That's the beautiful thing about true art, though - the intended meaning given by the creator of that piece doesn't have to have anything to do with your interpretation of it. So the curator is fine to think that it deals with the emasculation of black society, and he's right; just like the painter can make jokes about blow jobs, and he's right.

This reminds me of a small statement that was pinned on the wall in physics class.

"Art is not useless but bakers are much more important. They have to get up really early and bake bread so people can eat. If suddenly all bakers were gone that would be really bad. That's why bakers are much more important then artists."

That statement is art on its own It brilliantly shows that "art" is nothing but a form of entertainment, praised to have some intellectual value which is has not by people that have too much free time on their hand and want to have some argument to thing they are smart because deep down they know that they are not. If they were they would be nuclear physicists or something like that.

It's a little like book clubs. People get together for those book clubs and think themselves to be super smart and intelligent because of it. Here is some news: A lot of people can read. Wow, you can read, too! You are so awesome!

Bottom line: All the fuss behind art is just that - useless fuss. So in a way people claiming that computer games are art are right. It's just the other way around: Art is nothing more then games. It is fun to those who like it but let's be honest: It is no intellectual challenge, there is nothing special about it. It's entertainment for the masses, nothing more. The fact that the old forms of entertainment for the masses (theaters, paintings) are not appreciated any more by most people doesn't make them superior art to the modern entertainment possibilities. That would be like claiming PacMan is superior art to Sins just because it's older and less people like it these days.

Yup, and as the proud owner of one, it'll handle every game on the market right now. It'll even do Crysis decently at High settings.

Just played a little bit of Halo 3 on another person's Xbox 360, and I'm very disappointed. Just like the games in the store, it's not antialiased. The stair step effect is everywhere. I'm sorry, but even my old GeForce 6800 was plenty capable if pulling off 4x AA with most games, and 2x with the most demanding ones (except Crysis, which I wouldn't even try on a 6800).

My 9600 can pull off some AA with everything, and I'm pulling 8x or 16x in some games. I can even pull 2x AA with Crysis and maintain a playable game.

There's simply no excuse for not having antialiasing in games anymore IMHO. If the consoles aren't able to pull it off, then I'm not impressed at all with their supposed graphical "power."



Nope. Online play, especially with MMORPGs, is as popular as ever on the PC. Consoles are brand new to online play, and I think they still have a ways to go before they're competing with PCs in games like MMORPGs.



You can get them as cheap as $20 if you don't want to play recent DirectX 10 games. In addition, I seriously doubt you can afford a console if you can't afford a $100 graphics card.

I spent $100 for my MSI NX7600GS and am very happy with it. OpenGL is more important to me than DirectX.

I agree with the statement that PC Gaming is dying, even when we get that handful of developers and publishers that say "all is well; look the other way". A decent deal of those saying "all is well" are also well-within still viable genres and-or with strong influence with consumers (powerful brand(s)).

We do still get that once in awhile magic seller that gets consumer attention (Sims, etc.), but should we base PC Game Industry health around the exceptional few or what the rest of the industry is feeling on a regular basis? You know the ones that have been closing shop after a single game (even when good), the ones barely making even after many games, and-or the ones that hinge the survival of their company with each project that must be available near immediately after the last.

Considering how less saturated the PC gaming market is in some of these genres compared to years ago, and we have no greater count of game sells. Instead, we have observed declining sells in various genres for years. And, as of late some sold far below the original sales projections, which might be a showing that the recent console generation might be taking a greater impact on PC game sells then before.

Of course, looking at profit/revenue reports that broadly cover the PC Industry wont tell you this, as they include the profits and revenue of Pay-to-Play games (MMORPGs). Most of us know, those games consume more money and generate far greater profits. Leading people to believe all is well. It just really isn't. We have watched a total decline of game unit sells ranging from nearly five-hundred thousand to eight-million per year for at least five years (cannot remember exactly when this trend started).

There is no denying this, stick your head in the sand if you want to, but the viability of the PC for selling games is eroding away. While console viability is on the rise. The acceleration of this decline is due to console platforms now providing the (greater) viability of pay-to-play gaming (MMORPGs and the like), Real-Time Strategy Games, and First-Person Shooters. The recent trend shows that console gamers are now starting to buy these more then the PC counterpart, and some of the port are becoming more sophisticated adaptations (not just some silly half-baked control scheme for either or parallel platform development like some).

Further evidence, some of you older gamers remember what the old game retailer was like, walking into those stores and seeing dozens and dozens of PC games of many genres on those shelves. Now compare that to the retailers of today, tell me, how many PC games are on those shelves? What genres are missing? How many games does the largest genre have? How many does the least available have? How many of those games came out within the last year, two, three? Compare that to years ago from memory and tell me things are "Okay".

Ultimately, I could list many reasons for why this is all happening, but think this post is getting a wee-bit long for most readers. I hope it was informative.

That's the most intellectually dishonest, arrogant, pig-headed and asshole-ish thing I've heard all day.

You just keep living in your pretty little confined world and let the people who have the balls to study the humanities keep being the moral, psychological, philosophical and moral backbone of society.

I'm done with this thread.

Sorry for quoting entire thing but this post is great!

I agree 101%

This thread brings out so many good points that I thought... Maybe all of you would like to hear from one of us out there who is in the game design/development/project drirectors! Namely Me.

I have been a part of the teams that created Mechwarrior2, Ghost Bear's Legacy, Mechwarrior2 Mercenaries, Wing Commander, Heavy Gear 2, Ultima Online, Warlords Battlecry, Farcry and Crysis.

Here are the sad realities of PC Gaming:
1. A "great" PC Game might sell 100,000 - 150,000 copies and of those at best 40% were sold at full price. A "lousy" console game can easily sell 1 - 2 Million copies and the big ones can sell 13 - 15 Million copies. Do the math... I hate console games and their 1 tiered experience and lousy replayability, unlimited powerups and cheats and lots of other things about them... but... they payoff in a big, BIG way.

2. There are quite a number of game designers, like myself, who want CO-OP play in multi-player, who want the Campaign game to be FULL MULTI-PLAYER, who want the Single Player game to be at least an 80 Hour experience (if they let me I would make it longer than that!!)...

But, guess what, the guys who pull our purse strings at Activision, EA, Sony (all except CCP, Stardock and a handful of others) are NOT gamers and I don't think they really even like us. They are businessmen out to make millions. I have been told countless times that I cannot include CO-OP play... they don't have the budget for it...we don't have enough time before code freeze... ect. ect. It's frankly a lie though... the real reason is they want us to make very short games that are addicting and win rave awards for graphics that show what you ate yesterday as it explodes out of your intestines... they don't want replayability and they don't want games that are designed to be added onto or modded.

3. However, I believe their logic is flawed and they are foolish to constantly force us to rush out a game and to push graphics over gameplay. What I have tried to do in meetings with the money men is teach them about the truly great games and WHY they are legendary, for example:

Doom and Doom 2 - Can anyone tell me how many 10's of thousands of levels were made for these 2? To this day, I think I still enjoy good old fashioned Doom just as much as the day I played it when it came out long ago.

Hunt for Red October / Silent Service - Why is it that even now... there still is not a game out there that has the awesome gameplay and unlimited replayability of these great submarine warfare games.

Aces Over Europe / Aces Over the Pacific / F-15 Strike Eagle 3 / Jane's Advanced Tactical Fighters - These games looked "good enough" and, my god, I bet we played them more than a 1000 hours a piece when my buds would all bring over their computers and hook up to the Lan...

4. Now look at some of the games that could have been great games and why I think they are not:

Civilization - Why is the AI programming so sloppy that even when they are down to 5 cities and you have 20: a) They are still keeping up in research? They can still upgrade their units, even though they had no cash on hand last turn? c) When you conquer a city, or look at it, it only has 3 special buildings in it and could only support a population of 5 maybe...and it was size 25? This game could have been great, if Sid and his team cared enough to at least make it look like the AI was playing fair - but they didn't.

The Total War Series - Shogun, Rome and Medieval - This would have been one of the greatest series of games in history... but... WHY is the Campaign single player only? Did their programmers graduate from Howcheapryou University? It would have been so easy to fix these fantastic games and make games that would have rivaled C&C and its children... I have told Creative and the other studios this a 100 times and even talked with several of their teams... how lame.

WOW - I can only say that WOW sickens me, though I admit I play it because there is nothing else out there. There is no "WE" in WOW.. it is all about the player and his quests. Sure, he has to party every so often for certain quests... but it is all about the person, not the team, not the family or guild. I came from Great Lakes shard of Ultima Online back in the day when Player Gamemasters ran content on their daily. These dedicated content gamemasters actually brought the world to life for us on Great Lakes!! Monsters, played by GMS! Intelligent! Cunning! Who actually reacted to us! I would like to see all that and more... a world where the world changes based on what happens! If dragons raid Stormhold City of Silvervein Town, destroy the damned town! Let it take players and NPCS both, over time, to rebuild it! Have players like me who are gamemasters - running the important monsters, generating stories and sub-plots and introducing special encounters to bring the world to life!
Then you have WOW where all the Scourge you kill will never make 1 iota of difference to the game. And PvP?? What PvP? You loose nothing if you loose and you gain nothing if you win. Are we so shallow that we think this is fun? When you fight PvP, sure I think some items should be untakeable (ever wondered why there are "soulbound items" in WOW??) but you should come back from the dead with penalties, less experience, naked and have to go find your corpse to recover whats not gone... I mean, when is the last time you were cut in half and by some miracle were able to get back up in real life? Do you think your "stuff" would magically appear on your newfangled, miracle Max created body? HAHAHHAHAHH

What I keep trying to reinforce in the money man's thick skull is that it is all about GAMEPLAY, REPLAYABILITY, MOD/LEVEL Player Made Changes, and having fun!!! Graphics does not make a game great, not by a long shot and in todays times with gas and groceries going off the charts, people (which yes, does include gamers) simply cannot afford to buy a new $500+ Graphics card every year to play your new game. We told them this on Crysis... and many others... we begged for Co-Op... to no avail. Also, because most of you don't know, but we are being told that Solo play on most games today should be no more than 10 - 14 hours... which personally I feel is a rip off of the gamer's money.

Why are the games becoming so massive that it takes multiple DVD's to hold them even in compressed form? Well, we are using many sloppily written programming tools to create them for one and for two - GRAPHICS. Do you know, I had over 200 games installed in 1999... on my huge 1.7 Gb Hard Drive! Today, almost every game takes 5-10 Gb to install... why isn't the public screaming about how sloppy the code is for a game to be so massive? Do all of you have 5+ bays of Hard drives installed to be able to play the newest 20 games released last week?

Another myth to dispel... do you know that someone with a new Super-duper Graphics Card really can, and does, get the jump on those of you with Yesterdays cards? We have tested it several times by playing on our home systems against each other at the office... taking turns playing on the office's systems and then on the slightly less advanced home systems. A new super card with 2 billion bigabytes of DDR99 does give that millisecond or so edge. It isn't necessarily perceptible unless you play with say 20 people on a server but when fighting is heavy and graphics are popping... the super duper card gives an unfair advantage.

This is why I am so sick of DEATHMATCH games@@!! I'm good, damned good, in fact so good that most people simply don't enjoy playing me. Why should they? How much fun is it that just because your hand - eye coordination is slightly lower than mine, you become this big walking target dummy? There is no fun there. Remember old DOOM 2? I remember levels with 8 Cyberdemons and 4 of those Boss Spiders and all 4 of us playing Co-Op working like a real Special Forces team to take them out... that was fun@!! Plus, the slightly slower player wasn't having to compete against the sick gameaholics like me and spend all their time respawning. You can do so, so, so much more with a game than they are letting us do.

You want to help? Start writing to the gaming companies and telling them that it isn't acceptable what they are doing. That you want Co-Op, that you are tired of every game being nothing but DeathMatch and that a game being "fun" and replayable 10,000 times because the levels change and it is never the same thing twice is more important that graphics!!! Talking to them through blogs and emails is just a waste of time... write them, get all your friends to write them, send it to the game magazines, to the developers, and most of all to the big studios so that the money men have to listen to us again and let us make decent games worth the money that you guys have worked so hard to make!

Enough of my raving lunacy. God be with us all and long live America, despite Bush and his cronies!

Yes, co-op will fix most of gaming's problems, so will gameplay over graphics, but the problem is that people don't wanna change.

Bush is our best president (in the 21st century)! (Hey, the last one had an affair, doesn't Bush beat that?)

Welcome to tangent country, but no - I'd rather have a president that cheats on his wife thirty times during his presidency than one that starts an unethical, pointless war that kills hundreds of thousands.

I go with the war.

That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard since the LAST ridiculous thing I heard on this thread.

On what planet is an unjust war better than boinking an intern?

It's NONE OF MY BUSINESS if the President chooses to philander. I don't think it's very noble of him, but it's BETTER THAN KILLING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS.

You're insane.

Bah, where's the edit feature?

Link to the full image

It's ok, Mtn_Man.

SanCho, it's the measure of our leader's dignity. Plus his measure of desperation and risk for STD's.

Since it's so much more dignified to blow people up needlessly.

Like in an unjust, unprovoked and ultimately illegal war.

History will judge Clinton far less of a blundering idiot than W. The fact that you think that someone screwing an intern is worse than this war still baffles me.

Now I'm REALLY leaving.

Really really? Getting blowjobs from people you have power over while you're supposed to be running the country, and firing missiles at empty tents instead of taking terrorist attacks seriously isn't the same as having an affair and not letting it affect your judgment.

Nice post Axor, thanks for making my books look shorter.

The money, on certain things, is definitely going to consoles, but I disagree on your sales numbers for great games. A high end gpu requiring, 10 million dollar game might be a great game in terms of gameplay, but it's a stupid business design. The low sales really aren't a problem so much as the logical and easily foreseen consequences of producers being somewhere between retarded and persistent vegetative assholes. The up and coming small fries that will make it through the current bout of retardation aren't really a difference from anything else. Most businesses fail, the 90% failure rate for restaurant's in the first year is a myth, but the 60% for five years isn't particularly great either. That many game designers close up shop after their first game isn't irregular from the economy at large, business in general has a high failure rate.

There are millions of people playing games like Travian and maplestory online. I've played them, they suck. The only thing I can think of is they just can't find anything more amusing that they can run on an e-machine. The casual gamer with a bargain brand pc is a massive, all but untapped market. The Sims has shown just how powerful that user base can be for sales. Consoles are dwarfed in potential when you include the other 95% of the consumer base, designers just aren't designing for them. Even if they were, normal people don't read pc gamer, even most gamers don't read gaming magazines. They don't even advertise to the targeted audience, just a small percentage of it. You literally have to go looking to figure out what's out there. Consoles plaster advertisements on prime time television.

You can't design a game that wont run on the hardware that's available while you're developing it and expect it to sell as well as a console game will. The people with consoles can actually run the console games, most people with pc's can't run the pc games.

Nice list btw, particularly the mechwarrior and wbc bits.

First off, I'm pro-war, considering that the terrorists won't be happy with having a candy tossed at them, the war is technically legal, provoked, and just.

However, having an affair is a measure of deep seated mental instability.

Ok, I'll play. Hi! I'm a forum newbie and I've been gaming on electronic devices for well over 20 years. From cheapo pre-handheld things to state of the art PC, I've been there.

That said I can not agree with the original statement. Saying that "PC gaming is dying" fails to see the big picture. Its all about cycles. Back in the day, there were the commodore's, the atari's. The PC was a workhorse. Sure you could do other things but that was their big picture. The gaming machines eventually died and the worker evolved, changed. It wasn't fast, it took time.

Enter the early 90's when the Gameboy radically changed the world of gaming. That little ugly gray box was a smashing success. I loved that thing! The computer gaming scene drifted off to nerdiness. Why buy a bulky, ugly box for a few games when you can have a handy console..and an offspring that you can take wherever you'd please? That was my logic, anyway.

Yes great PC games developed around that time but the focus was on consoles. It took the PC a couple more years to become mass marketable. My first ever computer was a gift to the whole family at the time and I didn't even want to touch the thing! Ew ugly box, ya know?
In my opinion, the console generation in the late 90's was a bust. The industry tried to make the jump from cart to cd, was split, struggled along. After my beloved super nintendo had nearly run its course, I took a break since things just did not appeal to me anymore.

I was stuck playing games for my new computer. With the internet on the rise I began to see the advantages. A console game had to be finished. A PC game could be patched to squash bugs that remained. I believe around that time, the computer truly established itself as viable gaming machine and consoles continued to be in decline until the original playstation shuffled a new deck of cards.

Fastforward to the here and now. Consoles begin to use the internet. Consoles are gaming beasts, that is their only purpose after all and they are cheaper than a new capable PC. All smashing arguments and valid reasons why they are popular.
I will freely admit that some system requirements are through the roof as far as computer gaming goes but the games that push a moderm machine to and beyond their limits are absolutely not the majority. Crysis is the prime example, and it is one game. It is an awesome game, immensly beautiful, fun and intense but it is not the average product.

Consoles are more popular now than they used to be a few years ago. Especially with the Wii, that thing is getting quite the hype. It does things a computer cannot. Yea, ok.. my computer does things a Wii can't do. Whatever. Its a cycle of innovations, of mass marketing tastes.

There is one universal truth however: BOTH have their place. There's some games that a console quite simply would be an abyssmal platform for. Likewise, there's games that will never look good on a PC. It depends what people want to play and many hardcore gamers have everything anyway. There is nothing wrong with developers wishing to corner both markets, it is big enough. The problem will come when they are sloppy about it. I am certain everyone has played or seen at least one bad cross-platform game that would have been twice as good if it had been done right.

Sure it may look bad in stores, where there's 3 walls of console games and a single stand in the back with computer games..but to be quite honest: I order everything online. I let it go right to my doorstep, or directly onto my machine of choice. I very rarely BUY from a store anymore. I look, yes..but typically I order.

Yes I need to upgrade my computer regularly in order to play the latest and greatest. So what? I have invested thousands into my super nintendo collection, back in the day. I don't play them any longer. I don't use my old computer anymore because I upgraded. What's the difference? People go with the time, that is not restricted to a platform, or to only gamers.

Is there a decline? Yes of course. The cycle favors consoles now. PC gaming was a juggernaught and people easily mistake a change from "everywhere" to "part of the scene" with death. Why is there a decline? Is it because 10 million people play WoW 12 hours a day instead of buying new games? Is it because new games bring fewer innovations nowadays? Oh, maybe its because the innovation IS back in the hands of consoles? Or are the big players lazy, preferring to use tried and true formulas for money, fearing the new and unusual? People can and will argue about those and more questions 'till they turn blue and make up a hundred answers all of which will sound logical.

Ultimately, the point is this:
The gaming scene, and its platforms, changes. Lives. Breathes. It evolves.
..and it will continue to do so for better or for worse, for as long as there's people like us. Gamers with passion and developers with creative minds.

NOTE TO FORUM DESIGN CREW: OCCASIONALLY MY ENTIRE POST IS WIPED WHEN I HIT THE BACKSPACE KEY, AND GOING FORWARD DOES NOT RESTORE WHAT I TYPED. IT IS VERY ANNOYING.

It's also annoying that the "edit" button randomly appears and dissapears.



I'm not sure I totally believe those numbers. What's your source?



Now that I can believe. I'm pretty sure that, if PC gaming is truly dying, it's because the big companies are killing it, not because it has any disadvantages over other platforms.



Unfortunately, this is not totally WoW's fault: Problem is, very few people have the time to really do all of this planned gaming. I have a job and I go to college. I don't have much time I can schedule.



Same here. My brother plays in these really small maps where everybody is practically at point blank range. He who twitches first gets the kill. I don't find it fun at all. I prefer the larger maps where I get some time to think before I get to an opponent. This is also why I much prefer Stardock's games - I can proceed at my own leisurely pace in a turn based game.



Agreed. When the stores started scaling back on selling PC games, I left buying from brick & mortar. I started getting my games online.

@Axor,

I do agree with you.PC game's quality is dropping,especially on the FPS side.I didnt even both to try Crysis(sorry to say that) or Call of Duty 4 because i know do that these games are similar to the older games i have played.The only difference is the newer ones got better graphics but still dont have the great single player with great replayibility that i have been looking for.

I never really like Deathmatch games after UT2004.It's more like a cliche in today's games.

Even on the RTS side,things isnt better than FPS.Blizzard is being extremely conservative with Starcraft 2.EA's Red Alert 3 may sound good now,but the full game might sux.Dawn of War 2 might be the only game that satisfy my thirst for innovation in gameplay but im sure that it will still disappoint me in their support and modding.Sins,on the other hand,it manage to give me decent amount of innovations,great support but not so good modding.Sins's ai seriously need a big improvement.

Just one question,why do the games today have shitty ai?The ai coding have to leave to those bed room modders to fix and improve it.I have seen so many games with pathetic ai.WiC's ai is one of the worst.I would say Sins have decent ai but it still a lot of improvement to be on par with DoW's AI Mod.

Iron Clad and Stardock is my only hope.The big companies are mostly releasing crap games these days.

A nice forum topic here, something i feel close to home

I can hardly find anything on the shelves for the past few months, having completed medieval 2 total war on my last take. After which i tried to amuse myself back a little by reinstalling simcity3000 unlimited, this worked for a couple of days. Out of desperation and to this date, i recalled my ever reliable soulblighter to help kill my berserkers and free time.

The newer consoles (like xbox, or maybe ps) lean toward instant gratification, the stuff about waiting for websites to load...they got many upcoming titles, yet pc games are stagnating, save for some big names coming like fallout3, starcraft/warcraft. However, i believe what you find SELLING on the shelves must be related to the COMMERCIAL interests present, so proft margin differences must be the ones crafting the landscape.

I came to this website to look up dark avatar, the acclaims about its AI being so impressive. Two days ago i finally saw copies of it selling (it is actually a bundle of the main game dread lords and dark avatar expansion). However, looking at the patches released and the readme accompanying, i felt that the AI had been a letdown. Hope anyone can give provide a little advice?

As a benchmark, and as the last space strategy that I've had fun with, how does dark avatar measure up to sid meier alpha centauri?

Read a couple of posts earlier, i believe it is alfonse who said that tackling the game mechanics doesn't mean you are good, just shows that you are determined. Well said.

PC gaming has just begun and complaining about changing your old pc to a new updated unit is nothing but living in the past.Your thinking like a young Bill Gates who once said your never going to need more than 4 mb of ram ...or something like that .In the next 5yrs the old internet will be replaced with the "grid".Then you will see millions of players playing on 1 server in countless battles against each other all at the same time ! EPIC BATTLES in amazing detail and effects on thier PC! Lag , rubber banding will be lost phrases from the dark past . In time you will see how wrong u are like the young Bill Gates was.

Game companies do not ever cater only to new PC's otherwise we would all be playing on 64 bit OS's and the games would be there to support that. Game companies shoot for a range not a specific load out. Game companies better keep up or they will continue to go the way of Interplay and eventually get sucked up by EA or Actiblizzivision. And if they do, they deserve it for not listening to what gamers really want.

o wait i know why cause pc gaming company's make a good game then make you buy the expansion on what they mess up and they say they will fix it but really don't and con you in to buying a new game of theres ?


BF2 is a big one that did that