What's the big deal about PC games?

[Gabbit]

I play on 3 screens at a 5760x1080 resolution, there is so much more immersion when your entire periphery is filled with game space. Once you have tried it 1 screen is just not as enjoyable.

Downside is triple monitor gaming at high Image quality is really fucking expensive, I spent more on my pc then my car. Having said that I get lots more function and enjoyment out of my PC than my car.

 

[tzimize]

Just a little thing I want to ask any PC gamers about. What's the appeal in playing on a PC over a console?

Consoles are for kids. Real men play on PCs.

trying to start a war here eh?

Too late, the war has been going on for quite some time. The next line of my post stated that I own a PS3 though so I'm kinda like...er....Switzerland I guess.

 

[brunothepig]

First, aside from a few specific games (like third person action games, racing, sports etc.) I much, much prefer the mouse and keyboard. Especially considering my favourite genres are FPS, RPG and RTS, in no particular order.
Aside from that, usually they're much more customisable, in graphics options as well as mods. Good lord the mods. Updates are easier, and online play is free, not even a subscription, except the obvious ones like MMO's.
Oh, and Steam. Steam is awesome.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

See the thing is, a lot of people will pay so much more for a good gaming rig. When I was deciding on parts for a computer, the total price came up to about £800. A lot of that was because of the peripherals like the monitor, desk and chair though. I never managed to get to having anywhere near enough money to getting it, which is why I've stuck to console.

I was in the same place as you. That's why I went dumpster diving. I scored a CRT that can do 2048x1536, which works flawlessly, because a school district was just throwing it away. My dual core processor was sold for 20 bucks "May or may not work". It had a few bent pins, one of which popped off when I straightened them. I fixed that by just wedging some bread tie core in the corresponding hole in the socket, and it's been running happily that way for years. My video card came from a folding farm partout, so I only spend 50 bucks on that, and my harddrives are either scavved or pulled from portables. I use $20 mice and keyboards, and I have a 360 pad for driving/flying games that I got off eBay for about 30 bucks.


You don't have to spend a fortune to build a gaming rig. Used parts don't go bad because they're out of date. So what if I'm still using Socket 939? It runs, it's reliable, and it can handle any game I've thrown at it.

I guess you don't fix what isn't broken. The setup I went with was on the idea that I'd eventually just save up enough money and get it so I just followed the in for penny principle and went for high end new parts to make sure that it would run all the newest games and continue to do that for a couple years before it became an actual problem.

The final cost wasn't a great deal until it came to the little extras I had forgotten about. To get a PC like I had built up, you would have to pay double what it would cost me. No one is willing to pay £1600 for a gaming rig when they could spend £300 and get something similar.

 

[Woodsey]

Everything, for me.

Neither of my 2 consoles do anything better than my PC.

 

[Suijen]

A PC is more flexible than a console, with far more functionality than a console can ever have. The offset is that it's also a lot less stable than a console. When developers develop for a PC, they have to make the game suitable for a wide range of systems. When developing for a console, probably about 2 systems. That means that there's less things like drivers and incompatibility to worry about.

PCs offer more freedom, as you can probably guess. If you install Ubuntu on a Playstation Sony will probably sue you to death. It's pretty hard to make a mod on a console, and it's not like you can stick in Fallout 2 in a Playstation and get it to work (unless you yell at it a lot). On the otherhand, the average gamer probably wouldn't bother with mods anyways.

Consoles are better at piracy control simply because modding a chip is an illegal action. Lots of people do it, don't get me wrong, but it carries more risk than just downloading a torrent. Not to mention that you have to pay someone to mod your system (probably someone shady too).

My brother and I talked about this a lot, and in the end we both agreed that consoles were still generally better for gaming. They're cheaper, they're more reliable software wise, and they just get the basics done hasslefree. I'm still more of a PC gamer though because I'm just more comfortable with it.

In terms of games, they're pretty much converging. Check out metacritic top 10 games and you'll find that a lot of them are on many different consoles, including the PC.

 

[7amurai]

Pc games are have more stuff you can customize yourself basically, whether that is controls or modifying the game itself. Also higher barriers to entry into PC gaming means a more savvy community in general. Also dedicated servers. The main thing for me though is long lived games. Good luck finding a good lobby of any game which isn't the flavor of the month in its respective genre on console.

 

[similar.squirrel]

Steam, RTS games and the fact that it can be used for things other than gaming. And the wealth of amazing indie titles available.

I wish I could afford a PC.

 

[UncleScar]

I think pretty much everything has been covered, but for me personally my conversion PC gaming happened about 16 years ago.
Being able to use a mouse and a keyboard with 100+ buttons compared to a Megadrive/Genesis controller with 3 (6 maximum?) was absolutely ground-breaking for me.

Now I'm in the market and have been for so long, I drop £500-600 every 3 years on my rig to keep it at the very top of the performance bracket.
A worthwhile investment considering I also run my own company through it, all my social contact with old friends as well as consuming traditional news-media and TV through it as well.

Where's the competition?

 

[Vibhor]

You should bold the FACT word in the comment. It's not just coding, I've worked on PC, XBOX360, PS3 and DS titles. The PC was by far the most annoying one to work with. The coding was not the problem, the rest of the development process was. You talk in terms of search google, I talk in terms of personal experience.

Personal experience is not something you can give account of.
I can say that making games for PC is easier than playing them and add the line personal experience to that sentence.Would that make my statement true?
Google search on the other hand is something you can easily access and everyone can know about it without going through any hard job.
And yes coding for PC is easy as hell,I even made a QTE(text based) quick basic game when I was young(but after that I have stayed awayed from coding for a long time)

 

[ksn0va]

I grew up playing on a pc. My hands and eyes have adapted to playing on a pc.

 

[carpathic]

Just a little thing I want to ask any PC gamers about. What's the appeal in playing on a PC over a console?

Well with the Bethesda games, the noclip/fly/unlock/reanimate console codes allow me to get past areas that have been bugged up, unlike my xbox where I am just screwed. Also, you get to see things you might otherwise not.

Also, generally games look way better on my computer as I have a pretty decent gaming rig.

 

[Giuglea]

never forget Esports, MMOs, indie...

 

[SpaceSpork]

PC gaming is more open to indie titles like MYNECRAFT [/yahtzeevoice]
Also I don't have to pay extra money for a console if I just use the PC that I was gonna use to browse the interwebs and do my homework anyway.

 

[Zukhramm]

The deal for me is that I own my machine. No one has to pay a fee to develop games for my computer. I can do it myself right now if I wanted to. Games I install are wherever I like, I know where the files are placed, I can play without putting in a disc, if I want to poke around in the game files and change something, I can.

 

[WaffleGod]

One of the biggest reasons for me to avoid non-exclusive games on consoles is: matchmaking. The only places where it seems to work is in RTS games. And even then you have lobbies if you so please. On consoles, howmany games actually feature lobby's and server selection? You can probably count them on 1 hand.

 

[Mykayel1]

You should bold the FACT word in the comment. It's not just coding, I've worked on PC, XBOX360, PS3 and DS titles. The PC was by far the most annoying one to work with. The coding was not the problem, the rest of the development process was. You talk in terms of search google, I talk in terms of personal experience.

Personal experience is not something you can give account of.
I can say that making games for PC is easier than playing them and add the line personal experience to that sentence.Would that make my statement true?
Google search on the other hand is something you can easily access and everyone can know about it without going through any hard job.
And yes coding for PC is easy as hell,I even made a QTE(text based) quick basic game when I was young(but after that I have stayed awayed from coding for a long time)

Here we go again. I've also made PC games by myself, I'm not talking about that or about coding as you could of seen in my previous post. I'm referring to the stuff independent game designers don't really have to put up with, the kind of stuff you could only see if you where actually working in the gaming industry on big main stream titles such as Crysis. It's something I cannot go into great detail about due to obvious reasons. If you think that coding the game is all that counts then good for you, but if one day you end up working on a big budget title on the PC or even a PC-Port of a big budget title you will either:
A. End up with a game that suffers from bad controls and that doesn't give you any options other than sound, gamma and resolution settings (sound familiar yet? or did you think those devs did this so they would sell less copies?)
OR
B. End up with a good game (at least technically, design and innovation have nothing to do with the platform the game is on so I won't claim it does) but that you personally get mad about whenever someone mentions "It's too short" or "It's too repetitive".

Of course there is also the rare C where the game is excellent but that takes a lot of time (see StarCraft II) and money so it only works with established franchises.

This is the last reply you will hear from me on the subject, just believe what you want.

 

[Flames66]

No one is willing to pay £1600 for a gaming rig when they could spend £300 and get something similar.

I don't get this "gaming rig" thing. I run my games on my Dell laptop which cost me around £500-£550. It works fine with all the games I have ever tried to play on it.

EDIT: Apart from shattered horizon. That game ran like Lonely George because it was built on a graphics benchmarking engine.

 

[mexicola]

Hello! I am new to the internet. Is there some sort of controversy concerning PC vs. console gaming?

 

[iseko]

A) I can adjust the controls of the game to my own needs. Have a nice little system for shooters that I allways use (and i bet so does 98% of the PC gamers out there). Plus I find more buttons = easier to play.
B) Can overcloack my PC without getting afraid of being sued.
C) A game I bought in 1999 I can still install on my pc now (sometimes considering a few tweaks). My nintendo 64 is busted and I can't find a way to insert mario 64 in the WII. Granted most games of ps2 work on ps3. Most games of ps1 do not .
D) If I invest all my money in a kickass computer I can do more things on it than on a PS3 or XBOX 360. Or I could buy a xbox360, a PS3, a nintendo WII and a crappy pc because I am on a budget.
E) Some games like for example: the RTS. Are NOT meant to be played on a console! Same goes for RPG's imho but I'm willing to let that one slide

And last but not least: No english is not my native language. Yes I know compared to an american it's terrible. If you want to rant about it please point those rantings trowards the brick wall to your left (I hate it when people complain about my english).