Gaming How Far Has PC Gaming Come?

er what? i play eve and i certainly dont use spreadsheets and i see explosions, lots.

WoW has done seriously well considering the competition it had when it was released, shame its gone from being good to being ultra easy so that 6 year olds can play it.

 

"What Half-Life did was introduce a third option; telling a story without cut scenes and without breaking from the FPS perspective, a method later used by..." if it's viewed for FPS games, that's true. For those that remember it though, the ground breaking game was Interstate '76.

 

The article forgot to mention the single most important aspect of PC gaming: modding communities. People become inspired to make new games that challenge preexisting clichés. Homeworld 2 was left out as a good example of a story driven video game and it has a very strong modding community. When developers deny people the ability to freely mod a game from the day of release it kills the re-playability and removes user generated content.

To me FPS are dead. Regenerating health, claustrophobic field of view restrictions and forced game mechanics related to console porting do not make mainstream PC gaming worthwhile anymore. I might try The Path, Mount and Blade and more independent game developers for inspiration. The Thief mod using the Doom 3 engine is looking better every day.

 

True, I remember an interview with the lead designer of the STALKER games talking about the inspiration for the game and obviously Roadside Picnic was mentioned but also the surroundings and the history of the Ukraine destroyed by war and shrouded by communism I can see why the post apocalyptic games are a favourite. I might not be able to see the bigger picture and what could happen down the line but for now the enthusiasm and originality in the CIS nations combined with the overwhelming prevalence of PCs rather than consoles they do seem like they have it all right now. Not to mention due to differences in production costs make it an ideal place for publishers to find talent on a smaller budget. I think ACE team (Zeno Clash) mentioned that as a plus about living in Chile, they never would have made their game on a typical European budget.

 

Very well done.

 

yep

up until 3 years ago I was still in 3 clans playing on leagues.. and that was for UT99 !

Most of the UT communities would still be alive somewhat if it weren't for all the cheaters and obviously the lack of a proper and up to date anti cheat ...

 

It's sad to see the communties die off because of companies want for money. But of course that's the way things work, and you can't expect any less.

Still though, do people not realize that by giving a game longevity that it increases profits as that builds loyalty?

 

Hmmmm,

Well, this was a nice but very light survey of what an article might look like. It needs to be about 20 pages longer to start with, and add in genres that were not mentioned like sims and wargames.
I also have a problem with calling Doom the first modern PC Game, a prejudice, I suspect, with the average age of the bit-tech writers. What you DID say was fine though, just a bit light for me.

Now, as far as EVE Online is concerned, if you have ANY desire to play the most complex PC Sim ever made, run do not walk to get this Sim. CCP is turning EVE into a universe that is going to span PC and console (with a new fps ground game) and is going to span several "games" in its own right.
My ONLY regret was that I started in 2006 rather than 2003, but the best years of EVE are ahead of it, and things are really getting exciting. Join up now, get into a 0.0 alliance and see what can be done on the PC platform, it is beyond all reason!

Yours in EVE Plasma,
Star*Dagger

P.S. For the "I will never pay a monthly sub" whiners, EVE is free after 6 months since you can pay with in game currency for game time. You have no excuses, you know about this game, every day you delay is a day lost, run!

 

pc gaming is going now where, it will always be here. If it's any thing we boycott big comapnes. If big companies piss off too meny gamers they can kiss gaming good by.

here is a very good qote

"Yes it is a luxury product. And those products rely on the goodwill of customers. If we stop considering them as something to covet and enjoy then they loose their business."

 

I stopped reading when MGS was referred to as "rambling nonsense".

 

+1 I only recently got into eve, been running missions and going on roams in low-sec where you can have a pop at anything which moves, the most fun i have had recently is pissing people off by luring them into wormholes with pleas of help popping some offline piece of kit someones left lying about so we can then swiftly and violently betray our help and take all the loot.

This game gives back what you put into it, be it scamming other players out of their hard earned, protecting the innocent from people like me or just mining and making a profit to fund your pvp activies. Saying that in december they are bringing out more epic arc missions which are a fantastic storyline and quite immersive which really makes the player work hard for their internet money.

 

Meh, missioning in eve still smacks of a massively single player online game. And to the guy that said it wasn't spreadsheets, someone in your corp will have them coming out of their ears, I know I did trying to keep POSs and JBs fuelled, then emptying silos buying corp salvage, trading it or making rigs, jeez the game became more like a job just hauling other people's crap everywhere! and pvp was something I got to do when required by alliance CTAs which was sit at a system for an hour waiting for everyone to form up, suffer DCs and teenage FCs before being so tired of hanging around that most of the people who were there at the start had left and if you did hang around you got to jump to a lagged hell where you got instapopped by the 150 sniper BS fleet 200km away. Joy. Such was 0.0 I guess, I didn't have time for the shenanigans of unemployed students, despite being one, maybe should've stayed in low sec.

The shooter game looks interesting and I'll probably be suckered in at some point, see you there!

 

Yeah I spent over 4 years playing EvE, until my last ban, after seeing years of grinding skills reduced to crap as they reduced the learning times or nerfed the ships so new players could catch up / compete, plus , with an MMO you have to put up with the constant teen BS / Barracking..or....retaliate and get banned by some whiner, whose whole life revolves around waiting for someone to slip up in local chat, so they can report them ........nope, not for me anymore, single player games or quick multiplayer killfests.

 

IMO:

Best FPS - Quake
Best MMO - UO & AC1
Best RPG - Baldurs Gate
Best RTS - Starcraft

Notice the trend? They are all OLD. So yeah, I think the gaming genre has improved greatly in some area's (mainly graphics), but gone backwards in others (mainly game play & challenge) - especially in the case of MMO's: except for EVE, and SWG to an extent - sandbox world >>> some mindless, linear, risk free, quest grind.

 

Isn't it obvious what comes next?

Totally joined up global gaming. You take, World Of Warcraft, The Sims, EVE Online, Call Of Duty, Halo and Project Gotham and you mesh them all in to one massive universe.

Think about it.

Everything meshes together, the cars in your 'world' are driven by real people. Wars are started and fought by real people. There are real people piloting the spaceships and running the governments. Invasions from space could happen.

And if you didn't want to fight or drive or fly a spaceship, you'd just do the Sims thing...

Admittedly it is a bit of a flight on fancy, I mean the server back end alone would be staggering and administering it a nightmare.

Still worth considering though.

 

PC gaming is definitely changing at the moment.

I am at home with a keyboard and mouse, I cannot stand playing 3d games with a controller. Does anyone remember feeling weird and dizzy and disorientated when Descent, come out ?

The only thing making me angry with deathmatch PC gaming is the cheating with aimbot and turning god mode on and off, then some admins who turn clipping off to walk through walls then turn it back on.

 

Funny enough, I wrote an article on October 19th (same day as you wrote this one) talking about some of the new technologies and improvements needed for games in the future.

 

I'd have to throw in another category you missed.

Best Team based FPS/CTF - Starsiege Tribes.

This old game single-handedly innovated most every feature that seems common place in modern FPS games of today and yet its gameplay in many ways is still as fun or even better.

Honestly, most PC FPS games didint really have much of a story since it was more oriented toward the quality of the multiplayer aspect of the game. There were a few greats though like the first half life game.

 

couldnt agree more, SWG in the early days was pure awesome, same with UO.
While i defended EvE earlier it does look like to be going down the path of becoming more noob friendly and easier to play but still no one in my corp touches spreadsheets, honest, we are clean