1 Finish the game.
2 Stop coding out your user base! Games should be playable at 30-60 fps on last years hardware not some hardware comming out in 1 to 2 years
3 Remove the install process (stream the game for the cd). Remember Tomb Raider 1 did this. (52x cdroms should be able to handle this. Use the xbox hd model

I am sick of seeing and hearing about games that won't be out for years. Game development time must be reduced if the game industry is going to continue to grow.

I'm a dedicated consoler now, though i occasionally still dabble in the PC market. This wasn't always the case. There was a time when i didn't even own a console, playing all my titles on my trusty puter.

So how did i get to where i am today? How did such a dramatic reversal occur????

I'm so glad you asked.

THE CHRONICLES OF HOMM4
(Adventures in Futility)

I was addicted to Heroes of Might and Magic 2 from the first time i played it on my friend's laptop. Maybe it was the constant looting that appealed to me, or the fact that when you played one of the XL single scenario games, most of the time you cared less about winning than you did about getting all the "Kewl Crap (tm)" that littered the landscape. Maybe it was the simple, colorful presentation or the opera that played when you entered your castle. I can't pick a particular feature of the game that made me love it so much, but it ate countless hours of my time. It had a simple, colorful presentation to it, and could run on damned near any hardware (as long as you were running windows 98 anyway). It also worked right out of the box. i heard that there were several patches available for it, but i never had need for them.

BUT

This was the first game i played that required a cd check to run - and there began my long descent into madness.

I remember moving to a new apartment. The cd got lost in that move somehow, rendering the game unplayable. I thought about getting a no-cd crack but decided against it. Instead, i went out and bought another copy of the game. BUT YOU COULDN'T just buy the original anymore. now you had to get the special gold version or what-the-crap-ever it was called. it had all of these swell new campaigns and bonus features. hurray for that. it also added a lot of really fantastic new bugs.

One bug, for example, made the game freeze at odd intervals. Another made it crash entirely out to the desktop. A third would crash the game if you attempted to change the sound settings too rapidly. A fourth made the mouse move sluggishly and leap randomly around the screen. A fifth - the opera, while still selectable, simply would not play. ever.

In addition to the bugs, the game itself had changed in ways i could not appreciate. The musical score for the castles had been "upgraded" to some of the most annoying crap i'd ever heard. instead of spending time on the castle screen, zoning out on the music just because i liked it, i found myself rapidly jumping in and out of the castle screen to avoid it.

At any rate, i eventually got the game patched up to the point that it was playable. ah . . . but it didn't last.

I changed operating systems to windows 2000. There was (is?) no version of the game that will work on that platform. With the final nail in the coffin, i just tossed the disk in the garbage.

Years go by, and HOMM4 is released. I can't resist giving the series one more shot, so i splurge and pick it up. IMAGINE MY SURPRISE when the game, while quite fun, was HIDEOUSLY BROKEN straight from the get go. any one of a hundred different actions would crash it, odd stat bugs plagued it, items would suddenly disappear or simply not work at all, damage calculations were considerably off, etc. There WERE patches available, thankfully, but each was enormous in size and they ALL had to be applied in order to get the latest stuff. no cumulative fixes here my friend. On 56k dial-up, getting my brand new game patched up to an acceptable level of functionality took me over 4 hours.

m.

and there was the inevitable hardware upgrade of course. a new video card had to be procured in order to experience the "lush 3D environment". meh. i was thinking of upgrading anyway.

Having learned from my past mistakes in the "oh i have a cd for that, oops no i don't" department, i wisely made a back-up copy of the cd. I played the game for a while, but found other, better things to do. Some months later, a friend of mine was digging through the games on my computer and found HOMM4. he liked it, so i let him borrow the cd for a while to check it out. that turned out to be a shitty idea because his little sister ended up breaking the thing before he even got it installed (she was only four, how mad could i get about it?).

anyway, i had my back up copy - no big deal right? wrong. maybe it was something in the way i burned the cd, but HOMM4 refused to recognize the legitimacy of my disk. i checked the disk, and all the files were there. i could even install from it. what . . the . . . hell?!?!?

finally i went searching for a no cd crack, and i FOUND ONE! however, this crack was for a higher version of the game than i currently possessed. again, no problem right? i'll just go patch it up and then use the crack and EVERYTHING WILL BE GREAT!

wrong again. the update software couldn't connect for some reason. this irritated me, but a manual update would work just as well i thought. i hit the interweb, searching out a patch.

but you know what? there were no patches. there were no patches because there was no site. there was no site because there was no COMPANY.

after all this crap, the company went out of business, leaving us all stuck with their broken product and their insane copy-protection nazi bullshit.

that was when i bought my xbox. i have halo, splinter cell PT, KOTOR, and a pre-order in for Halo2 . . . and you know what? i'm f@#king ecstatic.

PC games can catch up or kiss my behind. People will only put up with so much, no matter how devoted they are to PC gaming - especially when better, more functional games can be purchased more cheaply on a console with much, much less hassle.

That's my 15 and one quarters cents anyhow.

-rus

Good job on telling how it is.

There is nothing I hate more than when something is done up half-arsed, and you are told this will be the next best game since Quake 3, or Battlefield 1942...ect ...ect...ect.

There are soo many games that I could name off that were such a disappointment. But, I will name off a few and see if some of you guys agre or disagree.

Terminator 3: War of the Machines - Now that game is a prime example for a publisher trying to make a fast buck, I also have to blame the publishers for this travisty of a game.

Starfleet Command 3: What is it? Out over 18 months no official patches even though the game buggier than hell. Another prime example of a Devloper trying to make a fast buck, Just so happend this game was released around the movie Star Trek: Nemisis. But, at least the devlopers of that game did release a couple of "Beta patches".

Soldner: Thats one game that looks good on paper, but ends up completely screwed up when put to action. Now this one gets the double blame ,one on the devlopers and one on the Publishers. I'm sorry I did not spend $40 (Correction $50) for a single copy to be told the isnt completed in its retail format, but we will patch the game up to the way it really supposed to be. Think of this game as a "work in progress".

Work in progress? You got to be kidding me. Im sorry nowhere on the box was there anything stated a work in progress.... If I could only get away with that line at work.

" Oh boss I didn't get the report done, but here Sir, is some of it, consider it a work in progress. " Valkyrie Says

"You're Fired, Dirtbag!" The boss replies...

Its all a matter of ethics, the consumer now matter what it is a game, a car, a pizza, you name it, all want the product that is explictly advertised for. If a game states it can handle 32 players! Then it pretty much better do it. If it supposed to a a gazillion different weapons then they better damn well have a gazillion distinctive weapons with thier own different sounds. If they say the game's graphics is smooth as butta, Then damnit it better be.

My kids get into trouble for lying to me.. Why do companies like Jowood, Wings, and Activision think they are above that? I pay for my games, usually I have to pay for double with kids and owning more than one computer. So I think its a matter above priacy and more about laziness.

Thank you,
Val

For the most part, I agree with the article and some of the comments made. I would also like to add that a big turn-off, at least for me, in ANY game market is non-replayability. Be it console games or PC games, I just don't really enjoy a game that has little replay value. Mabye it's just me, but I just don't see any point in paying $59.99 for a game that you play once and then never again.

When multiplayer FPS games first hit the market, the replayability of games certainly benefited. You could play online with or against other people. But even that only goes so far. You are still playing the same old game, again and again and again. The same old stuff spawned in the same spot, each and every time, you knew...well everybody knew what everybody else was going to do after a few times through your online slaughterfest experience with the game. Eventually your human counterparts became as predictable as the AI.

There isn't really any game out there that gives you a feeling of newness and randomness each time you play it. Whatever happened to the idea of random map generation? And yes, while certain game makers do put out tools for making your own map often they are overly complex and unsupported with no documentation. Thank god there are a few out there that can figure them out and they put up new maps to play on from time to time which does help aleviate some of the replayability syndrome but eventually these people get tired of doing it and quit. Which I honestly don't blame them because I'm sure they enjoy playing the game and when they spend hours and hours making maps they can't play the game they are making a map for. And a lot of them quit because they are truly unable to create the map or game features they REALLY want. Either the tools they have are incapable of doing it or they don't have the knowledge needed to manipulate the complex editor. Or the game engine is just incapable of performing what was desired in the first place without extra coding and work put into the engine.

If you haven't figured it out by now, I like mods. I enjoy an open ended game where users can create their own modifications and then share them with the rest of the community. For the most part I don't see a lot of publishers that support this. Sure, a lot of games have had "editors" pushed out for them, but they are usually very buggy, have no documentation and are too complex for 99% of the gaming population to even make a simple mod with. They throw you this editor, if you can call it an editor, that likens itself to your pizza analogy. The game publisher/creators say, "yea, we support the mod community, here's some new tools. Aren't we great?"

You know why games like Starcraft are still going strong? Look at the editor. Simple to use. You can make a great map in a short amount of time and then share it with the community. And look at games like Diablo, and X-com (oldie but goodie) and why does it maintain good replayability? The maps are never the same. They are always a challange.

Sorry for my incoherent rant...I am tired. But I hope I at least made some sense.

Overhype of a game is really bad too.


Oh...sorry...posted again.

I love you. Will you have my electronic babies?

AMEN! Thank you, thank you, thankyou. I've never bought one of your games before, but reading this article makes me want to. I'm so sick of the EA's of the world putting out craptastic bug ridden games with horribly annoying anti-piracy software. I made the mistake of buying (a crime in it of itself) their first expansion for battlefield, and anytime I switched between a classic map and one of the expansion maps the game would close and tell me I had the wrong f*ing cd in!!! This made me have to constantly switch between the original and the new CD depending upon the map. Eventually I had to stop playing the game because I became so frustrated with the bugs, lack of a friendly interface (the list is a mile long) and their exploits. The most frustrating part was that the game had so much potential and such a horrible implementation that I lost all faith in EA.

I have one more thing to rant about. I mentioned above how Battlefield 1942 had a horrible user interface. Why? I mean, games like tribes 2 (released in 2000 I believe) have defined exactly what a user interface needs to entail. Of course the game is notorious for it's unplayable release and inability to ever climb out of it's quagmire of bugs, but nobody can doubt their vision. I mean forget all the luxury items like the forums, irc, t-mail and browser which I loved but some thought were pointless. Lets just talk about the server list. First of all it was easy and intuitive to use. It gave you the ability to mark certain servers as favorites. It gave you the ability to search for buddies. It even had *gasp* filters that you could *gasp* *gasp* SAVE! What a revolutionary idea. Well, maybe not considering gamespy has been doing all that for years, but why am I forced to download third party components like gamespy and roger wilco (yes I know there are newer/better versions of both) that should be built into the game?

As a software developer who believes in doing things the right way the first time I find myself very frustrated and fed up with the majority of the PC gaming market. With the exception of Blizzard and ID (praise alah) gaming developers/publishers (and I'm pretty sure it has more to do with publishers) are ruining the market. What's worse is that you are starting to see the same philosophies creeping into the console market (Latest Tomb Raider). I'm to the point now were I barely play video games anymore ... which is sad.

I would have to say the only game of "recent" time that made me jump with joy was the ES3: Morrowind for the PC. I agree also with the physics of games have to be friggin realistic....UNLESS...the developer tells me that (in the case of RPGs) the world is different in some way and things are "physically warped," then I would buy into the story. I loved MoH series because the whole genre is a favorite of mine (FPS), also mainly since I play RTCW: ET online. The one thing though, the fact that the publishers are sailing on their bloody boats while screwing over developers definitely does not bode well for the future of the PC gaming industry. Also, for most games, heck...I don't want to have to pay for extra maps or some crap (which are essentially variations of existing maps).

In regards to the Sony and the PS2, I would have to say my all time favorite has been Kingdom Hearts. Indubitably a beautiful game with such a warm fuzzy nostalgic feeling. (Can't wait till KH2) I am a die-hard PC fan and as some others have said before, I will be always. But, the consoles are looking more and more like PCs and I don't want that to happen. That industry is starting to come into dangerous territories, and my only advice is for consoles to go back to their roots. There has to be a distinct boundary between console and PC.

It's so true!! I have been a loyal PC gamer for more years than I can remember, but lately my console (that works EVERY time it bbots up) has recieved more play time. Why is this? My opinion is exactly as Draginol's. I work on a 56k connection, and I work full time. I DO NOT have time to waste downloading a 20 MB patch just to access the main menu of my latest PC game! It's ludicrous, I tell you! Another reason is the decline of quality and work put into games. I can look into PC Gamer issues from 2 years ago and actually say "Man, I remember that game! It was so awesome... I think I'll go play it again!". Now, when I look in a magazine, most of what I see is complete and total crap. I haven't played a satisfying PC Game that actually held my attention for a span longer than 2 seconds since System Shock 2 (A true classic now). If developers want to stop piracy and boost sales, they should, as suggested in said article, deliver the goods. No v4.6 from 1.0, no 200MB patches to add functionality included in the original manual. Make a more involved story (for those that require one), and make it at least a LITTLE interesting to play. Also, for god's sake, release your games on TIME. Half Life 2 was supposed to be released nearly 9 months ago. Then 6. Then 3. Now, it's been pushed back so far, it's been delayed nearly a full YEAR. DOOM 3 is another example. iD never even gave a release date, until just recently. All that eye-candy, and not knowing when to expect it was plain stupid. Last example: Duke Nukem - Forever. How long has this game been in development? I believe it is 5 years, but i can't really remember... and thats a bad, bad sign.

I can always look at it this way:
In a few months, maybe years, there will probably be a new developer. Perhaps this new developer can fix all the problems inherent in the industry now. Maybe, just maybe, said developer would save the rapidly-declining industry. No? Well, I can always hope, right?

I've been a console gamer for many years. When I got my first PC about 10 years ago, I got into PC gaming a little bit, but I was turned off by the general issues already discussed in this thread, and the feature story. So, I don't play PC games anymore.

Console developers are limited in what they can do by the specs of the machine they're working on. Personally, I think my PS2 is just fine, and it's a few years old now. Sure, when the next generation of consoles is released PS2/Xbox/GC games will look outdated, but who cares? Emphasizing graphics over actual content doesn't go very far.

Regardless of the platform, a good game is a good game, but it needs to work out of the box, the developer needs to support the consumer, and the core gamer shouldn't be treated like a criminal by default. Games are so complicated these days that development times keep getting longer & longer. That doesn't excuse unrealistic release dates, buggy games or shoddy/lazy design.

As far as innovation goes, games are like movies or music now, they're very big business. With so much money at stake, there are always going to be cynical, conservative business-types whose only interest is making money. Personally, I don't think that there's a lack of innovation, even if there's a lot of bandwagon jumping after something's a hit.

I think the most important thing any free-thinking consumer can do is try to find those quirky, experimental titles, if that is your wont, and buy/try them. Support the "small" artists. Support small developers, just like you might support indy films or underground music, as best you can.

Here's another aspect not touched on. All this memory and storage capacity leads to sloppier coding, and the publishers don't take into account what's required to make these "Bigger, Better" games run properly. It also hurts gameplay in a variety of ways.

This problem began with Origin's Wing Commander II. This game, when it was released, was a monster. It needed over 20 megs HD space and at least 4 meg RAM. It provided the latest in bitmapped graphics and if you had a Sound Blaster, would run with full voice-overs (provided you purchased the special expansion pack). These requirements are laughable today, but it did start the trend. Current games will easily swallow a gig and a half on your hard drive, which naturally pushes up the minimum RAM requirements. Current designers are far more savvy than their predecessors ten years ago. They are using all this extra hardware to produce what could be some of the best games ever. However, publishers are still running on the same development cycles. The time a designers could normally spend polishing gameplay and debugging code on a 10-20 meg game is now being used to accomplish the same thing on an 800 meg - 1.2 gig game. That's a hell of a lot of code.

No wonder gameplay in the current generation doesn't match up to earlier products. It's also not just an issue of rehashing old games. Many of these could-have-beens started out with a great idea. It had to be great enough for somebody to be willing to invest in it. Unfortunately, current games are a whole lot of flash, not a lot of polish because designers are hard-pressed for time and publishers are looking for a return on their investment.

Unfortunately, the industry thinks it's a given that, regardless of quality, their game will be bought. If not, they spend no support time on it to save themselves the money for the next project (these guys _live_ from project to project). There is no more customer service because publishers are more concerned with profit margins and survival. As long as the game is shipped on time, they don't care about the paying public...and we let them do it to us.

Sweet mother of pete! This is like an invasion by anonymous users! I would have posted on this the first time I read it but I have been busy refining my BaseGolf skills:) Thanks for all the new games Brad. Next time see if you can get an article slashdotted and PA'd..of course then I liekly wouldn't be able to log on at all:)

Exactly! And the corollary is ... the modding community are your friends. Valve got that one right. Give away the tools to make adding value as easy as possible. Buy our game and you can download half a dozen more for free. Make your own game out of ours. We'll help! Half-Life has to represent one of the best gaming values out there.

I have been a gamer since the old atari and commodore 64 days and I have to agree with this article. I play pc games daily. Games like UT2k4, half-life and other of the same sort. And I can honestly say that it does not fail when a game needs patch to fix something not even days after it releases. It is sad and ultimately if we are not careful, the industry will end up causing the pc gaming community to go to the consoles.
I cannot find myself to play on a console when games on the pc are so much better, in so many respects.

Many I need to go back to playing pac man with MAME on my pc..NOT!!

This needs to change and fast.

Can someone please send all these comments to the publishers out there so they can get the message...just an idea..

heres my problem with both genres, if you will, PC vs Console
PC Pros:
~Better graphics, will always be better graphics...
~Developers don't have to answer to the MS/Nintendo/Sony Authority, just to their own publisher
~Games can have more complex controls for the die-hard, instead of limited to a d-pad, two sticks, and 8-12 buttons
~Games can be MONSTROUS, hundreds of maps outta the box, thousands if you count 4th party, user add-ons
~The Whole Mod Community... take a decent game and turn it into the biggest thing since sliced cheese. granted, updated graphics arent new, however, accurate physics, a damn good, involving story, with realistic and reactive enemies is. I think HL2 is going to be the biggest innovation in games, (as far as shooters), hell HL took what a FPS was supposed to be, and turned it into a phenomenon, with HUGE mod community support, a REAL story... an engaging story... and an above average multiplayer.
~The whole "4th party" user base...
PC Cons:
~Price....
~Upgrading.... (however, i have learned, spend a decent bit of money on the hardware to begin with, and just add-on before you think you need it, my processors are slow by modern standards, however, i have a top of the line vid card and a lot of RAM)
~The glut of crappy games, due to no overseeing by the sys manufacturer.
~sometimes awkward controls for the casual user

Console Pros:
~No Upgrading, lots more dev time, no patches
~Single Disc using (usually)
~Easy to use controls, fits in your hand
~You and 1-7 friends can play on the same screen, at the same time.
~in some games, simplified, built in multiplayer, not 6 diff ways to connect to the same damn game
~specialized hardware... no extra crap in the background bogging down the system

Console Cons:
~online is in its infancy... ie:less players per game
~if there IS a major bug (ie: splinter cell for xbox) its harder to fix (will get to xbox live in a sec.)
~console makers as overlords, there isnt much innovation, because sony/nin/ms doesnt want to approve something that might be too controversial
~no fourth party... no user maps (good or bad) no user add-ons, extra guns, missions, skins, etc.
~specialized hardware... it only does ONE thing... requires additional investments for just that thing, cant be used anywhere else
ie: memory cards, controllers, headsets, keyboards, etc etc etc

in either case, both have very good pros and very bad cons

in the end its all preference, and now ms is turning the xbox into a little pc, with games being rushed out, and patches almost immediatly... all content is controlled by them... so no user skins on that mech, or UT fighter... the hard drive is the bane of console USERS... not the devs, because now, if you have an xbox, the game devs dont have to worry as much about bugs and the like, just patch it...

me, i do both... and although i love my pc more, i do enjoy the console games sometimes... the multiplayer isnt as good... although it is there, and fun... id much rather have my pc with a broadband internet than a console without

but there is the one comment that someone made, console games have staying power... pc games, not as much... finally the console dev community has picked up on the retro thing, give us the original game (and make it WORK ON THE CURRENT OS, *cough*wolfenstein*cough*) with our brand new version... console games, hell i still play my NES and SNES, but as for 10 year old PC games, no not really...

-Static

Woot! www.penny-arcade.com

This was definitely an insightful and welcome article. As a former PC gamer that is now basically an exclusively console gamer, I thought I'd post my perspectives on the whole scene as well. I think there's a part of the console market that PC games have just ceased to appeal to. This part of the market consists largely of the casual gamers that may spend only a few minutes a day or some time on weekends playing games.

Just to give you a profile of where I'm coming from, I own a PS2. My most recent games have been Onimusha 1, 2 & 3, Dynasty Warriors 3, Wolverine's Revenge, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, Zone of the Enders, Legacy of Kain: Defiance, Gungrave, and Tenchu 3. My favorite game series of all is the Tenchu series (I'm a sucker for feudal Japan games... something PCs don't have much of). My last PC game was Blood Omen 2. When I played Half-Life, about halfway through it I found to to be exceedinly dull and switched on invincibility, all weap/ammo, no clipping, and walked through the walls to each level's end just to get to the end of the game.

First, there's the issue of keeping your computer up-to-snuff for PC games. For a lot of home PC users, their computer is more of a tool than an entertainment device. While they may know how to keep their OS updated and know their way around a computer well enough to fix any problems that may arise, they don't have enough of a vested interest in keeping the computer up to date with the latest and greatest hardware. It's much like the difference between someone that "trips out" their Subaru every so often... adding different mags, a spoiler, ground effects., etc.... and someone that keeps their car well-maintained in their own garage. You have the avid computer-tweaker that is always replacing the cards, adding hardware, or swapping out for the latest and greatest upgrades (my brother is this type) on one hand. On the other, you have someone like myself who is quite competent with computers, but doesn't invest a lot of time and money in it, other than buying a new machine every 5 or 6 years. For those like myself, the computer is a powerful tool for communication and home affairs, as well as a great jukebox and media center. But, in the end, it's just a tool we use when we need it.

For those like myself, PC games frequently leave us in the dust. Since we're not consistently upgrading our computers, new games, as tempting as they may be, are unattainable, since we couldn't run them anyway. The PC game market has been like this for almost 10 years, with the frequency of these conflicts growing exponentially in the last 5 or so. 10 years ago, I could keep myself pretty satisfied with a steady stream of games as older ones went down in price. Eventually, I'd hit a dry spell where the requirements for games had exceeded my computer's abilities, and I'd keep myself fueled on games I had been mildly curious about that had gone into the $5 bin until I opted to buy a new machine for general purposes.

I remember about 4 years ago, my computer was lost when my apartment was destroyed from a neighboring fire. When I bought my new machine, I spent almost $2,000 getting it up to snuff so that, in my thinking, it would be playable for at least a couple of years. My biggest goal at the time was being able to run Nocturne, which even my then-fiancee's (now wife) new computer was insufficient for. It wasn't long, however, before the PC games started pushing the limits of my new computer's abilities. In hindsight, I could have saved myself almost $1,000 in enhancements to a basic package from Dell by buying a then-recently released Playstation 2. So, consoles, while not completely bug free, offer much simpler and, typically, cost-effective outlets for gaming than PC games. On top of which, they typically offer much better performance from non-game segments like cutscenes. I've eyeballed Blood Omen 2 for my PS2, since I enjoyed it when I played it on the PC. I've thought about it particularly because I would, presumably, be able to view unmarred cutscenes. The cutscenes in most of the Blood Omen and Soul Reaver games on my PC suffered from choppy animation and out-of-synch dialogue as the CD-ROM and computer became discomboobulated in trying to keep up with the software.

It's also harder to sample PC games these days. Even though high-speed internet is becoming more of a standard, many folks, myself included, still have dial-up connections. We don't use the web enough to see paying $70 for HSI in addition to rental fees for DSL equipment or such. With dial up, a 300MB demo or patch is just masochistic. So, we stay away from anything we might be interested in, because there's just too much unknown. Also, rental of console games makes it much easier to try a game before you buy it. In addition, console games have resale value. If I wait until a game drops to $15, I'm not out of pocket much for my gaming experience. If I hold onto it until I have 4 or 5 games I've bought cheaply, I can trade them in for a new game. I was able to buy Tenchu 3 and Onimusha 2 a couple of years ago solely with the trade-in value of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I had only paid $10 for Castlevania originally because of other trade-ins. I recently bought Onimusha 3 for $7 plus the value of trade-in for 4 games. So, even if it has no replay value, a console game is worth more in the long run as something other than a dust magnet.

PC games have also headed in a direction that is a bit too involved for most casual gamers. Console games consist largely of FPS, 3PS, and RPG games these days. PC games have some FPS and 3PS, but seem to consist largely of RTS games now. For the casual gamer like myself, RTS games are far too involved and time consuming. Something like StarCraft is pretty fun and interesting, but many of us casual gamers just want a brief, mindless diversion. For us, keeping track of protecting troops, building buildings, generating new troops, advancing troops, mining money and resources, and keeping the enemy at bay while trying to gain the upper hand is just far too much to contend with. Even RPG games, like Final Fantasy, may involve a lot more management than we're wanting in our entertainment. RPG games in general leave me cold because of the menu-heavy combat systems. I typically describe it as feeling like I have to prepare my taxes so that I can swing my sword.

Console games consist more of "mindless" games. The limits of the number of controller buttons means you can have a solid arsenal of options without getting bogged down as you would with a keyboard. When I attempted to play a copy of Starfleet Command my brother had given me (not burned copy.. legit... the old one he bought), I looked at the menu to get a sense of the commands and, upon seeing a couple of pages of using almost every key imaginable on the keyboard, said, "To heck with this." With a console controller, I at least have everything I need pretty well at my fingertips. Tenchu 3 is one of the best examples I can think of in what I like in an intuitive, but extensive control setup.

Also, the console games don't require casual gamers to get bogged down in micromanagement. Most console games consist of you controlling one character or small group. You don't have 50 units scattered over a map that you have to keep tabs on. There's nothing wrong with such detail in games, but for someone like me that wants to spend 20 minutes after work, or maybe an hour or so on Saturday playing, that's just more than we want to contend with. Many hardcore PC gamers argue that console games like this are "fluff" and not a real challenge. While they may not be as challenging as Warcraft or your typical WWII RTS, that doesn't imply the players are unsophistocated. It just means they don't want to devote that much of their challenge-facing resources to video games. For myself, I study Japanese and have a lot of those Brainworks puzzle sets for my more mindful challenges. Many casual console gamers like "fluff."

The "fluff" also draws in a market of folks that are intimidated by PCs. Consoles have more appeal to college kids that might consider PCs "nerdy" and even older folks that find PCs to be kind of scary. The sports games in particular will have more appeal to non-gamers than the WWII or medieval simulation RTSs you see on PCs. So, therein is part of the rise of consoles... they reach a market PCs will never be able to touch.

In a nutshell, PC games and console games have sort of diverged from each other. Rather than it being a question of a console game running better than its PC counterpart (like maybe Resident Evil games released for both console and PC), the PC games have evolved to meet more of the the wants and needs of hardcore PC gamers, with more emphasis on RTS that focus on paramilitary or medieval fantasy themes. Console games, on the other hand, have evolved more to fit the wants and needs of more casual gamers, with simpler interfaces, more straightforward gaming, less micromanagement, and less of an intimidation factor to non-PC folks.

On top of which, there's something to be said for the comfort of sitting on the sofa in your living room making the ninja move around a 32" screen as opposed to sitting in a secluded home office hammering your keyboard while everyone else in your house is off in the living room or something.

About 5 years ago I switched from being primarily a console gamer to primarily a PC gamer.

Unless I have a high degree of confidence in a developer, I won't buy a game immediately when it is released. I get the most enjoyment out of most games right after I buy it, so waiting for patches to fix a game is just frustrating to me. Too many companies use patching capabilities as a crutch for poor software instead of a tool to enhance their game.

Sorry for the double post (unless someposts before I finish this) but Santos commented on something that inspired a thought (his comments appeared once I submitted my last post). Some PC gamers have gotten overly burned by wondering whether or not a game will work. With consoles, you are pretty certain that if you buy a game for your console, it will work. There's no question of memory or storage space or whatnot.

After a history over the past 10 years of such issues being raised with PC games, some of us have just given up. The breakout of the consoles offered us a way to keep an eye on what was coming out and know we'd be able to play it once it arrived. But, after being left to tread water with my respective PCs each time the software grew beyond my hardware's capabilities, I just gave up. There's no more "Gee, that looks neat... I WISH I'd could be able to play it." Why get your mouth watering for a slice of pepperoni pizza if you're going to be told you can't have any? After a while, you just give up on pizza all together and head for the taco stand.

Going back to my previous comments, here's a pizza analogy. The pros of consoles are you pay for pepperoni pizza and you get pepperoni pizza. With PCs, you have the option to get a S00P3R D00P3R D3LUX3 P1ZZ4. That has definite allure for many hardcore gamers.

Some of us, though...... we like nice, basic cheese pizza.

another example of how big companies are pushing he workload of
testing onto the consumer, wouldn't be so bad if the money they save
was reflected onto the price ..

boohoo

After reading your post, I went back and finished an essay that I had written earlier in the year. What the industry needs, I think, is some kind of basic Software Bill of Rights (SBoR). That's not to suggest that government regulation is necessarily the answer, for the government screws up virtually everything it does. Rather, it's to suggest that until software vendors are held to the same standards as those who provide other products/services, this awful situation will continue. If interested, I've posted the essay at the following URL:

http://www.geocities.com/phileosophos/other/sbor.html

And, of course, I loved your post!

PC games are just NOT being played through these days. There's no way they could have hired a playtester that just 'happened' to not get effected by all these bugs in recent games:

Painkiller: Well, when you buy a game, you don't expect to have to download a pirated version to play it. The publishers, Dreamcatcher, released a patch, but that's just stupid to be forced out due to pirating issues, when pirates can play the game.

Temple of Elemental Evil: "Wow, this is fu---what the fuck? How'd I get all this gold? SHIT, Why did it crash?!" This game is loaded with so many bugs...like the following: Okay, so you can get certain npcs to join your group, many of them VERY powerful, like the troll and hill giant. But, they work for bits of the treasure monsters have, which they get first dibs on. They make bad choices, but that is besides the point. If you go to a store, and force them to sell something, it tells you that they can't. But if the have multiples of the items in a stack, such as gems, they keep the items, but you get money equal to the total value of all the stack, minus one. Infinate money, easy. Too bad it crashes randomly. There are also less hidden gems, such as if you rest, monsters may spawn behind a wall, and if you start combat, bam, end of game, since you can't attack them, and there's no way to retreat from the area. Word 'round the campfire is that Atari rushed the game out. No clue if patch works, I said "fuck it" since it did some such, like deletes save games or somethin'.

Breed: Wow, that could have been an awesome game, except: you can't go up any slanted objects without a LOT of jumping or waiting; the cutscenes are unskippable, and if there's an enemy near, he can KEEP SHOOTING YOU WHILE THE CUTSCENE IS PLAYING!; teammates will shoot through you; teammates are retarded. When a game is easier when

Sacred: Ummm...well, great game, only thing I can think of is the night and wood elf classes are overpowered, dunno if they fixed it, America's army takes up all my online gaming time.

Farcry: Auto saves are not fun. I played the game starting on normal and having auto-adjust skill, then went through the first few bits getting headshots on everything for the fun of it, then everything went totally BERSERK! Kind of hard to play, when everything kills you in very few shots, and you accidentally cross an auto save when you need to do many, many things before the next one. Otherwise, superb game, okay story, good controls and fun weapons.

Tron 2.0: Wow, i fall 4 blocks, not a scratch. I fall 4.1 blocks, I'm dead instantly? (a block is one standard data cube size, lots of jumping puzzles, its between level 2 and 3 jump heights I think?)

Now, the finale: The Spider-man 2 port for the pc is AWFUL! We got literally fucked in the ass there. The thought process had to be, "Okay, pc gamers HATE controllers. So no gamepad support. Now, I want you all to strip ALL of the replay value from the game. Okay? Now, I want as many of the secondary objectives as possible to be impossible to complete." Seriously, they removed the radar(I was trying to find the store to purchase power-ups, so I hit up gamefaqs, went to the xbox faq, and one of the question's answers was "Try to find the green thing on the radar." Hellsau was confused!), removed the power-ups, and just kind of screwed us over.

There are certain containers, such as mailboxes (mailboxen?) that contain red coins you need to collect. Some make the coins not go to where they are supposed to. You can watch, they'll rarely go where they should, but mostly they'll just be gone. I know this because i only could get 6 of 8 of one, then i watched the directions of the coins as they shoot out, but some trails just lead to nothing, or if you look away from one, it'll be gone when you look back. There isn't any reason for it though. Why would they go through the trouble of removing everything from the pc version?

I heard so many good things about Spider-man 2, but I learned "praise = lies" a long time ago. I decided pirating would be a good way to test, so i downloaded it, finished the game EASILY, and was amazed that there's nothing else to do.

The best thing we can do is follow Myth's slogan(I think): If you like this software, buy it. Support the developers. If it's awful, you only downloaded it and wasted time, not given greedy publishers money for rushing an incomplete game.

Your article is gloriously bitter.

I started on a console, the Mega Drive, but I remember there being plenty of bugs in those games. When your character suddenly flies through three layers of land, or the screen becomes a pile of funny colours, or your armies of troopers just don't respond to any commands at all, you know something isn't quite right. Still, they didn't always stop me from playing the game. I probably used some to my advantage.
I moved to the PC, and having to set autoexecs and stuff appealed to me, usually more than actually playing the game. Getting it to run with as many settings as possible was generally more fun.
Now to the present day, and I think the article covers a lot of good points.

However, I recently bought a playstation 2. I don't have a TV, so it goes into my computer via my expensive graphics card. Having become used to resolutions like 1280x1024, low-res TV graphics really HURT. Why is there no CRT-out on this thing? Back to topic though, the games I've played so far have been stable and solid, much better than some recent PC games I've played, but the lack of complexity is rather boring. It probably means less bugs though.

The no-CD patch thing, and related gripes. are interesting. My PC has 1 CD writer, and region 1 and 2 DVD drives, so I can store 3 CDs, but I still end up changing them, and some games don't even allow me to use arbitrary CD-drives! what is that about? It's bad enough that I have to put it in there in the first place, but I have to remember which drive I installed it from as well? Far Cry came on a DVD though, which was a welcome change, except that it still installed n gigs of crap on my drive, and doesn't seem to use the disk at all. In fact, the existence of no-CD patches clearly indicates that it doesn't.

I'd like games to come with actual decent manuals (you know, like for any good software...even in electronic form is fine) for their capabilities, bugs, and command line options, so that I don't have to connect to the internet and trawl some forum I have to spend ten minutes signing up for, when I could have used my reasonable technical knowledge to try ten reasonable-seeming configurations by then. Those readme files are often hard to navigate, or are just filled with 'update your drivers', as if its really someone else's problem, which is especially annoying when it doesn't work.

Patches do annoy me...they seem to be getting bigger. I downloaded a massive (25MB?) patch for something the other day, and it actually removed some options from the graphics menu that I was using so that it displays properly on my TFT monitor.

It's all about value...

I have to say, the big problem that faces a lot of gaming (both PC and console) is the value per dollar purchase. Since I graduated college, I haven't had as much time as I would like to game. I have even less time to keep up on the development of games that I find interesting. Buying games nowadays becomes a gamble, and aside from certain developers (*cough*Bioware*cough*) I'm never sure if the game is gonna bite. When I first began considering GalCiv, I saw their drengin.net option and thought this was the best idea in the universe... For the price of a game and a half, I get all the games this developer puts out in the next couple of years, plus all the games that have already been released...

A year and a half later, it has turned out to be the best value in gaming for me. I have gotten perhaps twice the value I would have gotten by purchasing other games. I'm also content in the knowledge that the entire amount I paid went to the developer, who no longer had a portion of its profits eaten by a publisher. The entire purpose of our copyright system is to reward the authors. The technology now exists to put the author and the customer in contact with each other. The removal of a parasitic middleman (parasitic because publishers add no value whatsoever to the final product) results in a greater value for both the developer and the customer. I hope other developers see the writing on the wall and implement similar systems.