Remember when you could play a game, and it would work? I’m willing to bet if you have this memory, chances are it’s from 2 or 3 generations ago and certainly NOT on a PC. Gone are the days when you could buy a game and not have to worry about if it would run on your PC gaming system of choice. I was going to delegate that previous statement to PC’s only, but lately, that mentality has slipped over into the console realm as well. What’s a gamer to do when they can’t trust a game to work even on a console?
Believe it or not, there was a golden age of gaming, and it’s already passed us. There was once a time when one could buy a game and the only worry he had was if the gameplay was solid. Now you have to worry about, well, which system are my friends buying it on? Will it run on my PC? Will it run on my friends’ PC’s? Should I wait until the game is properly patched before buying it. Unfortunately, all of these questions except for the last are valid questions. I’ve come to terms with my friends having become console gamers, I’ve come to terms (barely) with realizing every new PC release would require a PC upgrade to max out it’s graphics and play it the way It’s Meant to be Played, What I haven’t quite accepted yet, and plan not to in the foreseeable future, is patches that are released to fix a product intentionally left broken.
This is a huge issue for me. Especially in the recent light of companies screaming bloody murder about their games selling shit because of piracy, even going so far as to say they will no long make PC games because of piracy. Let’s ignore the fact that the PC gaming industry as a whole is still very profitable, let’s just blame those pesky software pirates.EA, let’s have a little heart to heart shall we? Did Crysis do bad because people stole your game? Or was it because it required a 2000 dollar desktop to run at the insane graphic levels, you know, the ones that if the game didn’t have it really just became Farcry, the game you released 5 years ago?
Dear dear Flagship Studios. You pioneered games like Diablo and Diablo 2 when your team worked for Blizzard… yet when your spiritually successor to Diablo, Hellgate London, flopped about to retail stores on release day, were the poor sales due to those damn dirty pirates? Or perhaps the 5 patches released in November required to get the game working properly.
Oh and let’s not forget Blizzard. Now this is a special case because even despite the horrible problems the game had at release, it’s still the number one selling game on PC right now, but just for shits and giggles, and to further prove my point as to why people are losing faith in the PC gaming community, let’s take a look at World of Warcraft. Let’s ignore the fact that shortly before the release of WoW, you were bought out. Let’s ignore the fact most of the senior staff was subsequently fired. Let’s ALSO ignore the fact that shortly before release you retooled a few of the skill tree sets (note: few, not all), because now that the big guys were gone, you could ignore all the Blizzard class lore from previous Blizzard games and do what you wanted to make your classes the best (read: Over Powered) Let’s ignore all that because that is another conversation for another day. Let’s not ignore that your game was incomplete because of the class restructuring (remember, not all classes were finished being restructured at release, nor are the finished being restructured now 3 years after release) there was horrible loot lag when you tried to claim items from a dead body, there was enemies that you couldn’t see/target/run away from that would kill you, a lot of content was missing (your excuse was people won’t need that content right away anyway because they need to level first) and numerous other games. I know a lot of people still bought it anyway, but I know there had to be a lot more like me who though, Yeah, you know what? I’ll buy this game when it’s out of paid beta. When it’s a complete game, I’ll think about playing it then That is the depressing state of PC gaming.
THAT is why your sales are in decline. That and the fact the economy is in a depression right now, and you want to continue pushing games so far past the limit that it requires people to buy a 3000 dollar machine with money they don’t have. What’s that? Oh yes, poor economy does effect gaming. Who knew? Well… I did… especially with the 10 dollar price hike on games that all started with Doom 3. Another thing Doom 3 started? Required PC upgrades with almost every new title. Oh or how about Games of Windows (vista). Requiring a 200 dollar OS update to play Halo 3 and Shadowrun? Unacceptable. Neither of those games even required DirectX 10, a Vista only component.
So ask yourselves, PC developers. Are my games not selling because they are requiring ridiculous specs and being patched every couple weeks? Or is it those blood thirsty, scurvy havin software pirates? Will you blame them again when you kill console gaming with your patch mentality?
Gerry is a budding game developer and is trying to get this information out there because he has a passion for his community. He hopes to be able to help revive the industry not only by one day releasing great games, but by setting an example in how they are handled at release. The patch mentality has to go or the community will continue to lose support not only in PC gaming, but console gaming too. Remember, most console gamers came from PC. If they see the same thing happening there, who know where things will go.