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[dcx4610]

It amazes me how often you hear people use the line 'I know what I am doing' and yet appear to have so many issues when attempting to use a PC to play video games. Is this just sort of trend I am seeing because I want to see it, or is there some substance behind it.

Coming from a developer perspective (desktop apps, not games, but still), these people who tend to have issues constantly are the ones that know enough to be dangerous. They usually change or tinker with various parts of their system thinking that are making 'improvements', when in reality they are just leaving a minefield of incorrectly configured or even broken system ready to rear its ugly head.

I am sure it is the platforms fault though. Somehow.

Since I used that line, I'll reply. I work in IT and I've been playing PC games since the 80s and have been building systems since the 90s as my evidence for I know what I'm doing.

I'm not tinkering with ini files or the registry to make a game run a certain way, I'm simply using the available settings for the games in the options. The same crashes I ran into on my games are the same crashes others have experienced on the same games. It just seems like programming has either gotten sloppy or you can blame GPU drivers for bugs. I also think the community plays a big role in fixing bugs. A game like World of Warcraft runs flawlessly because you have millions of players. If there is a bug, it gets fixed. When it's a smaller game, there's less outcry, less resources and lack of examples to resolve the issue.

I love PC games but it sometimes just doesn't feel worth the hassle, especially with the graphical quality the PS4 (sorry Xbone) is pushing.

 

[NervousXtian]

With a risk of generalising, that feels like a pretty good assumption. I'm quite baffled at how much problems some people seem to have with their PC's, but maybe they're actually trying to hard. I would like to know how many of those where who seem unable to get their games to work that are talking about actually getting the games to run, or mean getting that they're tinkering to get the game running with all kinds of fancy graphical effects.

Some games will be botched at launch, and some incompatibitlites will always be there, but I find it hard to believe that that many people are actually having problems to get pretty much every game to even run.

Well, I feel pretty comfortable saying that anyone saying the bolded part is either outright lying or has botched up a bunch of systems files some way/some how or is using completely old or out-dated drivers and hardware.

The answer to the OP's title though, is that PC Gaming is taken seriously already, and all the issues he lists (and that I've mentioned as well) will never ever be fixed.

It's really a deal with it or use a different platform thing. We're not going to see unified system set-ups in the PC world to solve the strange hardware compatibility problems, and you have fragmented OS issues as well.. and we're tossing a new one into the mix soon with SteamOS.

To be honest, you could say it's amazing that things tend to go as smooth as they do these days.. but it's no less frustrating when something doesn't work and you're left fucking with things and searching for solutions to a problem that by all accounts shouldn't be a problem with your setup.

 

[RionaaM]

I'm in total agreement with OP.

I've been gaming on PCs just as long as consoles and while I enjoy building and tinkering, it definitely gets tiresome when you just want things to work.

I've been on a kick of hitting my backlog of PC titles recently. Out of the recent 6 I've played and beat, every. single. game. crashed. Multiple times, throughout the course of each game.

Yes, my hardware is up to spec. I know what I'm doing. It's simply bad programming, buggy drivers and games having to to work with 100s of different specs rather than just your specific rig.

For the people that don't mind tinkering, yes, you can get the best quality graphics possible on PC but you have to work at it and deal with a lot of headaches. Especially with the PS4 and XB1, the gap is going to close even more and PC quality graphics (for now) can be had without the hassle of everything above.

May I ask which games where those? It seems to me there's something wrong with your PC, not with PC gaming in general.

 

[Opiate]

Well, I feel pretty comfortable saying that anyone saying the bolded part is either outright lying or has botched up a bunch of systems files some way/some how or is using completely old or out-dated drivers and hardware.

The answer to the OP's title though, is that PC Gaming is taken seriously already, and all the issues he lists (and that I've mentioned as well) will never ever be fixed.

It's really a deal with it or use a different platform thing. We're not going to see unified system set-ups in the PC world to solve the strange hardware compatibility problems, and you have fragmented OS issues as well.. and we're tossing a new one into the mix soon with SteamOS.

To be honest, you could say it's amazing that things tend to go as smooth as they do these days.. but it's no less frustrating when something doesn't work and you're left fucking with things and searching for solutions to a problem that by all accounts shouldn't be a problem with your setup.

I definitely agree with this. In fact, I'd go further, and say that the precise strengths of the PC platform (power, flexibility, openness) necessarily cause its weaknesses (less simple, less accessible). You can try and moderate the weaknesses, but you can't eliminate them entirely. In other words, you can't have everything at once.

 

[Moon_frogger]

Arguing that PC doesn't have these issues or that they are 'fun' is pretty hilarious. It's better to just say it's the nature of a mostly open platform and the tradeoffs are worth it. Console gaming has a lot of the same problems as PC these days but driver conflicts, runtime errors, malware, are just a few of the many issues consoles will never have due to their closed nature.

 

[Opiate]

Arguing that PC doesn't have these issues or that they are 'fun' is pretty hilarious. It's better to just say it's the nature of a mostly open platform and the tradeoffs are worth it. Console gaming has a lot of the same problems as PC these days but driver conflicts, runtime errors, malware, are just a few of the many issues consoles will never have due to their closed nature.

This seems right to me as well. Openness is almost by definition opposed to security; raw power opposed to inexpensiveness; flexibility and variability opposed to simplicity.

Again, you can help mitigate these issues, but not eliminate them entirely.

 

[Almighty]

Well I learned in this thread that PC gaming is even more mainstream then I thought. I never thought it was niche with some of the massive games on it, but to see that you have to combine every platform under the sun into one super(non-existent) mega platform to beat the revenue was interesting. So yeah just another thread that confirms that for some people PC gaming starts and ends with console ports. Which to be fair does explain some of these strange experience people claim to have with PC gaming.

 

[Opiate]

Well I learned in this thread that PC gaming is even more mainstream then I thought. I never thought it was niche with some of the massive games on it, but to see that you have to combine every platform under the sun into one super(non-existent) mega platform to beat the revenue was interesting. So yeah just another thread that confirms that for some people PC gaming starts and ends with console ports. Which to be fair does explain some of these strange experience people claim to have with PC gaming.

I'm aware you're basically saying this, but keep in mind that only a small portion of that PC space represents hardcore, AAA western games, and that this sense of mainstream varies by region.

I happen to live in the US, where the PC is easily the least proportionately represented. If I lived in Europe, China, Korea, or emerging markets (India, Brazil, etc.) the picture would be notably different. Further, if I were dominantly or exclusively interested in the big budget blockbusters from EA/Take 2/Ubisoft/etc., then I probably would find the consoles as if not more appealing.

 

[Dr.Acula]

And the example that I was responding to had nothing to do with consoles.

Sure it did.

"Interesting just watched a guy playing that be batman game on his Xbox complaining"

This thread is about PC and console experiences and how they differ, so contrasting and comparing arguments are fair. I was just giving the example that in game bugs relating to path finding and AI are platform agnostic.

 

[MogCakes]

Ok, on the off chance that the PS3 or the game didn't require an update at playtime, I still have to look for the disc and load the game which takes a LOT longer than on a PC.

Yeah, what you actually sit down and play isn't that relevant, as long as it's just about putting a disc into the console.

Oh good god. This is ridiculous. Yes of course, discs are the devil incarnate.

 

[hlhbk]

This is exactly why I do not PC game. I spend more time making the game work than I do playing it.

Hyperbole much? If that is not Hyperbole then sounds like you need to learn how to maintain your system.

 

[hlhbk]

The OP's reasons are why I abandoned PC gaming after being primarily a computer gamer for 20 years. I just got sick of the maintenance and couldn't be bothered with it any more. I've fully played 2 games on a PC (Limbo and Walking Dead) in about the last 8 years.

However I will say that if the Steam Box can solve all the problems, I am very likely to return to it.

i am totally serious when I say this how does everyone including the OP seem to think that the Steambox is going to "solve all the problems"? Their hardware is not going to be uniform and the O/S can't fix what is 'wrong" with pc gaming. Again if you want what you are asking for then go ahead and buy a console because doing that to PC gaming would kill the PC market because all of the benefits for PC would be gone.

 

[hlhbk]

PC gaming requires a touch of humility. Most people lack that. I really have my doubts about the expertise and hardware level of the people claiming to have every other game they play fucking crash.

100% this.

 

[Riposte]

If people are using Minecraft "empires" (like, "mspaint masterpieces") to bash console games, even ones with QTEs (because they are just QTEs lol, even the multiplayer), all of gaming may be impossible to take seriously. You are really scratching the bottom of the barrel when you make games like Heavy Rain look good by comparison.

With empires in mind, you could have said Civilization, a Paradox game, even Starcraft, but no... Minecraft. A game more famous for its ability to a very shitty 3D modeler.

 

[fertygo]

Agreed. Tinkering is a hobby of mine unto itself.

I get it, customizing in-game setting can be fun.

But tinkering with .ini file and driver/Bios prblem? fuck off. Its can even mess up your PC, there's no fun in that.

 

[Sentenza]

If people are using Minecraft "empires" (like, "mspaint masterpieces") to bash console games, even ones with QTEs (because they are just QTEs lol, even the multiplayer), all of gaming may be impossible to take seriously. You are really scratching the bottom of the barrel when you make games like Heavy Rain look good by comparison.

With empires in mind, you could have said Civilization, a Paradox game, even Starcraft, but no... Minecraft. A game more famous for its ability to a very shitty 3D modeler.

Ghst's post wasn't supposed to be about how much you should or shouldn't like Minecraft.

 

[Riposte]

Ghst's post wasn't supposed to be about how much you should or shouldn't like Minecraft.

Fair enough, I guess. I think he made the same point twice (messing with PCs is a stimulating experience - which I agree with), only the first post didn't have the silliness I'm talking about now (commenting on the actual content of console games).

 

[iamshadowlark]

The relevance is that the PC is a single platform, while consoles are not. In fact, that is the very definition of a platform. This is now explicitly a denotative argument: a platform is defined as a hardware architecture with software framework (e.g. OS) that allows software to run.

By definition, if the software cannot run on the platform, then it isn't part of the same platform -- while recognizing there are at least a few rare cases and exceptions (very old or very new PC games; 360 games from Japan on a US 360; DSi games on a DS; PSMove games on a PS3). If 95%+ of the software can work, we tend to call that a platform.

If we want to instead redefine a software platform as just a loose philosophical connection between systems made by different companies in different form factors running different software and which are completely incompatible with each other, I think that's very silly, but fine, let's completely redefine what a platform is. In that case, Windows+iOS+Android are also loosely philosophically connected (and as stated, in some cases Android tablets can already dual boot to Windows), so even if we decide to completely redefine words to suit our arguments, PC is still bigger.

Again, you have to be incredibly obtuse and semantical to get your point through.

The term platform as used in a computer context can refer to (1) the type of processor and/or other hardware on which a given operating system or application program runs, (2) the type of operating system on a computer or (3) the combination of the type of hardware and the type of operating system running on it.

The first meaning, also called the hardware platform, can refer to the the type of system in general (such as mainframe, workstation, desktop, handheld or embedded) and/or the specific type of processor (such as x86, SPARC, PowerPC or Alpha).

http://www.linfo.org/platform.html

 

[Opiate]

Again, you have to be incredibly obtuse and semantical to get your point through.

Okay. Hold on. I'm going to retrace the steps of this conversation for other people to see what happened here.

I said this:

Correct, PC Gaming revenue is notably larger than any console and even larger than all consoles combined in revenue generated.

You then said that the data didn't support my conclusion, and after providing my evidence that the PC platform is indeed larger than all home consoles combined, you replied:

The word "home" doesn't even show up in your post. Thats the only thing plain.

Now, most people in casual conversation recognize that "console" refers to "home console" in virtually all contexts, but you wanted to split hairs and insist that in this case "console" can also refer to handhelds because technically they can sometimes be labeled as such. So let's be clear here: this is indeed a semantic argument, and the semantic nature of the argument was precipitated by you. I'm typically a bit more colloquial, but as soon as you made it clear that common vernacular was disallowed, I started playing hardball right back. If you want to blame anyone for the nitpicky, semantic nature of the discussion, don't look at me. I'm playing by your rules. I suspect you've decided that semantic minutiae are frivolous only now that these semantics seem to be working against you.

Also, "semantical" isn't a word.

 

[PKrockin]

http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/The%20point-you.jpg[IMG]

Ghst's post wasn't supposed to be about how much you should or shouldn't like Minecraft.[/QUOTE]

There was a point in that post? It sure looked like joking/trolling to me.

 

[Wiktor]

lol, okay, this is seriously hilarious.

Not really. If you don't get your kid on a computer you are doing him a great disservice. A child raised with only mobile device or just console will likely be inferior intellectually compared to one who did it with a full blown PC. And there's no better way to get a kid in front of PC than games.

 

[hlhbk]

Not really. If you don't get your kid on a computer you are doing him a great disservice. A child raised with only mobile device or just console will likely be inferior intellectually compared to one who did it with a full blown PC. And there's no better way to get a kid in front of PC than games.

100% this. Gaming was why I started on PC's, and configuring games in DOS started me down my career path in IT. To not encourage kids to game and use PC's is a great disservice.

 

[Doctor Ninja]

I ordered the part for my brand new PC and I shall assemble it soon and join the master race ! The problems you've addressed in the OP won't bother me at all but yet again that's just me.

 

[Codeblue]

And they say irony is dead.

I think you're confusing irony with chivalry.

 

[PKrockin]

Not really. If you don't get your kid on a computer you are doing him a great disservice. A child raised with only mobile device or just console will likely be inferior intellectually compared to one who did it with a full blown PC. And there's no better way to get a kid in front of PC than games.

Who said anything about not getting them on computers? I never had a gaming PC growing up. I had old hand me down hardware and software from the thrift store most of the time and lord knows I spent way too much time behind the keyboard even then.

And that bit about kids without a PC being "likely inferior intellectually" just smacks of elitism.

 

[nded]

Who said anything about not getting them on computers? I never had a gaming PC growing up. I had old hand me down hardware and software from the thrift store most of the time and lord knows I spent way too much time behind the keyboard even then.

And that bit about kids without a PC being "likely inferior intellectually" just smacks of elitism.

Yeah, pretty much any manner of computer for kids to tinker around with and learn stuff on will do. I'd think giving them just enough to want to learn how to do more would be better than just handing them a gaming rig.

 

[Wiktor]

Who said anything about not getting them on computers? I never had a gaming PC growing up. I had old hand me down hardware and software from the thrift store most of the time and lord knows I spent way too much time behind the keyboard even then.

Which is fine. But most kids won't just sit down and start tinkering with PCs on their own. They need a gateway to it and there's not better one than gaming. Especially today. Ten years ago PCs were the only devices of it's kind. You wanted internet, watching movies etc..you only could get a PC. Nowadays mobile device does all that, so you need something more to encourage kids to use PCs. Gaming is a good way to do this, as mobile devices are pretty laughable in this area compared to PCs.

And that bit about kids without a PC being "likely inferior intellectually" just smacks of elitism

I think your reaction smacks of denial of the worst kind, one that's hurtful to kids's development just because you don't like pcgaming.

 

[MogCakes]

I think your reaction smacks of denial of the worst kind, one that's hurtful to kids's development just because you don't like pcgaming.

I agree with him tbh. I didn't need a powerful gaming rig off the bat to become savvy in basic computer literacy. The same rings true for most of us.

 

[CecilRousso]

Oh good god. This is ridiculous. Yes of course, discs are the devil incarnate.

That was not really the point of my post. It was that when you give up on PC gaming because consoles are easier, you give up on playing a lot of games that are only available on PC. If you're fine with that, then ok, but if you''re really into strategy games, then it really doesn't help that consoles are easer to handle, does it?

Some are aware of that, some are ok with it, but a lot of posts seem to say that people aren't that concerned about what they actually play, just that they have something to play.

 

[MogCakes]

That was not really the point of my post. It was that when you give up on PC gaming because consoles are easier, you give up on playing a lot of games that are only available on PC. If you're fine with that, then ok, but if you''re really into strategy games, then it really doesn't help that consoles are easer to handle, does it?

Some are aware of that, some are ok with it, but a lot of posts seem to say that people aren't that concerned about what they actually play, just that they have something to play.

That's a fair point that's really poorly conveyed by the discs remark you made. LOL. As a PC/console gamer I agree with you.

 

[zoukka]

OP is weird. I'm a total lazy bum of a PC gamer, yet have no problems. If one arises there's nothing a quick google search can't fix.

If anything, the current gen consoles feel slow, clunky and you need to download slow updates to everything all the time.

 

[sono]

You just expressed perfectly why I left PC gaming a few years back.

I dont have time to tinker, the little free time I have I want to play games, not fix up what should be other peoples responsibilities in the game I bought.

 

[DryvBy]

Steam Machine will solve all. I think people are forgetting you'll be able to build your own steam machine

Steam Machine won't fix badly programmed games. Kane and Lynch on PC is the biggest rip off in the history of gaming for me. I can't even finish the first mission without it crashing.

 

[Seanspeed]

This is exactly why I do not PC game. I spend more time making the game work than I do playing it.

You're doing something wrong then.

 

[-SD-]

This is exactly why I do not PC game. I spend more time making the game work than I do playing it.

These modern PC gaming times are nothing compared to the 80's and 90's and a bit into the 2000's. Back then you had to know and remember lots of stuff and actually use your brain to get things to work. Remember, there was no plug-and-play and no Google to help.

Compared to what it used to be, modern PC gaming is effortless and retard-friendly.

 

[Zakalwe]

I honestly very rarely have an issue with a PC game that takes longer than 5-10 minutes to get up and running.

Usually it's a minute of messing with graphic settings to get what I like and I go. PC gaming is easy for me.

Which is lucky, or you haven't been PC gaming for long. More frustrating issues will occur over time. I've been PC gaming for over ten years and, while the majority of issues are relatively easy to fix, there are sometimes games or programs that simply don't want to run. I've only ever found a single game I couldn't get working, but plenty that took more than 5-10 minutes of tweaking.

All part of the fun, though. OP just doesn't seem to have the taste for it.

 

[DryvBy]

Which is lucky, or you haven't been PC gaming for long. More frustrating issues will occur over time. I've been PC gaming for over ten years and, while the majority of issues are relatively easy to fix, there are sometimes games or programs that simply don't want to run. I've only ever found a single game I couldn't get working, but plenty that took more than 5-10 minutes of tweaking.

All part of the fun, though. OP just doesn't seem to have the taste for it.

Been PC gaming since 1990 and over the years, it's gotten easier and easier to game on a PC. The best part about my love for gaming is that my dad wouldn't ever help me get something working (he's a big techy guy). He taught me to figure things out on the computer and not to fear it. So I learned how to actually get around a computer fairly well at a young age.

But today, there's been a few games that just don't work. And PC gaming isn't for everyone. It's more expensive, it takes some tweaking to get it "perfected", and generally having a PC in the living room with a mouse/keyboard setup doesn't work. But I do love it as I have more classic PC games I love than my console counterparts.

 

[Kinthalis]

Not only is PC gaming easy, It also, apparently, the only place where you cna find consistent "next gen" graphics and 1080p 60 FPS.

With the consoles... you take your chances.

 

[iamshadowlark]

Okay. Hold on. I'm going to retrace the steps of this conversation for other people to see what happened here.

I said this:



You then said that the data didn't support my conclusion, and after providing my evidence that the PC platform is indeed larger than all home consoles combined, you replied:



Now, most people in casual conversation recognize that "console" refers to "home console" in virtually all contexts, but you wanted to split hairs and insist that in this case "console" can also refer to handhelds because technically they can sometimes be labeled as such. So let's be clear here: this is indeed a semantic argument, and the semantic nature of the argument was precipitated by you. I'm typically a bit more colloquial, but as soon as you made it clear that common vernacular was disallowed, I started playing hardball right back. If you want to blame anyone for the nitpicky, semantic nature of the discussion, don't look at me. I'm playing by your rules. I suspect you've decided that semantic minutiae are frivolous only now that these semantics seem to be working against you.

Also, "semantical" isn't a word.

LMAO. So again, you are trying to get loose with the facts. Is your name that important to you?

Again, there was never anything said about "home" consoles until YOU decided that the point of distinction should be there, introducing semantics. Which you did here:

Do handheld consoles not count or?

As a home console? No, I don't think most people classify them as such

Who said anything about home consoles?

You even managed to straight up lie and claim in regards to the last question

I did, right here, in very plain language:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=87837958&postcount=975

Not to mention trying to hang your head on an absolutely obtuse definition of "platform" and somehow trying to snake the smartphone/tablet market in to creat a victory.

If you are gonna "let people see" then why do you need to obfuscate facts? Its probably the same reason why you retreated to semantics in the first place.

We are talking about the gaming economy in a macro-sense, that guy was using "PC" as the collective term for all of the different configurations of home computers and the various avenues of gaming and I used "console" as the collective term for console products released by Sony/MS/Nintendo. Again, not that hard to grasp, but I suppose at first you need to want to grasp....

 

[Mihos]

Years of experience and raising kids of my own, I can tell you with absolutely no emotion that all of them have access to a PC of some type and all of them play games on it while you aren't looking. There is no barrier of entry for them. If they are in the computer lab typing a report, they are alt-tabing over to mine craft while your back is turned. People who are writing PC off as the ultimate hard core machine are forgetting it is also the ultimate casual machine as well, and it is bullshit to ignore one or the other to make a point... Especially when the consoles are desperate to capture that indie "casual" space on consoles.

 

[Minsc]

Which is lucky, or you haven't been PC gaming for long. More frustrating issues will occur over time. I've been PC gaming for over ten years and, while the majority of issues are relatively easy to fix, there are sometimes games or programs that simply don't want to run. I've only ever found a single game I couldn't get working, but plenty that took more than 5-10 minutes of tweaking.

All part of the fun, though. OP just doesn't seem to have the taste for it.

This is one point I don't agree with. One is not lucky if things work without problems, one is unlucky if things don't work correctly (in most cases). Do you really believe the majority of PC games released don't run correctly for most users? No, it's a vocal minority that have issues with the games. Of course it depends vastly on what type of games you play as well, but if you look at everything, I don't believe it will be a common issue that most of that game's players cannot play it due to their PC.

 

[riflen]

These modern PC gaming times are nothing compared to the 80's and 90's and a bit into the 2000's. Back then you had to know and remember lots of stuff and actually use your brain to get things to work. Remember, there was no plug-and-play and no Google to help.

Compared to what it used to be, modern PC gaming is effortless and retard-friendly.

Oh god, you're bringing back horrible things my memory had suppressed, like IRQ conflicts and setting motherboard jumpers. Kids these days, etc, etc.

 

[dejan]

Here are some of the games I've played on PC in the past 12 months. Yeah, not much Triple-A stuff in here, but a pretty varied list.

X3: Reunion
Path of Exile
Super Monday Night Combat
Unity of Command
Mark of the Ninja
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition
Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams
Unity of Command
Card Hunter (browser game)
SolForge
Monday Night Combat
Tomb Raider
Shadowrun Returns
Plants vs. Zombies: Game of the Year
Saints Row: The Third
Blood Bowl: Chaos Edition
Dead Island
Binary Domain
Deus Ex (not Human Revolution, the 2000 classic)
Marvel Heroes
Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box
Warframe
The Walking Dead
Anomaly Warzone Earth
Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten
PlanetSide 2
Tropico
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Games that required more than installation to run:
Tomb Raider - had to update my graphics card drivers for this one

Games I tinkered with, because I can:
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition - DSfix
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - installed Morrowind Overhaul 3.0 mod and a gamepad profile
Saints Row: The Third - after finishing the game, I installed a mod to replay story missions
PlanetSide 2 - it's been a while, but I remember tweaking ini-settings
Deus Ex - installed a community patch after experiencing the Paul Denton disappeared glitch
Blood Bowl: Chaos Edition - installed an UI mod

I'm gaming on a Windows 7 machine with an overclocked i7-930, 6GB Ram and a GTX 670. So nothing too fancy. Maybe it's because I'm playing most games months after release and most of the problems are fixed by then, I don't know.

 

[pestul]

I absolutely love tinkering with hardware and software. Always have. Call me weird, but I actually like it when I have to find a solution to get something to work as intended. I can never understand when someone gives up and the answer is only a quick google search away.

 

[Principate]

Years of experience and raising kids of my own, I can tell you with absolutely no emotion that all of them have access to a PC of some type and all of them play games on it while you aren't looking. There is no barrier of entry for them. If they are in the computer lab typing a report, they are alt-tabing over to mine craft while your back is turned. People who are writing PC off as the ultimate hard core machine are forgetting it is also the ultimate casual machine as well, and it is bullshit to ignore one or the other to make a point... Especially when the consoles are desperate to capture that indie "casual" space on consoles.

Yup remember when flash or later facebook gaming was a thing, I remember practically everyone in our school was downloading flash games directly onto school computers as a work around to the IT dep blocking of websites, and a whole host of over things to get the games working.

It was all very easy and a constant tug of war. That was against a system that was actively trying to prevent you from playing on their computers that were fairly locked themselves, let alone if they didn't have that barrier.

 

[Dahaka]

You guys remember config.sys, devicehigh? I have fond memories of those times actually.

People should be glad they don't have to deal with the bullshit VIA did almost a decade ago with the infamous KT133 chipset or CPUs not shutting down when heaty.

 

[afternoon delight]

In the Steam thread, a great poster said that "all complaints against Alpha Protocol are basically sharp knees comments". The same can be said of people who just can't take the time to have games run in a perfectly modded environment.

Directory files, graphics tweaks, ini files.... These are the fun things in life that reward you with PERFECTION.

 

[Felix Lighter]

You guys remember config.sys, devicehigh? I have fond memories of those times actually.

People should be glad they don't have to deal with the bullshit VIA did almost a decade ago with the infamous KT133 chipset or CPUs not shutting down when heaty.

It wasn't really all that long ago that you basically booted your machine into, "play game mode", freeing up every last bit of resources you possibly could. Now you double click a link in your Steam Library with your music player playing, a browser with 2 dozen tabs open and an HD video paused without a second thought.

 

[Nymerio]

It wasn't really all that long ago that you basically booted your machine into, "play game mode", freeing up every last bit of resources you possibly could. Now you double click a link in your Steam Library with your music player playing, a browser with 2 dozen tabs open and an HD video paused without a second thought.

Yeah it's amazing how far we've come. I still remember manually shutting down processes to get that last bit of performance. Now, as you say, music player, browser with x tabs open, youtube, skype, teamspeak and now with shadowplay I'm also constantly recording gameplay. Crazy if you think about it.

 

[bobnowhere]

You guys remember config.sys, devicehigh? I have fond memories of those times actually.

People should be glad they don't have to deal with the bullshit VIA did almost a decade ago with the infamous KT133 chipset or CPUs not shutting down when heaty.

I remember when you had to edit the config.sys and autoexec.bat files and reset your computer depending on the game you wanted to play. It became the never ending question of whether you wanted to load the mouse driver or the soundblaster driver because you sure as hell couldn't have both.

I've been PC gaming since the 80's and it is crazy easy nowadays apart from some .net issues with LA Noire, which they eventually patched, I can't remember the last time I couldn't run a game. In fact I've probably gotten a little lazy in terms of my understanding of what is going on under the hood due to ease of plug and play hardware and the general stability of the newer operating systems.