FA+
Shop
PC master race, it's YOUR fault (ranty rant)
10 years ago
Here's something I wanted to vent off for a while. I've grown a huge dislike toward the average, self-entitled hardcore PC gamer shouting "PC master race" every single gaming discussion out there.
Why? Because these are the kind of stupid you can expect from these individuals:
- "Console gamers are dumb for paying $60 every game"
- "PC games are dumbed down because of consoles"
- "I saved money because I bought 1000 games from steam sales"
But now let's start with some basic economics:
If you look up the estimated costs of developing Doom - a top tier game back in 1993 - you will find something in the ballpark of U$200.000, with given the price tag of about $40 for a boxed game back then you could expect $20+ net profit per sale meaning the costs can be recovered with less than 10.000 copies. But today the cost of developing a top-tier game are in the ballpark of $50,000,000-100,000,000 meaning a similarly priced game would require 2,500,000-5,000,000 copies to break even!
One might argue that the market is now larger. Ok, let's try to make as estimate:
It's hard to estimate how many PC gamers are out there at any point in time (for the obvious fact most PCs are not bought to play games), but we can roughly estimate how much the market has grown looking at console sales:
SNES: 49mi Mega Drive: 40mi Turbografx:10mi - That gives a total of 99mi 20 years ago
now let's compare to the last generation:
Wii:101mi X360: 83mi PS3: 80mi - That gives a total of 262mi consoles sold on the last generation
That means development costs of top-tier games have risen by over 25000% while the market has increased only about 160%.
And in this scenario, is it really surprising that developers are increasingly turning away from PC gamers - gamers who are constantly demanding lower prices and more content for the exact same game on consoles and yet demand support if they can't run the game on their broken PC - in favor of console gamers - people who are fully willing to buy physical copies at launch for $60 as is, without concern of having them bugging you because it didn't work (unless you really fucked up delivering a broken game)?
So if PC gamers truly want to have more content and more complex games than the ones you get on consoles, logically they'd be happily willing to pay something in the range of $80-$120 for it.
The thing is, PC games are not dumbed down because console gamers, they are dumbed down because YOU PC gamers have demonstrably had far lower standards choosing quantity rather than quality, by waiting for steam sales, buying tons of games the don't intend on fully play and so forth.
I personally did enjoy PC games at one point - in the 90s, with games like Doom, Rise of the Triads, Command & Conquer, Warcraft 2, Full Throttle, Star Wars: Dark Forces, Heretic, Hexen, Duke Nukem 3d. And I believe most PC gamers back then had the same mentality - they enjoyed PC games because they enjoyed PC games, not because they believed they were getting (or were supposed to get) more content for less money compared to the same game on consoles. But today there are no remaining developers with PC as their main target platform I care about. It seems every major PC game looks the same as 20 other games out there, along with tons of games that seem to belong on consoles and not on PC.
Respect your developer. They are not grubby bastards trying to con you for your money. They are hard-working individuals working day and night out of passion trying to make their dreams come true.
Why? Because these are the kind of stupid you can expect from these individuals:
- "Console gamers are dumb for paying $60 every game"
- "PC games are dumbed down because of consoles"
- "I saved money because I bought 1000 games from steam sales"
But now let's start with some basic economics:
If you look up the estimated costs of developing Doom - a top tier game back in 1993 - you will find something in the ballpark of U$200.000, with given the price tag of about $40 for a boxed game back then you could expect $20+ net profit per sale meaning the costs can be recovered with less than 10.000 copies. But today the cost of developing a top-tier game are in the ballpark of $50,000,000-100,000,000 meaning a similarly priced game would require 2,500,000-5,000,000 copies to break even!
One might argue that the market is now larger. Ok, let's try to make as estimate:
It's hard to estimate how many PC gamers are out there at any point in time (for the obvious fact most PCs are not bought to play games), but we can roughly estimate how much the market has grown looking at console sales:
SNES: 49mi Mega Drive: 40mi Turbografx:10mi - That gives a total of 99mi 20 years ago
now let's compare to the last generation:
Wii:101mi X360: 83mi PS3: 80mi - That gives a total of 262mi consoles sold on the last generation
That means development costs of top-tier games have risen by over 25000% while the market has increased only about 160%.
And in this scenario, is it really surprising that developers are increasingly turning away from PC gamers - gamers who are constantly demanding lower prices and more content for the exact same game on consoles and yet demand support if they can't run the game on their broken PC - in favor of console gamers - people who are fully willing to buy physical copies at launch for $60 as is, without concern of having them bugging you because it didn't work (unless you really fucked up delivering a broken game)?
So if PC gamers truly want to have more content and more complex games than the ones you get on consoles, logically they'd be happily willing to pay something in the range of $80-$120 for it.
The thing is, PC games are not dumbed down because console gamers, they are dumbed down because YOU PC gamers have demonstrably had far lower standards choosing quantity rather than quality, by waiting for steam sales, buying tons of games the don't intend on fully play and so forth.
I personally did enjoy PC games at one point - in the 90s, with games like Doom, Rise of the Triads, Command & Conquer, Warcraft 2, Full Throttle, Star Wars: Dark Forces, Heretic, Hexen, Duke Nukem 3d. And I believe most PC gamers back then had the same mentality - they enjoyed PC games because they enjoyed PC games, not because they believed they were getting (or were supposed to get) more content for less money compared to the same game on consoles. But today there are no remaining developers with PC as their main target platform I care about. It seems every major PC game looks the same as 20 other games out there, along with tons of games that seem to belong on consoles and not on PC.
Respect your developer. They are not grubby bastards trying to con you for your money. They are hard-working individuals working day and night out of passion trying to make their dreams come true.
My only concern is that you seem to be projecting a dislike for modern games in general. I remember the games you enjoyed, I even played most of them at launch, including games that most people would have never heard of simply due to the gaming demographic nowadays (i.e. The standard age of gamers). Games like Major Stryker, Scorched Earth, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, Descent, Gradius, etc. Games that ran on operating Systems like Windows 3.0/3.1 and DOS based games.
Modern games have certainly started blending together, but now, as an adult, I have the option of being picky about the games I play. I look for the Gems among the rhinestones. The wide array of games and game styles that exist now didn't exist back then because we only had a select few genre defining games and even fewer gaming platforms to choose from. Now we have games that play cross platform (i.e. Final Fantasy 14 PS3/PS4/PC) and it doesn't matter what system you choose to play on then.
Having a narrow view on games is the best way to limit yourself. Instead of ranting about the idiots in this world, it might be better to surround yourself by the TRUE gamers, the people that play games just because they're fun, not because they're on one console or the other.
As for the costs... I don't give a flying flip. If I'm looking forward to a new game on PC, I'll pay that $60-$80 at launch to have it day 1. On the same token I've done the same recently for console games. The sales are great! Don't get me wrong. They're not necessary though. Maybe I'm an exception to the rule because I'm one of those that have watched the growth of the video game industry over the course of my life.
TL;DR - I prefer PC gaming over consoles, but I don't think the PC Master Race is something that people should pay attention to because it's dumb. Consoles are good too and if things keep going as they are, they're all going to be able to play together one day anyway.
Besides, back then there were real technical reasons to put games on PCs and not on consoles. Doom on SNES is abysmal compared to PC, Ultima was hardly playable. Today there's hardly a difference. You're playing the same exact game except with a different controller and graphical differences barely noticeable by the average gamer for the most part.
While console fanboyism seems to have mostly died out, PC fanboyism seems stronger than ever, and the spreading of this mentality is doing nothing but harm, as it literally hurts developers - http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1574
Personally, I have a computer that will run current Triple-A games at maximum settings. The drawback? I had to spend nearly 2000 bucks on it. I get more FPS and slightly better quality than the same game on PS4... So is it worth it? Right now, no... It's not worth it. But with time, my same computer will support future games with no extra cost out of my pocket but that same game would have to be... Reduced.. in quality to be supported on consoles. That doesn't mean the game becomes worse, it just means that consoles have a hard limit to their hardware capabilities and that limit (Evidenced by the Nintendo 3DS) has caused system developers to bring out new versions with updated hardware to support the heftier games. I spent the money for the new system, and most console players that are pleased with the company would do the same.
I think we, as a whole, should strive to adopt a more open minded and less aggressive view of the gaming industry. There will always be the trolls and village idiots out there who make life difficult for others, but with enough work we might be able to at least reduce that number.
Also, XBlive comes with monthly games of the manufacturer's choice, if you have both X360 and X1 you get 3 games per month
Allow me to explain some things about us.
We *hate* compromises. It's the main reason we go with PC over consoles. PC gives us the most flexibility with our games, we can play old games with an emulator, or the sweetest next-gen graphics game coming out. We hate consoles because consoles represent a compromise, the gameplay is often lowered in order to meet the requirements if a game goes multi-console. Look at portal 1 and 2, the 2nd portal slowed down the gameplay, removing a lot of the twitch needed to play it, so that console players would have an easier time, we don't like having our challenge removed.
Because we hate to compromise, we tend to latch onto very specific games and play the shit out of them to the exclusion to all else. Games like Darkfall, Mortal Online, and Day Z have never had a console equivalent, and even though those games were buggy and problematic, we loved the shit out of them, because they were unique.
We are picky, arrogant, and elitest, we want the best, so why would we want 2nd best when we go for (In our eyes) 1st?
I've started up some multi-console games and saw "Press start to begin!" on my PC, and it makes me angry. Immediately I know that I'll have a screwed up field of view, my graphics settings will literally just be low/medium/high, console optimized menus, and the gameplay will be "slowed" down to account for gamepad users. I'm not getting something that was the best here, I'm getting the left-overs from a console port that was poorly done.
Compromise is not by itself a bad thing, but it means different things to different people. Consoles are cheaper and MUCH easier to use, they retain their value better (I can't resell my PC games), and are a better overall choice for the casual gamer... But as a member of the PC master race, don't ever call us casual.
If a game is slower it's not to account for gamepad users since separate platforms rarely share servers. It's because the developer bloody wanted a slower gameplay. Because a ton of developers don't want to have a game that plays like everything else and that is not a bad thing. If anything I can hardly enjoy PC shooters because I want a shooting system that actually challenge you, not an unrealistically accurate mouse aiming that delivers "han shot first" gameplay.
Claiming your platform is best is what destroys developers willingness to develop to said platform. In the past PC games were cheaper because the developer wasn't giving a cut to the console manufacturer, but today since most developers on PC have to resort to a publishing platform like steam prices should be the same as consoles since they eat about as big a cut as any console manufacturer, or higher to account for the extra content made an PC to appease the hardcore demographic. Rather the opposite is true as having a PC game for $60 at launch is virtually a guarantee it will not sell.
Also if anything it's the PC that appeals to casual gamers more (ahem... Facebook). Collecting consoles so you can play the games as intended rather than have them butchered by an emulator is quite the opposite of casual.