So yes, it is boring.

Imagine, for example. A fantasy world, with fantasy parts and bits. A pre-built world, and the potential for other "planes" when space runs low. People can buy plots of land in designated spaces, collect parts and bits and build their own castles and areas. They can develope new spells and skills through research, leveling up to devine new types, and by reading tomes. They can apply those parts. Say, to create a flying spell, or a lightning spell. Or a spell that calls roots from the ground to grasp opponents. Or a spell to call roots from the ground to create a pedistal to stand on. A platform.

Imagine, that these tomes, bits, and parts are scattered at a logical kind of random around the world, and new bits are added each month. So.. For example, rather than adding new player-classes and races, they add new bits.. Perhaps that might be visual, so new characters can 'look' Orcish... and perhaps that is axe-parts, orcish-looking spell particles and effects, orcish inspired materials.. Bone, Mossy-moldy-leath, and raw plates of steel.

So, lets say you have a player that has been learning blacksmithing, and he gets ahold of some Orcish steel, that will make his armor have Orcish-looking textures, and the pattern he has might have been designed by another player who designs armor styles, and it was made to look very spikey.

Now you have an Orcish-plate with spikes. It will have certain attributes that come from it's materials, which could be many.

Next, a mage blesses the armor, with a spell-base that he created. The spell is like 'feather' in TES, and so, the armor is lighter and might even less the player carry more.

Now, maybe that blacksmith player attends a school another player set up using a 'school' archetype yet another player created. The school teaches him a new skill, which another player created. It is a special attack, which spins the character around attacking all the enemies directly around the player. He modifies it to use the broad side of his axe, so it stuns the opponents, then repeats with the edge side, dealing far more dmg on the second spin.

There is no reason things like this shouldn't be possible.. and theoreticly easier than trying to create a very detailed world in-house.

... but, while possible, what you mention is also extremely, extremely, extremely cliched and stale. You can fiddle around with the little niggly details, but you're still talking about Orcs, Mages, swords and sorcery. It is this endless recycling of tired old cliches that harms PC gaming the most.

What PC gaming desperately needs is not just innovative/original gameplay mechanics, but also (and perhaps crucially) innovative/original narrative, themes, settings, plots, stories, and characterisations.

It all comes down to two things: balance and grief mitigation.

I dare say balance is the bigger of the two issues, because a poorly balanced game won't have any customers to cause grief. Trying to design open ended systems like that that manage to create enough balance that interesting choices still need to be made - instead of just choosing JimBob's power slash of doom + Gannndalf532's firebolt of freezing - or whatever other "power skills" happen to be found/created. Without extremely careful balance, the (Bartle classified) achievers are all going to be a homogenous bunch.

Of course, the more freedom players have the more options they have to inflict grief on one another. I'm not in favor of arbitrary immersion breaking mechanics that heavy-handedly prevent griefing - but there do need to be some (hopefully IC) measures that mitigate the potential of it.

Lastly, I think option paralysis (defined as: The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none) would be a huge issue. As sad as, from a designers standpoint, I find it to be, a lot of players LIKE to be shuffled off into a pre-defined role (aka class) and have predefined, arbitrary goalposts to reach (aka levels.) I believe that the closer a game approaches real life complexity, the fewer the number of people who will put in the required time and effort to enjoy said game. That doesn't, in any objective sense, make the game better or worse - but it sure as hell does in a financial sense.

And yet this is apparently what the significant majority wants (not only in computer fantasy but also literary fantasy). Why? Damned if I know.

Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software has some interesting comments about this issue here. My own experiences (in the literary world) have taught me similar lessons.

There is a market for original fantasy settings, but it’s small and not lucrative enough for the big players to seriously consider.

I think I no longer enjoy playing 'big' games on the PC because of:

* Install, patch, configure, test, re-configure affair
* Stuttering, CD spinup (after no activity), or hard drive thrashing
* Total BSOD because the graphics card got too hot
* Random issues (key inputs buggered, mouse sticking, glitches, freezes, annyoing background pop-ups)

From my experience, PC's just can't cut it when it comes to playing the heavy stuff.
Too many things can stuff up.
Times I've returned to a game which, although it played great a week ago, is completely unplayable because something changed somewhere in the O/S. In which case I can't be bothered to spend another week trying to find out what and why.

But..aren't most of the games that come out for the PC are the more heavy stuff? I just happen to have a fairly decent rigg so all the new PC games I've put in so far have worked without any issues.

Yeah on Spellforce the original you had to get a patch BEFORE you could even install the game, TBH PC Games are the best tested in the industry and that has hurt it the most. When PC Games started you got a game to play and patches ADDED to the game content now it seems to be an easy fix for crap coding and sloppy testing.


TBH Stuttering is usually down to memory leaks within the game, Elder scrolls oblivion is one for this after every so often you have to exit and restart the game.


Or it just crashes, I think games should be tested WAAY more than they are.


With this what do they do 'oh we will release a patch ASAP', the thing is everyone seems to go along with it as if 'oh this is ok we will wait for a patch'. If you bought a new car you wouldnt wait for a patch before you can drive it would you?

hey I like old school fantasy with orcs mages and what have you, its all the modern scifi and super heroes I find tired and boring. I generaly dislike a lot of technology and computers, so games that are kind of medieval with fun and engaging gameplay let me escape from all that.

Appart from the original starwars triology, pod racing, aliens and The Thing scifi is pretty much rubbish. Each to his own I guess :)

Well you're entitled to your opinion. But you're wrong.

The problem is that with PC games being as boring and repetitous as they are, even testers can't bother to play them for real for more than a few days.

most games are boring, not just PC games. Infact console games are often even more boring since they simplify the games to appeal to the broadest demographic.

I'd say about 5% of games on any platform are actualy worth playing. Since about 10% of games are a huge success and make up for the rest, I think most people probably feel the same way. Not everyone likes the same games, so there's still a big potential market out there.

I for one can't stand the sims, and spore looks like the most boring game ever. I tend to dislike FPS for their simplicity, and racing games for their lack of feel and poor AI.

At the end of the day, a lot of us have simply played too many games over the years, and so we have become some what jaded and bored of whats out there. Someone new to gaming can still have a great experience with new games based on old themes because they havent played a variation of the same game dozens of times before.

Edzup wrote:


No, the problem is that developers shouldn't waive the bugs that testers find when they're under pressure to hit a milestone or release date. In my experience, most bugs that are "discovered" by consumers were already known (and puposefully ignored) by by developers.

Testers always unfairly take the blame for bug filled releases. All they can do is report the bugs to the developers - they can't fix them.

yeah, usualy the shipping date is set up way in advance. And often the publisher won't allow any movement without huge penalties. Especialy if marketing is trying to hit a window.

It's really tough on everyone, and I'm not sure who's fault it is. But its the customers that lose out in the end :(

There can be huge penalties for not shipping on time, one being voiding your publishing contract so no one gets paid and the developer goes out of business.

With console games you get fewer bugs because of the console manufacturers QA testing. After the developer/publishers beta testing. The console manufacturer will have also gone through final QA testing, and no games get through QA testing the first time.

Games for computer platforms don't get this extra level of testing and often the bugs get through. I think this is one of the primary reason that PC games are so much more buggy than console games. The console manufacturers want their system to look good and work hard at testing the games, its also a great source of revenue, so they are always more thorough than publishers and developers would like.

Funny people mention the PC gaming market is dead.

it's actually coming back, Production companies are saying creating games for new consoles is getting too expensive.
Over 60 million $$ for a PS3 game.. you need to push alot of volume just to break even so your game better be damn good!

I might pick up a 360 when Hellgates gets released on it.

last game bought, Guild wars 1, 2, 3 and World of Warcrack :)

hmm is Guild wars as good as Demon attack and Vanguard is ?

I hate online multiplayer games that go on forever, a game shouldn't be rewarding by how time you play on it, because they're always dominated by those who gave up their entire life to dedicate themselves to the game. I want to have some pre determined action that I can have a blast with, and then come back to it again and maybe do the exact same thing. I love being able to play a 30minute shoot-em-up and complete it on sitting. Repetition is sometimes the best bit. This is why films don't go on forever, or a book with an infinite amount of pages. They'd suck otherwise if you couldn't go back and relive some of your finer moments.

Games where you can immerse yourself indefinitely are stupid, if there's no end why bother even starting. I'd prefer to live in the real world than play games that try to simulate it. I will never buy anything, especially a computer game that I've already bought if it needs regular subscription costs.

I totally agree 100% ENAY, although games like ultima online where you litterally live a life in the game pausing only to eat junkfood, sleep a bit and S(hi mom!)T are kinda cool in the start, it is actually quite pointless in the end.
I had a friend who lost his job, girlfiend, car, house, talked about nothing else down the pub and pretty much lost everything playing it. He ended up in a mental hospital after a nervous breakdown.
Also, wasnt there a case in japan or somewhere where someone sold a borrowed sword and got murdered in real life?

Not good.

Oh and dear god do i hate the sims (no offense if you like it - it is a 'good' well designed game) but really, appart from teaching kids all about life & how to live!?!(sarcasm intended) really, what is the point, wheres the goal, why not play it for real?

@Dan:
>what is the point, why not play it for real?

Life's to short to test all the possibilities :D Life has to many constrains to let you try all the possibilities.

PC games might be dead, but devs are not the best audience to judge their playability. We're biased.

best
Roman

Everyone's biased. In fact, it's people's biases which make their opinions useful. That said, I agree that a forum full of dev's is probably the worst place to get a useful overview of opinions on this subject, since our biases are unlikely to be reflected in people en masse.

Well it's good thing we don't have to then. The sales numbers speak for themselves.

Give me a game I can play at the press of a button, spend 15-20 minutes playing and then put it down and forget about it and I'll probably enjoy it. Just what I find most indie demos are good for (and why I rarely purchase full versions or regular games from a physical store)

Duke Nukem 3D for me (with the JFDuke3D port for XP fixes). Very quick to load. Straight into the action. Good style. Good blast.

Duke Nukem 3D does the job!

@Matty: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones - loads fast and completing one level takes anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, depending on how good you are and how many tries you have to do :D

true, but i would say the Sims has far more constraints, you cant even give the virtual neibours wife that you have been having a virual affair with a 'good-one'(in full glorious technicolor live interactive stereoscopic 3d with sound :P ). Or go on holiday in say.... tibet :) In the first one you couldnt even leave the house!

Nah, i prefer to blast the hell out of hordes of aliens, or to hack the head from a cheeky orc in a good in-depth RPG that devastated me a few levels ago, although i do enjoy a good puzzle adventure too sometimes. All regardless of good graphics.

but not take it all too seriously and save 'everyday life' for real roleplay.

Each to their own i say :D

Those PC game figures were for in store retail and didn't include online purchasing which is a pretty significant chunk these days.

Yeah Casual games are reputedly on the rise big time, so mayve it's the sector to be in...

What I said used High Fantasy as a defacto obvious easy to relate to example. Obviously the setting could be anything.

Doesn't have to even relate to 'real life' in any way...

Also. Balancing would be done like the spells in TES Oblivion. More powerful? Needs to have a higher skill level and uses more magic up.

The same could be used for anything.

To take my spin attack example. The first spin might require 5 fictional points to use.. that same one, altered might cost the same. Stack them together and it costs 15 rather than 10.

Sure, there would be some some attacks made that are better than others. But that is realistic. And as time goes on, new things will be discovered... Say.. for instance.. there is a MEGA spell that is normally impossible to cast because it requires 50 more points to use than is possible to gain. Someone else might develope armors and weapons that raise that attribute.. making the spell castable. Albeit, also crippling the player because they can't have any other enchantments..

There are ways to balance things.

An alternative is for the enemies to 'scale' to the new median power levels. Everyone is running around with ultra-cheap super-weapons.... Like guns, in a fantasy world... Well.. the enemies start to develop protections against that super-weapon through 'evolution' which is or isn't related to actual evolution.


All this sound like a lot of work? Good.. Cause most games focus all their 'work' on graphics and asset creation. It would do games some good to require a lot of work to get the game working. Work is what makes new kinds of games.

Define "pretty significant". For PC games not to be selling worse than in 2000, they would have to have revenue in excess of 1 billion USD, or put another way, online distribution (Steam/RealArcade/Total Gaming) has to better than all the stores you can buy video games in.

So you agree that real games is on the decline?

How is that balancing? For starters ir puts artificial constraints on what you can do (which is counter intuitive to what you originally described), and secondly it gives people who have been playing a long time, an incredible combat advantage, further askewing the balance of the game. Particularly since these people who have played longer are probably getting pretty bored by now, and are amongst those most likely to start griefing.

Sure. You just haven't mentioned any yet. I bet you thought the "Flashlight switching" sub-game of DOOM3 was a clever game device?

Regarding MMO's, I think the future is in dynamic worlds with relatively little vertical growth of characters, but instead considerable horizontal growth. I.e. You don't necessarily get all that much more powerful over time, you just gain new abilities which allow you to approach problems (which themselves need to expand to include more than combat and the pathetic excuse they call "crafting") in new and interesting ways. That's the design I'm going for, anyhow. A player who has played for 3 years can be beaten in combat by a player that has played for 3 months if he makes unwise choices. Of course, the character that has been around for 3 years will have more skills and abilities (combat and otherwise) but that only gives him a potential advantage (i.e. if he uses those extra abilities wisely.)

Modern MMO's always dangle the carrot just out of reach, while murmuring softly in your ear "you'll taste the carrot real soon now." Why not give players the carrot right from the get go and later give them potatoes, corn, beef? Beef stew is a helluva lot tastier than a single carrot. The fact that the concept of an "end game" exists in an MMO is enough to declare some serious flaws in the design.

I agree completely.

I love all these wishful statements:

"Commercial games are dead."
"Look like casual games are the way to go."
"I guess 3D graphics are dead."
"I think id will go belly-up, oh well, more of a market for my block puzzle."

I don´t buy a game over $20.

So is wishful thinking hey? Seems that most projections for the casual game market are extremely positive, for example: http://www.igda.org/wiki/index.php/Casual_Games_SIG/Whitepaper/Market_Overview#Introduction

Projections usually are. Particularly so when financed by a special interest group.

Well, guess we have ourselves a young, little coder here. I'm 26 now, and I'll be pushing retirement and Social Security in 40+ years myself, so I'm not gonna start complaining.

He's neither young, nor a coder. :P

I do, sometimes.

So, like what happened to you in the past which made you so cynical? Do you ever say anything positive? Please, lie down on my couch and tell me about your mother...

Lots of different things. Wanna swap life stories?

Sure. But I don't have rosy red glasses on. I've found that being sceptical, particularly of people who offer or promote deals that are too good to be probable. Get rich quick schemes are usually at the top of my list.

The problem with not dreaming big, is you reinforce the status quo..

Remember. Inventing the lightbulb was easy. Getting power into everyone's house so they could use it was the hard part.

Grey wrote


Flameduck wrote:


Flameduck, you obviously had trouble replying coherently to what Grey said. It got to you. Your reply really doesn't make sense. Come lie down on my couch and tell me about your father.... I can help take the pain away.

Amon, stop drugging Mikkel.

No matter of dreams are going to affect the status quo.

Listen if we're voting on it, sure I'd like to believe that a handful of hopefuls can take down a multi billion industry - much like I'd like to think that Linux will destroy Windows, that Nokia will be crushed under the uncompromising heel of Samsung and that a Linux based console could rule the console market.

Back in the real world however, big business is not a democratic process, despite me rooting for the lost causes of this world.

Yeah well I wasn't expecting you to understand anyway.

Not really. I don't know him from Adam, and he doesn't know me from Jack. Although I did think it funny for him to think he was qualified to psychoanalyse me, I didn't particularly care for him (or your) sniping my family.

Twas merely a jest, I never said I was qualified, nor was it a snipe at your family - you know better than anyone not to take forum blabber personally.

I don't know if your forum persona is your *real* persona, but I know that people attact more of what they think and talk like - positive or negative...

Sure. I just found it ironic that the same person who repeatedly chastises me in public for swearing, somehow thinks it's morally okay to insinuate that I have sexual relations with my father.

It's further ironic how Amon keeps saying that I'm a member of some special club, because I apparently swear without getting called on it. Well I wasn't allowed to say fuck, but he was allowed to suggest that I get sodomized by my father. Whose a member of a special club now?

> Whose a member of a special club now?

Having an argument with children is pointless.

What in the name of all the gods, non gods etc are you blabbing on about.

Where the hell did I ever say that you were getting sodomized by your father?

I find it kind of weird that you came to that conclusion.

Please, let me know where I ever said you were sodomized by your father.

You say I chastise you on the forum. I do. Because you swear, break the rules and don't get banned. You've even done it again in your last post. Why should you be let off while others lose their accounts?

Noel Cower was banned for saying the word 'turd'. You break half the forum rules and are still posting.

Somethings not right here.

[edit] Special CLub is exactly what I've always said it was. Special CLub is a group of members who appear to be ban proof. YOU, are an example of a member in Special Club.


[edit2] Uless you're refering to me saying this.



But then before I said that Grey said this



Now, you got no secret meaning from Greys post but from mine you got that i was insinuating that your father sodomizes you?

Bah!

Don't ruin the thread please guys.

I think the whole 'Steam' affair with Half-Life 2 put the dampener on things for me too.
What with all the tremendous time amd effort it took to get the game running. Register, download, un-pack, install, initialise, cleanup, re-configure, and whatever else it done under the hood. Sure the game itself was great but I would never want the 'Steam' approach to become a standard procedure for future game purchases.

I still feel a little un-easy that someone might get hold of my steam account and I end up being locked out of the game.

Aw heck, I'm posting that I like Steam (it's better then having those CD copy protection schemes that never seem to work correctly), but it looks like this thread is heading for a lock or deletion.

Steam also makes patching the game easy (automatic, it doesn't get easier), no needing to go to some third party site to get a patch (that bugs me).

Wait a minute...who's sodomizing who's father? How did this thread get turned from the death of PC games to an incest sex romp?

Anyways, I havent bought anything off of Steam yet, aside from downloading the Lost Coast HL2 demo, and Darwinia.

I'm not too keen on Steam myself, but it does seem like the problems were sorted out. I like to have backups of my games stored somewhere, but just having stacks of CD's is a royal pain even when you typicaly never use them.

Something like Stardock Central gives a much better end-user experience than Steam IMHO. Steam just seems to do too much unnecessary jumping through hoops in the name of security (read: paranoia).

But seriously things like Steam aren't the reason you're seeing less PC games on the store shelves. It doesn't help much that's there's only maybe 10 PC developers around any more, because all the good PC / Mac developers (DMA Design, Bungie, Psygnosis, Bioware, etc.) get snatched up by the likes of Sony and Microsoft to develop "console exclusives".

The PC games market is a casualty of console war. It's not like Raven, Relic and Blizzard can turn out new games quickly enough to meet the demand.

I agree with Flameduck, the problems we have with the PC industry is that the only games that get to the shelves are mainly from Ubisoft, EA, Sony, M$ etc all the other decent games are either snatched up by them or the company is bought out to then make games for them.

There is no decent competition anymore as soon as something sells well the company is bought and then churn out the stuff that the companies think the consumer wants IE another FIFA game which is mostly the same as the last one or another sims expansion. The bigwigs dont take risks this is why we always end up with the same old games because to take risks means risking money and that is something they dont want to do.