From the Brow of Zeus

NOTE: This is a work in progress, but since no one reads this blog anyway it shouldn't matter. Expect updates soon.

I don't think the problem is piracy. The reason people don't buy many PC games anymore is, well, who can afford them?

A console costs $300-400 dollars and is good for 5 years, more or less. (Much more, in the case of PS2.) A gaming PC costs over a thousand and you start to have trouble keeping up with new games after about a year, barring constant hardware updates.

The real joke is that except for gaming you can do basically everything you need to do on a computer using eight to ten year old hardware. Web browsing, email, word processing -- these aren't things that require upgrades.

So we're supposed to shell out $2000 every three years for what, a few new PC games? When console games look almost as good for 1/4th the price and twice the longevity? Please.

I think people are starting to catch on. A better investment would be to never upgrade your PC again and just buy a console every four or five years.

My new stance on computers is that I treat them like cars. I'll fix parts when they break down, but I'm not going to run out and buy a new one every three years as long as I can get mileage out the one I already own.

In the meantime, I'll continue to play classics and buy games from developers who support gamers, not hardware companies.

Mount & Blade had me at "DirectX7 support."

Psychonauts, on the other hand, continues to languish on my shelf, unplayed, because the bastards won't let me play it. To them, having their pixels shaded is more important than actually letting me play the damn game.

Choppy framerates I can deal with. I played Quake on a 486 DX/33. But one thing I can't stand are error messages telling me that the water might look a little less than shiny, so sorry, I can't play the damn game. You want to talk "ruining the experience"? Try not having an experience at all.

The really crazy thing is, I can play KotOR (an Xbox port) fine. But the spiritual sequel, Jade Empire, (also an Xbox port) won't work with my video card. Why? Because that they thought having a few special effects was more important than reaching gamers with older PCs.

Look, I realize you can only reach back so far. Consoles aren't "forwards compatible," there's a limit to these things. I am fine with not being able to play games like Half-Life 2, which had an advanced physics engine my rig couldn't handle. That's gameplay, to the core. I appreciate that Morrowind lets me play it even without pixel shaders and crap, but I'm not going to expect to play Oblivion because that's on a whole other level (ragdoll physics, etc.)

But the petty "Oh, the game might not look as SHINY, let's not even let them PLAY it" mentality is killing the industry. Is Jade Empire really so much more advanced than KotOR that I'd need new hardware just to play it, when both games ran fine on an Xbox? I don't buy it. Changes could have been made, and sales could have increased. But why bother, when you could just half-ass it and blame piracy.

Developers claim they can only make money on MMOs and casual games. Because... Why? They're pirate proof? Wrong. It's because we can actually run them -- casual games aren't any less prone to piracy than any other, and MMORPGs are dominated by a single game -- World of Warcraft -- while newer titles like Tabula Rasa continue to die.

Let's look at WoW's minimum requirements for a clue:

- Intel Pentium® III 800 MHz or AMD Athlon 800 MHz
- 32 MB 3D graphics card with Hardware Transform and Lighting, such as NVIDIA® GeForce™ 2 class card or above
- 4x CD-ROM drive
- A 56k or better Internet connection

A 4x CD-Rom? Oh crap, how will I manage? I'll have to buy it as soon as I save up for a 56k modem.

Now let's compare that with Tabula Rasa.

- 2.5 GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 or equivalent AMD™ processor
- 128 MB Direct3D and Shader 2.0 compatible video card and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver

Viva la Rasa? Not with those requirements.

Age of Conan is even better:

Processor: 3GHz Pentium IV
RAM: 1GB RAM
Video Card: Shader Model 2.0 and 128MB RAM: NVIDIA GeForce 5800 or ATI 9800

Recommended
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz (E6600) or better
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7950GX2 or better
RAM: 2GB or more

Something tells me that the Age of Conan will last about as long as the Age of Mythica.

It's a crummy time to be a PC gamer. But at least we have indy developers on our side. The second Iron Tower Studio said Age of Decadence could run on a GeForce 4 MX, they guaranteed a sale.

The only professional developer who seems to get this is Blizzard. I remember playing Diablo II on my cruddy old laptop, and it was amazing -- a brand new game on this total non-gaming rig! You can bet they had my money.

Publishers could learn from Blizzard. Instead they're learning new ways to alienate consumers, embracing DVD-drive-destroying anti-piracy measures and insanely high system requirements that all but guarantee we'll turn to consoles, older games, or turn away in disgust.

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Sneer at the average consumer all you want. It is they who have made this industry bigger than Hollywood, not us; they who have made The Sims and Myst some of the bestselling games of all time.

Labels: videogames