Comments on: Why must games crash?

By: Grokmoo

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:39:12 +0000

I think the point about consoles lacking keyboard / mouse support is an important one. In fact, I don’t think consoles (as we know them) will ever have widespread keyboard mouse support. The reason is that consoles are made to play on a couch around a TV, while PC games are made to play sitting at a chair in front of a desk. This is really the key difference between the 2 platforms at this point. As long as there are games that you are better off playing while sitting at a desk, there will be a market for PC or PC-like games. Whether a console might come along to fill this niche is pretty much irrelevant, as the games will still be PC style games.

Also, I disagree strongly that no one plays (or wants to play) games where it is actually possible to aim your weapons in a reasonable manner.

By: T2A`

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:16:09 +0000

Not anymore. The bug/patch point is almost completely irrelevant now. And I only say almost because some people might not have access to The Internets, but you could say the same thing for PCs — just look at how many people complained about Steam/HL2 when they first came out.

With access to The Internets (that is cheaper and possibly free), the only thing consoles are lacking is keyboard/mouse support, which they may already have. Cost, game availability/quality, comfort, the important social factor of having drunken people sitting next to you to punch, etc. are all going for the consoles. PCs have what now? Configurabilty? Hmm. Apparently that’s not a word. Still, if it actually mattered at all console games might not outsell PC games 20:1.

MMOs and RTS games do have their place on PCs, but shooters I’m not so sure anymore. If you’re talking about games like Quake or UT, then, yes, those belong on PCs. However, those games are dead; no one plays them anymore and no one makes them anymore. CoD4 and the like, which are the types of shooters people play now, don’t suffer on consoles because they aren’t so much about aim as they are location and prediction.

The issue is quite literally that it’s impossible to actually aim a random spray of bullets. All you need to do is point the thing in the proper direction and hold the trigger while trying to rein in the recoil bounce. This works equally well with both control systems.

By: Cyde Weys

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:40:41 +0000

I wouldn’t even pinpoint PC games as the target of criticism. I’ve used non-game software that was far buggier than even the worst game software. The best examples I can think of are when a formerly lean software package gets utterly bloated. I’m thinking of Adobe Acrobat, WinAmp, etc. The first bloated versions were incredibly buggy, as so much new functionality was added without being properly tested. The more recent versions are somewhat better; they are still, unfortunately, just as bloated.

I think it has more to do with the availability of patches for PC games. A bad bug in a console game (until very recently with the deployment of networked services, anyway) was never going to get fixed, and it would forever mar and tarnish the record of the game. A bad bug in a PC game can simply be patched at some point after release. So the disincentives to release with bugs are different by at least an order of magnitude between the two.

By: Arthromitor

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:23:27 +0000

What seems to be missing here is the fact that consoles crash too, and it can be far more difficult to recover (since generally the only people that can service a console are the console manufacturerers). I’m not just speaking of the notorious Xbox red ring of death. I’ve had Halo 3 on the X360 freeze up, controllers mysteriously stop working while playing EDF, and those are just the ones from the 360 that I can remember (seeing as I don’t own a 360 and these are just from when I was playing with friend’s machines this isn’t exactly a stellar record).

By: Grokmoo

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:38:22 +0000

Not all games will sell better on consoles. The standard example of this is MMORPGs, but this also applies to RTSs and turn based strategy games. Also, shooters are almost inevitably better on PCs because of the superiority of the mouse + keyboard setup.

I think there will always be a market for these sorts of games. The market may end up being smaller than the console market, but it is not going to disappear. Note that it is not clearly smaller than the console market currently, if only because of World of Warcraft.

Also, I would argue that PC versions of games are more often than not better than the console versions. Fallout 3 is one example. While the occasional crashes are annoying, they are a minor factor compared to the much better control scheme on the PC.

As far as how many crashes you have seen, I guess I probably just work on a lot more PCs than most people.

By: T2A`

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 02:26:21 +0000

This is yet another nail in the coffin of PC gaming’s eventual death.

Why go through all the trouble worrying about different hardware setups and beta testing for months when your game will sell better by an order of magnitude on the consoles? Developers know exactly what they’re getting into with the consoles; the games are better, more plentiful, easier to produce, and far less buggy.

It’s a bad business decision to make PC games anymore. Hence, they’re all bad or at least worse than their console counterparts.

That said, Oblivion’s engine is obviously not that good. Even in vanilla form Oblivion was notorious for crashing at the worst of times without any sort of error message or warning. Add in a mod or ten to fix some stupid gameplay issue and making any decent progress without a crash was always a crapshoot.

Also, I’ve seen only a “handful of full-blown computer crashes” since 2001.