You are making your voices heard. People who buy PC games may have consoles but they don't necessarily want their PC games to simply be ported console games or console-like games.
I have been waiting
6 EXCRUCIATING YEARS to finally hear someone, someone "in the biz", say that.
I daresay that Stardock may be the salvation so many of us have been hoping for.
But please, for the love of all that is holy, could you tone down the rampant PC fanboyism just a bit? I like to pretend that the people who enjoy these sorts of games are too intelligent to fall for that trap, but it's really quite hard when people use the word "console" as if it were an insult. PC gamers really are just console gamers with a different controller - or, if it's more palatable for you, console gamers are just PC gamers with a different mouse and keyboard.
Oh please. To claim that PC and console gamers expect the same things and are alike is ignorance and idiocy. Look at games made before and after 2002 - Pre-2002 consoles were more or less 'kiddie' machines. They were gimmicky, quirky, and fun, but not the same kind of fun that entailed PC games. They were 'dumb' fun.
PC gamers have been lamenting the impact of 'mainstreaming' gaming since the launch of the Xbox, which is right around the time Microsoft got the bright idea to port console titles to their OS. Compare Deus Ex to the consolized Deus Ex: Invisible War. That was completely the fault of the Xbox, and it utterly killed the franchise for damn-near everyone.
The divisor of 2002 marked the end of 'artistic' games. Fallout was never made to be a commercial moneymaker - it was a fun project the developers wanted to create and share with people. Post-2002, games have been about nothing but squeezing cash out of people. Take the latest-and-greatest, buff up the graphics, chop some features so you can sell them in an expansion pack, then treat your customers like crap and release an unfinished game for $50+. Clog it with moronic carrot-chasing schemes like 'unlockable content' to artificially add replayability. Throw some in-game ads in. Then after two worthless patches, release your expansion pack with the previous old features and only support that from then on.
Yeah, I DO think games are an art. They're a creative product born of a conglomerate of minds. Halo wasn't art - Halo was tawdry moneymaker.
Another good example is Morrowind to Oblivion. One was a wonderful, atmospheric RPG dripping with backstory and style. The other was a generic, boring, dumbed-down level-scaled atrocity.
How about System Shock 2 vs. Bioshock? SS2 was, once again, an atmospheric, insanely well-designed, creative, and intelligent game, featuring hands-down the best antagonist in gaming history. Bioshock was a linear slog with an admitably decent story that, however, completely evaporated after the halfway mark, and more or less just degraded into a 'Guy with guns and magic spells blows up mutants'. The game was as deep as a backyard plastic kiddie pool, and had about roughly 5% of everything that made SS2 so fabulous.
Frogboy is dead on the money, and I almost think he understated it. I like playing Super Smash Brothers as much as the next guy, but to be fed that sort of mindless, thoughtless entertainment for 6 years is, well, atrophying my brain. Halo is an unremarkable shooter that appealed to the 'gamers' who really had never played an actually GOOD FPS game before. Console games have a place, but to try to pass off console gaming as just "PC 2.0" is, well, fucking insulting. I don't consider console gamers to be real gamers. Do you consider your gradma playing Minesweeper to be a 'gamer'? That's pretty much what I think of 99% of console releases and console ports - just 3D minesweeper.
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And StarDock, THANKS for taking this company under your wings and publishing this game, you two make an awesome team.
