PC Gaming Dead!

[roco_nights]

I'm a big fan of PC gaming, and have been playing pc games scince DOOM, duke nukem, death rally, etc.
My favourite games are Unreal Tournament, Comand and conquer: Red alert series and Colin Mcrae rally.

I'm VEEEERY disaponted with Unreal Tournament 3 (it's a PS3 GAME!) and specialy with colin mcrae dirt, wich in my opinion is a disrispectful game towards a traditional sprort like rally (Travis pastrana may have won the x games in rally, but in the rally world he is no one). I just can't stand exesive xbox-ps-ish explotions and voices in UT3 and a copilot calling you "dude" in colin mcrae. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

PC gaming is totaly different to PS3 and XBOX, and game creators need to accpept that in order to maintain the market.

I just swear, if age of empires 4, unreal tournament 3 expansion pack, next colin Mcrae, C&C RA3 or any other sequel to a classic untouchable game fails to satisfy me, I will definetly stop with all this gaming thing, screw them.

 

[jay_l_a]

TO BE FAIR, a few of the games you mention are somewhat arcadey in their outlook.
There are plenty of 'sensible' games for the PC.

If you want some recommendations for games for a more mAtUrE audience, then just say The Word.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Only reasoning is due to the fact that consoles make more money. But C&C will never really become xbox-ish. Its a PC game and always will be.

 

[roco_nights]

Hey Jay_l_a, thank you, yes I would like some advice, I need some serius research to justifiy buying a new video card
What I like:
colin mcrae (not dirt!!!)
unreal tournament 1 & 2004
Age of empires (all)
Microsoft links
Starcraft
C&C Red alet series
FIFA & Pro evolution soccer

PLease keep in mind i'm not a hardcore gamer, my system: athlon x2 4800, 2GB RAM, radeon x1650pro

Thanks man!

 

[jay_l_a]

based on AOE (RTS) Have you tried the homeworld series. Old but EPIC.
If you can find it, Sacrifice. Old But great fun and addictive.
See if you can root out some of The Settlers, A bit like AOE only you control the buildings, rather than the people.

based on UT (FPS) have you played Half Life 2? Probable the greatest FPS out there. So many times during the game, I just though WOW!

I always recommend OBLIVION to people, even if it doesn't seem your sort of thing. It will run on your hardware pretty well.

There are others, I'll have a think.

 

[tmeacham]

All the Relic RTS games are excellent (Homeworld, Homeworld 2, Company of Heroes and it's expansion, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and all it's expansions.)

If you liked Age of Empires you might also like Rise of Nations.

 

[dnicklas]

I agree with tmeacham, if its made by relic, its definitly worth buying. Same with anything with the THQ label actually, I have yet to play a game marketed by THQ that I did not like.

PC gameing is far from dead when you have developers like Valve in the mix still fighting for the PC.

 

[RADIO_ACTIVE]

I just swear, if age of empires 4, unreal tournament 3 expansion pack, next colin Mcrae, C&C RA3 or any other sequel to a classic untouchable game fails to satisfy me, I will definetly stop with all this gaming thing, screw them.

Don't stop! PC gaming needs your support.

There still are some great games for the PC
WoW
SOURCE
COD4
BF2
BROTHERS IN ARMS
STAR CRAFT 2 coming soon!
These are just a few I threw out off the top of my head.

Anyway I play alot of games and I keep coming back to just two of them, WoW and DOD:Source and they keep me satisfied. There will never be a good MMORPG on a consol because of the cross platform. FPS games are meant to be played with a keyboard and mouse. RTS is so much easier with mouse and keyboard as well...

The consols are becoming more and more like PCs, O wait they are.

 

[Muhad]

Seems like the gaming developers don't even try to make great games. They know there a tens of thousands of suckers on the planet that will waste their money.

 

[dos1986]

10 million WoW gamers would say, err no...

 

[AzureFlash]

NetHack

Need I say more?

 

[Oh Snap]

Seems like the gaming developers don't even try to make great games. They know there a tens of thousands of suckers on the planet that will waste their money.

Which is why "piracy is hurting the industry" because more and more people are downloading the torrent, playing the game for 20 minutes and going "Thank Jesus I didn't just pay for this garbage."

We're reaching a point where getting a "7" rating on the review sites means your game is going to fail. Game companies need to give it 100% or stop making games. Anyone have a link to that post made by the employee that worked on Titan's Quest where he was complaining about how hard it is to build a game for different hardware? Whiners like that need to get out of the industry.

 

[BigMac]

NetHack

Need I say more?

I had no idea that still existed I played that in the early 90's and it was fun but why would people still bother with something like that today, if only for refusing to go with the times?

 

[abusive]

PC gaming is dead! Oh no! Better not tell that to Blizzard with there 10 million subs, there 10 year old RTS and 8 year old RPG still selling.

On a more serious not tough you might have a point, last year, the profit made by video game industry in NA was only ~14% due o PC games.

I think that is because either, PCs are expensive(bout 750$ for a decent one) complicated (for people who just wanna slap a DVD in and play) and the copy protection pissing every1 of. <~ Just look at Sins of the Solar Empire, no copy protection, yes its on Pirate Bay Mininova and <insert torrent site here> but its still hitting record sails.

I think if Developers and publishers dropped copy protection and you could just put a DVD in the Drive and wait a minute for it to install and then play with no bullsh*t like registration and suff or even a spyware that sends you advertising (looking at you EA) I think that PC game would sell loads more.

 

[razor512]

yep. if they remove all of the drm crap, they would sell more.

most copy protection is broken within a day when a game comes out

a 1 day delay in piracy doesnt help the company much, but it does turn away legit buyers because they have to deal with the drm the whole time while pirates never even notice it

 

[infornography42]

Piracy lead to DRM, which lead to more piracy which lead to more DRM which lead to more piracy ... ad nauseum.

Removing DRM would not stop piracy, but optimistically, within a year or two, piracy would be back down to where it was when DRM was minimal. Largely this optimism stems from the idea that the more honest among the pirates would pressure the others to legitimately buy any game that did not use DRM as already happens to some degree. Then they would eventually get out of the habit all together.

I would like to see a world where putting DRM in your game meant that the game did not sell.

 

[razor512]

yep, they were so greedy that they couldnt stand 1-2 hundred people pirating their game so they make drm which is a major inconvenience for everyone so to escape it, many legit users move to piracy for drm free copies

most people pay like how they did for radiohead and NIN out of respect and fairness, they did the work to make the mucic so they earned the money being paid to them. but if they slap on drm from hell on their stuff then they loose all respect from their fans and people move to piracy.

DRM is a method of punishing people before they do anything ( the Do onto others BEFORE they do onto you method)

if the legal system followed the method of drm, every one on earth would be in jail because that have the ability to do bad


usually it is common for pc games to have problems
and when you have a problem with a pc game, you will generally google for solutions, if someone is having a problem with the drm in their game making it frustrating for them to get to play it then their solution would be to get a drm free copy (aka pirate copy)

 

[abusive]

most people pay like how they did for radiohead and NIN out of respect and fairness, they did the work to make the mucic so they earned the money being paid to them. but if they slap on drm from hell on their stuff then they loose all respect from their fans and people move to piracy.

DRM is a method of punishing people before they do anything ( the Do onto others BEFORE they do onto you method)

Exactly, also why would I want to buy from a company that treats me like a criminal?

 

[Kenelm]

While I the presence of DRMs can lower a game's sales, the complete absence of protection won't make PC games sell any better. Of course, some people download cracked copies of games so they aren't bothered by DRMs, but these people do this AFTER they've bought the game. This is different than downloading the game and never buying it.

So the first reason why people download games is that they don't have to pay for it, not because of DRMs. Give them the possibility to copy their games, and they'll make copies for all their families and friends. From the first day that a video game was released without any protection (they used to have those "What's the 59th word of the fifth paragraph in the manual page 18"), everyone was like "Hey ! Let's buy only one, and make copies for everyone !"

Remove protections, and it will be 1990 all over again. And it won't help game sales. Actually, I believe that copy protection is what made PC Gaming live so long.

Now there's an alternative to make sure people buy games : do what Blizzard does ; make a game that truly shines by its multiplayer part, which requires a unique cd key that no keygen on Earth can give you. Looks like it worked for them, so it could work for any other game.

 

[razor512]

there shouldn't be a need to download the game after buy buy it, it is basically punishing legit users and this discourages them from buying the game.

while i believe in some copy protection like the kind that just makes it slightly harder to copy a cd (a little harder than copying a old music cd

but thats it, that kind on protection only becomes a slight annoyance when the legit user tries to copy the game but not when they just want to pop in a cd and install and play the game

 

[infornography42]

CD keys and content updates are the answer. Stardock has the right idea and I think everyone should follow their example.

 

[razor512]

while cd keys are good a good simple not too intrusive form of copy protection, but they need to shorten them.

the cd keys get longer and longer making them harder to type in, while a keygen will just generate and you can copy and paste it in (or with newer one, no cd key needed at all)

cd keys should be 9 characters long, thats enough for a few hundred million combinations and is easy to type in for the legit users

30-40 digit keys are not needed we don't have enough people on earth to fill a quota of a 30-40 digit key and nothing will sell that much unless they are assigning cd keys for people in a few million other planets and other galaxies

 

[memoryguy]

I wouldn't say pc gaming is dead. That's going a bit far.

But the truth of the matter is, there is a shortage of games coming out atm. It's pretty dry right now, you've got to admit.

 

[infornography42]

Razor512, the idea behind CD keys is not simply to have a unique one for every copy, but to also make it so that it is not easy to guess one that is available. At only 9 characters it will be a very VERY easy algorithm to crack. I really don't mind long serials because you enter it all of once per install and with Stardock it is only once per game because it associates the key to your account and you never have to enter it again no matter how many times you reinstall the game.

In order for this method to work you have to have a complex key that is extremely difficult and annoying to crack. That coupled with the fact that you don't even need the key to install the game means that crackers won't bother trying. It is there as a gateway to registering the game, not to installing. Once it is registered you then have access to the patches which tend to be very content heavy.

In this way, people who steal the game will get a taste of it, and if they want the newer features and content, they will be likely to go out and buy it. Especially if it retails for $40 new. This method uses piracy as a means of advertisement rather than a scourge that needs eradication.

You might say that it is optimistic to think that this would work, but we already have a working example with multiple points of sample data. If more developers followed this method, I honestly think piracy will become less and less of an issue.

 

[infornography42]

I wouldn't say pc gaming is dead. That's going a bit far.

But the truth of the matter is, there is a shortage of games coming out atm. It's pretty dry right now, you've got to admit.

Actually, as a strategy gamer, I am wishing the new games would come out a bit slower. I'm swamped as hell and mired in several games at once. I need to start studying for my CCNP, but how can I do that in this environment....

I kind of feel for you FPS gamers, after all you only got COD4, TF2, Portal, HL2E2, Crysis, and Bioshock in the last few months...