Misconceptions about PC gaming.

[Theo Samaritan]

Misconceptions about PC gaming should also include:

Everyone who plays counter-strike cheats
Everyone who plays MMO's are addicted to grind
Every game charges for expansion packs
Every game is pirated
Every game charges for online play (I have met XBL gamers who thought this true of PC)
Only guys play PC's, Women play on consoles (seen this to)

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Only guys play PC's, Women play on consoles (seen this to)

B-wha? That's the reverse of the misconception I usually hear, that women only play casual games on PCs and that consoles are the domain of men-children. To be honest, I've never heard your version voiced.

-- Steve

 

[Rotating Bread]

Some good points but I'd disagree with the £350 pound price tag for a system that can play games on medium to high. I'm sure if you go somewhere that can build a PC you could get a medium powered gaming rig for £400ish, but that is without a monitor and you'd need to know something about PCs to do that as choosing components is very confusing for the uninitiated.
Most people just don't feel confident enough to build their own system, and to buy a gaming rig from Dell or PC World you're talking £600.

If you do take the plunge with a medium powered system it's a calculated risk as you can't be sure how long it'll last as a gaming platform. When you can buy a console for £200-£300 and know that you'll definately be able to play games on it for the next 3-4 years you can understand why people go for the consoles.

 

[Theo Samaritan]

Only guys play PC's, Women play on consoles (seen this to)

B-wha? That's the reverse of the misconception I usually hear, that women only play casual games on PCs and that consoles are the domain of men-children. To be honest, I've never heard your version voiced.

-- Steve

I have to admit I heard it only twice and both times I promptly slapped the person involved around the face with a virtual penis.

 

[Danny Ocean]

Some good points but ... you can understand why people go for the consoles.

I'm using myself as a benchmark here, my current dell, if I get the spec from 3rd party retailers, is worth about £350 and can play all the games I need it to on medium-high. I take the screen out of the equation as consoles need screens too. You're right about the inside knowledge though, but with a whole internets worth of help it can't be that difficult. There's always 'that guy' too, who can help you out.

We can't be sure how long a console will last either, can we? 3-4 years is about the same for time a PC, if we're estimating, to get an upgrade, which shouldn't really be more than one component.
I mean, there are still perfectly good PCs with Pentium processors. That's two generations behind [Celeron --> Pentium --> Core 2 --> Quad] the top end now. The most common upgrade is the graphics card, which is normally about £200 for a high end one. Or Ram, which is dirt cheap anyway.

You're correct, more people do go for consoles. That's not the point, however, the point is to address arguments often cited against PC gaming as a whole.

 

[Rotating Bread]

You're absolutely right to say it's easy to find help to build a cheaper PC but I guess the perception is that it's difficult.

From my own experience i know that the question of upgrades is a genuine problem. I've not yet taken the plunge into this console generation yet and have been PC gaming for the last couple of years and now it's come to the point where I need an upgrade. So the dilema is do I spend £150 on a new G card and hope the rest of my system holds up or spend a bit more on a 360 and not worry about system requirements (not to mention the other console benefits i won't go into).

So I think the issue of upgrades and system requirements is a genuine problem for PC gaming but I would agree that there is a misconception about the scale of that problem.

(I'm leaning towards the xbox btw).

 

[Joeshie]

You're right about the mods though. But with that comes to the good ole' pc tradition of cheating in online games.

One thing I'll say about halo, you never see anyone fucking wallhacking.

Cheating in PC games is often overexaggerated. Most of the time, people have no proof or solid evidence that a person is just really good or if they are cheating. Thus people throw out the guilty verdict on cheating even if it's just to mask their own terrible playing. I can't tell you how many times I've been called a hacker in FPS simply because I've been kicking ass and the accuser is simply a terrible player.

Not to say that there aren't hackers, but a majority of the times someone gets called a hacker, they usually aren't.

In any case, the ability to produce custom maps, content, and administrator abilities greatly outweights the possibility of encountering hackers.

 

[kyouger]

There have been a couple of big rumors about PCs that are utterly untrue. I had an old, clunky Windows 95 with no internet that wouldn't even run games made for the system, and so I switched to a Nintendo 64 until we got the brand new sparkly Windows 98 with lightning fast internet which had the best graphics I'd ever seen. So I'd consider myself a half-and-half gamer.

Jump to 2008 and now we have a 3 year old flatscreen Windows XP which still works fine. It plays recent games fairly well, with little to no lag. That brings me to my first PC myth.

PC games lag like crap, making them impossible to play. Untrue. Occasionally you might see a bit of a cut during a gigantic battle onscreen, but it never makes a game unplayable unless you're playing a recent game on a computer that's about five years old which hasn't been updated. Plus, consoles are not immune to lag, either. Even on single-player mode, I've seen Call of Duty lag several times. I can't even count the amount of times my connection has gotten interrupted by the host having a crappy connection, either.

The PC only has three types of games, RTS, TBS and MMORPGers. Also untrue. There are a few good shooter games exclusively for the PC, like FarCry and Crysis. Some people even think they play better on the PC with the mouse than on a console with thumbsticks. Personally, I've never been a fan myself. As a side note, Real Time and Turn Based Strategies will ALWAYS be better on the computer, no matter what you say. C&C: Tiberium was good, but it was better on the PC. If Halo Wars is a success, I'll be the first to bet that it'll be ported to the PC and be better on it.

Those are just a couple of the myths that I've heard far too much of.

 

[Danny Ocean]

There are a few good shooter games exclusively for the PC, like FarCry and Crysis

And the good battlefield series games.

 

[the monopoly guy]

That we're elitist. That's not true you drooling console monkeys.


EDIT that was...um...a joke; and by not getting that you disproved your own point...

EDIT AGAIN, saying console graphics are better on consoles is like saying that TV shows are better then movies. Half Life 2 was made in 2004, now go look at the pc version's grpahics compaired to the xbox's(not 360) graphics.

 

[kyouger]

That we're elitist. That's not true you drooling console monkeys.

Well, dude, you kind of confirmed that you are by calling us drooling monkeys. Seriously, I play the 360 and I'm smart enough to form a coherant sentence that doesn't end in an insult.

 

[Danny Ocean]

I think he was joking. Let's not start a flame war pleeease..pretty please?
Anyway, this is about PC gaming, not pc gamers.

 

[Danny Ocean]

Another misconception that my friend just stated is that Console games are graphically more advanced than PC games, so they look better.

thoughts?

 

[AlphaWolf13]

Another misconception that my friend just stated is that Console games are graphically more advanced than PC games, so they look better.

thoughts?

Hahahahahahaahahahahahaahahahahaahahahahaahahaha
*catches breath*
Hahahahaahahahahaahhahahahahaahahahaahahahahaahahaha

Tell him to shut up, when he doesn't know what he's talking about...

 

[Danny Ocean]

Hehe, his response to that post isn't forum friendly.

 

[Bulletinmybrain]

I was thinking about getting a mid-range pc system. But then I thought about it and said with all the custom modifications I would have to do to it then it would still cost as much as the lowest costing alienware.( about 1000 USD.)

 

[Danny Ocean]

custom modifications?

 

[Bulletinmybrain]

custom modifications?

What I meant by that is you can pick a system and then you can choose what you want in the system like more power, a better graphics card, fans to counter overclocking, etc. And yeah I would have had to mod it quite a bit to run crysis on medium-high on it.

 

[Danny Ocean]

I am decidedly confused, all I can think of if you get a £500 system to upgrade is the gpu. I wouldn't really include the cost of fans as they're cheap anyway. What was the spec?

 

[Alex_P]

4. Software compatability- is only really an issue if you don't run windows, and even then you can use wine. (I run Ubuntu and Vista hp, sp1)

Then again, I had Mass Effect puke on install and had to extract all the files by hand.

And there's always a small chance that you'll get a game with some kind of piece-of-shit DRM that doesn't like your particular CD drive, even though it's a very common one.

So, it's not all good times. And, annoyingly, these issues are new. I didn't have to deal with this bullshit back in 2003.

-- Alex