John Carmack: PC Is Not the "Leading Platform" for Games

[Mr. Omega]

Nice of you to take my comments out of context and try and put other words in my mouth.

Ok, I give you all the things you listed, but one.
"- They made an FPS from the ground up that was designed for the PC"
Yeah, a PC from 7 years ago. This would cut more ice if it used an API higher than DX 9.

Why is that necessarily a bad thing? So the graphics aren't the epitome of shiny, and it doesn't require a laundry list of specific parts to run. It's a good game, with all those features listed.

Who says I am after another Crysis that only a handful of PC's could play. Also where did I say that the game should only be playable on hardware the supports the latest API's. All I was saying is that for a game 'built from the ground up only for PC' it is odd that the maximum API it supports is so old. Just because you have a game that runs the latest API does not meant people who only have old older hardware can't run it. There's this thing on PC's called 'backwards compatibility'...

No, my pedestal feels pretty secure...

Ah, that explains a lot...

Yes, it explains that I was pointing out to someone that the comment of Carmack's he used to make a point was contradicted by the comment made just above. Live by the sword die by the sword. I did not bring in the 'pedestal' idea, but 'when the world gives you lemons make lemonade'.

A high-end PC is nearly ten times as powerful as a console and we could unquestionably provide a better experience if we chose that as our design point and we were able to expend the same amount of resources on it."

Focus on consoles larger audience has deprived PC's of an "unquestionably" "better experience". Yeah, really don't see that pedestal going anywhere....

The guy's trying to suck up to the PC Gamers he screwed out of a decent experience by appealing to their egos. I know PC Gamers have big egos but you can't honestly tell me you're falling for that. It's a PR spin to try and divert blame. "Oh, we didn't do a lousy port job and just fuck up. It's all the console gamer's fault!"

Yeah, that would be the case if he did not spend the rest of his comments explaining that PC wasn't very important any more. If this was a suck up, it is probably one of the worst I have seen...

Sorry, didn't know about any previous posts. Skipped a couple pages. And sarcasm is hard to read over the internet.

 

[Parnage]

ID sell the rights to Quake to someone who gives a damn about Esports sense you no longer seem to give a damn about either the PC or the Quake Community. Get out. We don't want you. Go make another crappy jack black game.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Not only that but they need those shiny new graphics or sales could suffer.

Of course getting more performance out of stable (or stagnant if you want to be rude) and very limited resources runs face first into diminishing returns... which is the nemesis of financial sustainability. This is one reason that devs and publishers have started calling for a new gen of consoles, they're reaching the point where further advances in optimisation are costing more money and effort than is financially sustainable... of course a new gen only pushes that crunch back, it doesn't get rid of it.

 

[darksakul]

So in a nut shell...
Sloppy Developers are sloppy

If nothing else, a vanilla version of the any game should run fine out of the box with out any updates or patches on release date. I like to include Games with Online play, and even MMOs.

 

[ph0b0s123]

Could someone explain this thing about Hard reset being such a credit to PC gaming and how the company is really behind PC's? This a game that got mixed reviews and even though currently PC only used only DX9 which normally denotes a multiform game...

Let's see:
- They made an FPS from the ground up that was designed for the PC
- They've been very engaged with their community and very often have helped troubleshoot problems
- Their very first patch came out very quickly and really took into consideration community input
- In interviews they've shown a very anti-DRM stance acknowledging they dislike it since they're gamers themselves
- Hard Reset compared to Rage actually allows you to adjust the game settings. This is particularly important with the field of view slider since it can cause headaches if the field of view isn't set properly.

Ok, I give you all the things you listed, but one.
"- They made an FPS from the ground up that was designed for the PC"
Yeah, a PC from 7 years ago. This would cut more ice if it used an API higher than DX 9.

Meh, the game works and it's fun. That's more important than what tech level they're working at. It's not like they were hyping it as the next Crysis/Metro 2033 PC-buster. Besides, it's not like it's unforgivable for a new developer to cut back on the tech whizbangs to save a bit of cash.

If it had not been hyped so much as this amazing PC exclusive FPS, I would not have brought it up. You are completely right that I would not hold new devs to the to huge standards, so they are welcome to the party.

They and the community just need to tone down this 'FPS built from the ground up for the PC' bit as that sets a bit of false expectation. It's kind of code for 'wow they built this to take advantage of stuff on the PC' that consoles can't do like newer API's etc. It feeds into the PC only FPS's are always boundary pushers trope.

It's not a term I saw used with stuff like Witcher etc, so did not have false expectations about above DX9 support.

 

[Still Life]

Dismissing and otherwise disingenuously underestimating the power that the PC holds over the market is directly shooting your profits in the proverbial foot.

Why don't you ask Valve how much their PC-centrism is hurting profits, hmm?

You got it wrong.

Valve has a sprawling online service which makes up a huge chunk of their profits. Their games have been multiplat for quite some time. Even the PC crowd's Jesus effigy -- Gabe Newell -- has acknowledged the need for the company to move to the console market, including Steam.

Valve are not PC-centric, simply put.

OT:

Carmack makes sense and it's great to hear a brutally frank opinion in the industry. The patch that was uploaded through steam was a work-around like the user-made .cfg files were, so this is an issue of driver support for OpenGL games.

Unfortunately, these issues are part of being a PC gamer as the possible combinations of hardware, OS and driver configurations factor in the millions. It is disappointing that id didn't provide more options in the UI to tweak the graphics settings, but AMD and Nvidia should cop a lot of the blame for their fuckery in supporting OpenGL.

Fortunately, I don't have an AMD card, so the issues I had were minimal. Once the patch hit, they were non-existent. I have found Rage to be high quality product overall and I'm looking forward to Doom 4.

 

[Comando96]

Why can't Bethesda do shit with PC's?

Fallout... disasters in technical terms... the User made Mods completely re-ramp the game and have solved ALL graphics problems like the lag every 10 seconds when new scenery is loaded, shit textures, many many crashing bugs so I can play for more than 2 hours, all memory leak issues... just... Bethesda... hire the people who have released anything half decent on the Fallout Nexus's because they are a lot more competent than you lot at everything fallout >:|

Just like fallout, oh surprise... they fucked up Rage as well... well I hope they fix Rage at least.

 

[Zer_]

The funniest part is that the patch that only took 4 days to make fixed graphical issues for most PC users, so the question is... was it really necessary to lie about bad drivers in first place?

PC is not the leading platform and bla-bla-bla, which is probably true, but there are still millions of people that prefer it keyboard-mouse-office-chair-monitor way and there's no excuse for delivering the game in such a state. It would have been fine for an indy developer, but then again indy developer would never sell it as AAA title for 60 bucks in fist place.

They didn't lie about bad drivers at all... AMD's second revision of Rage / Battlefield 3 drivers fixed all the performance issues for me. Only a very small minority had any issues after that point. The reason the game performed poorly for many people was because AMD and nVidia's OpenGL support is pathetic at best. AMD's support is even worse than nVidia's. RAGE actually forced both companies to stop slacking on OpenGL drivers and release newer ones. In fact, after they updated the drivers, I noticed performance improvements in other OpenGL games... Go figure.

The Patch did address some issues, but most of it went to introducing in-game graphics options, things we've already configured through the game's config files.

Glad to see people educating themselves and not giving in to knee jerk reactions.

 

[theultimateend]

Why don't you ask Valve how much their PC-centrism is hurting profits, hmm?

And since they're the rule, not the exception, governing by them is a solid way to go, am I right?

Totally Right.

I mean look how bad being PC Centric went for Blizzard.

Poor guys are barely making it these days.

(But dude they made Starcraft on the N64 once!)

 

[AngryPants]

The funniest part is that the patch that only took 4 days to make fixed graphical issues for most PC users, so the question is... was it really necessary to lie about bad drivers in first place?

PC is not the leading platform and bla-bla-bla, which is probably true, but there are still millions of people that prefer it keyboard-mouse-office-chair-monitor way and there's no excuse for delivering the game in such a state. It would have been fine for an indy developer, but then again indy developer would never sell it as AAA title for 60 bucks in fist place.

They didn't lie about bad drivers at all... AMD's second revision of Rage / Battlefield 3 drivers fixed all the performance issues for me. Only a very small minority had any issues after that point. The reason the game performed poorly for many people was because AMD and nVidia's OpenGL support is pathetic at best. AMD's support is even worse than nVidia's. RAGE actually forced both companies to stop slacking on OpenGL drivers and release newer ones. In fact, after they updated the drivers, I noticed performance improvements in other OpenGL games... Go figure.

The Patch did address some issues, but most of it went to introducing in-game graphics options, things we've already configured through the game's config files.

Glad to see people educating themselves and not giving in to knee jerk reactions.

Well, AMD users are having such problems with every release, so I'm guessing it's nothing new to poor AMD fans. It did resolve all my issues with Nvidia card though, without any need to shaman with config(which I did before the patch), so it was still a lie regarding Nvidia drivers. I understand they were trying to protect their assets, but it honestly went too far this time.

 

[Zer_]

The funniest part is that the patch that only took 4 days to make fixed graphical issues for most PC users, so the question is... was it really necessary to lie about bad drivers in first place?

PC is not the leading platform and bla-bla-bla, which is probably true, but there are still millions of people that prefer it keyboard-mouse-office-chair-monitor way and there's no excuse for delivering the game in such a state. It would have been fine for an indy developer, but then again indy developer would never sell it as AAA title for 60 bucks in fist place.

They didn't lie about bad drivers at all... AMD's second revision of Rage / Battlefield 3 drivers fixed all the performance issues for me. Only a very small minority had any issues after that point. The reason the game performed poorly for many people was because AMD and nVidia's OpenGL support is pathetic at best. AMD's support is even worse than nVidia's. RAGE actually forced both companies to stop slacking on OpenGL drivers and release newer ones. In fact, after they updated the drivers, I noticed performance improvements in other OpenGL games... Go figure.

The Patch did address some issues, but most of it went to introducing in-game graphics options, things we've already configured through the game's config files.

Glad to see people educating themselves and not giving in to knee jerk reactions.

Well, AMD users are having such problems with every release, so I'm guessing it's nothing new to poor AMD fans. It did resolve all my issues with Nvidia card though, without any need to shaman with config(which I did before the patch), so it was still a lie regarding Nvidia drivers. I understand they were trying to protect their assets, but it honestly went too far this time.

A lot of nvidia users had problems which were fixed with the Beta drivers. The point I'm making here is that almost all the people with performance problems did so because of poor OpenGL support on the driver level. This applies to both nVidia and AMD.

 

[AngryPants]

A lot of nvidia users had problems which were fixed with the Beta drivers. The point I'm making here is that almost all the people with performance problems did so because of poor OpenGL support on the driver level. This applies to both nVidia and AMD.

Nvidia beta drivers were made available on September 26, 2011 (285.38), almost 2 weeks prior to Rage release, so I guess... there weren't any reason to blame them there, was it?

 

[Zer_]

A lot of nvidia users had problems which were fixed with the Beta drivers. The point I'm making here is that almost all the people with performance problems did so because of poor OpenGL support on the driver level. This applies to both nVidia and AMD.

Nvidia beta drivers were made available on September 26, 2011, almost 2 weeks prior to Rage release, so I guess... there weren't any reason to blame them there, was it?

Not really. The drivers were still Beta at that point, meaning they are unsupported. The RAGE release did a lot of good. It pushed both GPU companies to get their act together with OpenGL. Carmack has every reason to be angry. Both card manufacturers had beta drivers out when RAGE was released. AMD's beta drivers didn't work very well, if at all. nvidia's fixed a lot of issues, but the fact is that these drivers were still in Beta when RAGE was released, meaning most people don't have them on their system prior to playing the game.

The end result of all this is a lot of misguided grief on . id Software says that these graphical problems are caused by improper OpenGL drivers in the latest (non-beta) drivers. And they're right. Any other issues the game has (which quite frankly, is not that much) is being promptly fixed with patches.

The only thing I can really fault Carmack on with this whole ordeal is the fact that he didn't foresee any backlash towards the lack of any graphics options.

 

[Tselis]

Rage, huh? This seems to be the most appropriately named game in the history of gaming.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

If it had not been hyped so much as this amazing PC exclusive FPS, I would not have brought it up. You are completely right that I would not hold new devs to the to huge standards, so they are welcome to the party.

They do have pretty good pedigree with a number of their staffers being former People Can Fly and CD Projekt Red... Still, they pretty much just came out of nowhere, hype-wise.

They and the community just need to tone down this 'FPS built from the ground up for the PC' bit as that sets a bit of false expectation. It's kind of code for 'wow they built this to take advantage of stuff on the PC' that consoles can't do like newer API's etc. It feeds into the PC only FPS's are always boundary pushers trope.

See, I think it's a difference of expectations. When I hear that an Eastern European dev is putting out a PC exclusive FPS, I expect something that plays like games from the Golden Age of PC FPSing (or the mid to late 90s if you prefer) with maybe an interesting mechanic or gimmick and no refinements that interfere with the basic hardcore twitchfest gameplay... or to put it more bluntly, I expect the devs to reach under all the shit that's glommed around FPSing today and try to pull out the essence of old school gameplay. I expect polish (no pun intended) in game play and a certain roughness in coding. As a late 30s PC gamer, nothing says 'home' to me like fun, if simplistic, gameplay occasionally marred by sloppy coding. It's also why I love Obsidian games.

What I don't expect from their first published title is pushing the technical envelope.

It's not a term I saw used with stuff like Witcher etc, so did not have false expectations about above DX9 support.

Hmmm... Actually, I heard a lot of people wrap lips around The Witcher 2 for being PC exclusive... Even the original The Witcher got a lot of word of mouth hype, especially when CD Projekt released the enhanced edition (and upgraded existing copies for free). Of course no one was really doing 'dark, gritty fantasy' when The Witcher dropped, whiched helped it a lot.

 

[AngryPants]

A lot of nvidia users had problems which were fixed with the Beta drivers. The point I'm making here is that almost all the people with performance problems did so because of poor OpenGL support on the driver level. This applies to both nVidia and AMD.

Nvidia beta drivers were made available on September 26, 2011, almost 2 weeks prior to Rage release, so I guess... there weren't any reason to blame them there, was it?

Not really. The drivers were still Beta at that point, meaning they are unsupported. The RAGE release did a lot of good. It pushed both GPU companies to get their act together with OpenGL. Carmack has every reason to be angry. Both card manufacturers had beta drivers out when RAGE was released. AMD's beta drivers didn't work very well, if at all. nvidia's fixed a lot of issues, but the fact is that these drivers were still in Beta when RAGE was released, meaning most people don't have them on their system prior to playing the game.

The end result of all this is a lot of misguided grief on . id Software says that these graphical problems are caused by improper OpenGL drivers in the latest (non-beta) drivers. And they're right. Any other issues the game has (which quite frankly, is not that much) is being promptly fixed with patches.

The only thing I can really fault Carmack on with this whole ordeal is the fact that he didn't foresee any backlash towards the lack of any graphics options.

In fact Nvidia drivers ARE still in beta But it's a very common thing with PC releases to have beta drivers to run them.

And while OpenGL driver updates are nice from both AMD and NVidia as a result of software vs.hardware developers showdown, it's really a technology that lost its stand quite a few years ago (for mainstream gaming market anyway). I'd be severely surprised if a major movie studio goes for HD-DVD release ignoring Blu-Ray media and end up blaming video-player manufacturers for not supporting it...

 

[Zer_]

In fact Nvidia drivers ARE still in beta But it's a very common thing with PC releases to have beta drivers to run them.

And while OpenGL driver updates are nice from both AMD and NVidia as a result of software vs.hardware developers showdown, it's really a technology that lost its stand quite a few years ago (for mainstream gaming market anyway). I'd be severely surprised if a major movie studio goes for HD-DVD release ignoring Blu-Ray media and end up blaming video-player manufacturers for not supporting it...

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX

Read that link. I need to sleep, but it gives you a great deal of information on exactly why OpenGL isn't the top API for gaming.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Fortunately, a patch was released over the weekend which will clear up several technical issues and also allow users to adjust video settings including texture cache, vsync and anisotropic filtering. The "massive" update is available now via Steam [http://store.steampowered.com/news/6464/].

This here, people. This small piece of info pretty much allows me to forgive Carmack for saying that. Because you know what? He's right, the PC isn't the leading platform for games, and I'm saying that as a PC gamer. But the fact that they are fixing their stupid autoconfig means that they at least care.

 

[Jadak]

*Marks checklist*
And so Id joins the ranks of Crytek, Bethesda, Bioware, and most recently of all Blizzard in the modern age and are better for it.

I'm confused by this, how did doing something stupid put them in such awesome company?