*cough* AoC online *cough*

I remember when I use to play everquest 2. My old rig was not that good but they had made their game scalable. So we could play it well with less graphics. Now I'm sure with my new laptop I could probably play it at full with little trouble. The game as been out what 4 years now or something like that.

So you guys are right, if they did lower the game requirments a lot more poeple would buy it. Is it so hard to make it scalable?

I have forgone a few games knowing I could not play it. No way will I buy something new for a GAME. I buiy a computer usually every four years. Period.

Regarding MOO3, I recall that most of its graphics were quite servicable. The alien diplomats, in particular, were gorgeous. If it had graphical trouble, it was the space battles, which were sort of messy, with everything being too small, including the view area. There were plenty of other more pressing problems than the graphics though.

I think Baldur's Gate still looks decent enough to be playable today actually, because of the painted backgrounds. It's just a shame that the resolution is locked.

I think there is a small flaw in the Steam hardware survey: it completely misses the 1280*1024 resolution, which is very common for 19" monitors. Still, it does drive the point home doesn't it?

I'm sure part of the problem is that the developers are using a souped-up rig (as well they should).  You need to make sure the playtesters are using older platforms at some point, and some companies may forget.   One could argue that a souped-up box may enhance a QA tester's productivity as well, but the side-effect is that it relegates testing the older platforms to "compatibility testing"--which usually means, "not tested very well".  It's a fact of life that software will never be more reliable than on the platform it was originally developed on.

Yes, let's have a look at those recent, highly successful games you mentioned:

Team Fortress 2's success is an unknown quantity - it was not sold on it's own for a long time after release. There's no hard data on how successful it would have been on it's own. Note also that it was a Valve game, as well as a sequel (thus being part of an already established brand). It's success did not depend on system Reqs.

CoD 4 is, again, a sequel to a highly successful brand, and has been subjected to a long and expensive ad campaign. It's success did not depend on System Reqs.

World of Warcraft, yet again, is part of an already established brand, by a developer that get's a free pass by 99% of the gaming media and their followers. It's success did not depend on System Reqs. Note also that WoW is a statistical outlier that is unrivaled, yet sadly taken as "the goal" for MMO development. 11 Million paying subscribers, 132 million dollars per month, is neither normal, nor necessary for a successful MMO, or any game for that matter.

Sins of a Solar Empire was a "success" due to several factors: The amount of sold units that constitutes "success" in it's genre is far lower than those of the previous examples (incidentally the same is true for WiC). It had heavy support from the enthusiast press, due to it's DRM-less nature, and it's moderate system reqs were bought by skimping on visual detail and restricting modders.

As for World in Conflict - I have yet to see evidence of it's success. It is by now all but forgotten by everyone but's its most hardcore playerbase, with the upcoming expansion being an example of "too little, too late". It's success (if it had that) was not a result of it's low system requirements, although this is one of the games where your claim of efficient game engines is true to an extreme. WiC looks far better than it's hardware need would suggest.

Crysis being considered a failure is largely the result of an enormous failure of their PR/Marketing. Someone, somewhere started the Urban Myth that Crysis needs a NASA supercomputer to run and all but a scant few press outlets simply parroted that claim without factchecking it. After they propagated it, the potential buyers believed it too, again without factchecking it.

The truth is Crysis is actually very well optimized. It runs with maxed out settings on a system that is cheaper or as expensive as a run of the mill "next-gen" console.

Actually, Stardock has reason to believe that their users of their service have more sophisticated rigs. There's several reasons for that, but the number one reason is one game. Counterstrike. Not the source version, the old one. After one of the latter patches it required Steam for online play, which will drive an enourmous number of "outdated" machines onto the steam service, to potentially answer such surveys. Don't forget, CS is/was one of the most successful multiplayer FPS games of all times, which means it has/had a huge installbase, all of which would be forced onto steam.

Edit: Sorry for the double post, but it was getting a little long, plus a different arguement/quote altogether.

Did you read that after you posted it?

You're stating that the customer base has more sophisticated rigs than reported, because the customer base has been inflated by all those users that wouldn't be customers without the older, highly popular game they're still playing on their outdated machines.

When you develop a game for the high end of the spectrum, even if it's only top of the last generation requirements, you do more than just cut out potential customers.  The development costs of Doom 3 are far higher than they would be for an exactly replica gameplay and story wise that had a game engine a year older in tech.  The cutting edge costs a lot of money, the bleeding edge costs a fortune.  Those five million dollar game engines require a much larger customer base.  Spending four million bucks pushing the boundaries on current capabilities to cut out 20% of your market is stupid.  They're all acting like morons, designing games as if they have no talent and can only draw customers in through graphics.  Gameplay is first, that is why the CS mod is the most popular online FPS of all time, turning a very successful game into a record breaker.  More games would be successful if they'd just stop pissing away small fortunes on graphics in an attempt to get a few more customers than they're losing with the higher requirements.

Actually I'm stating that IMPULSE customer base would have more sophisticated rigs - the STEAM customer base has a host of underpowered machines due to Counterstrike. I didn't word it perfectly though, you're right. You should still be able to see that though if you think it through.

Here we go - you're claiming that CS was successful because it had low system reqs, and despite it's bad graphics. What you're forgetting is that neither of those claims were particularily true at the time of CS's rise to success.

Halflife was a very pretty game at it's time, and it's engine was very scaleable, especially in terms of resolution. CS was successful because it was the first of it's sub-genre that was effectively free (it was a mod) -  it was built on an FPS that already had success.

The continued success of CS, even when it's graphics and gameplay started to look dated, was, again, not a result of it's low hardware need, but rather of the simple fact that the so called "pro gaming" scene is deathly afraid of any change whatsoever. That sad characteristic can be observed in all of the genre's but CS is one of the prime examples of it. (it took years and masses of sponsor money to get them to change to CS:Source, despite it being effectively the same game only prettier)

Valve's hardware survey is a fine example of how to do things the right way: Instead of spending endless days philosophizing about it, they went ahead and gathered statistics. They don't need to make guesses about their audience - the have the numbers. That's probably the most valuable tool any game developer can have.

Sure, people can philosophize about why the numbers are what they are - but at the end of the day, the numbers speak for themselves, and you'll pay attention to those numbers if you want to appeal to the largest possible audience.

That gives me an idea - why not a hardware survey with Impulse? I'd love to see a comparison, and I think it would greatly benefit Stardock to see what types of platforms they are appealing to.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Stardock may actually be appealing to more lower end systems than Steam!

Remember: Most of Stardock's income is from applications, not games.

I'm one of those 73%. Sadly, monitors still are one of the most expensive parts of a computer, and I have yet to be able to buy a new one. I'm guessing the same is true for most people who are still using 4:3 monitors.

"philosophize" about the results? It's called analyzing. It's what you do with Statistics, otherwise they're meaningless numbers (well, more meaningless than they are, any statistics professional will tell you that you can twist stats into anything).

Numbers never speak for themselves without context.

It did say on the box that reccommended meant no more than 2v2 on a 10x10 map on medium.

Hardware req's for new games have always been a point of contention. Even way back with Wing Commander.. Crysis is nothing new in this respect ( and I beg to differ with DatonKallandor, it did require a NASA supercomputer to run at max settings when released ). Eye candy is very nice. Obviously if it didn't count for something, we'd all still be using Paradise EGA video cards and 14" monitors. The "Whiz-bang" crowd will always scream for more More MORE until they have direct neural projection with interactive bio-feedback controls. And we'd all lust after a rig that would support it. Better graphics require better hardware. Stardock and Ironclad have made an excellent business choice by going mainstream with thier suggestions. I can play on my dedicated game rig, or my work laptop. My friends can play on thier less then cutting edge machines as well. Crysis ? I'm the only one who owns it in my circle.

But graphics and horsepower are not the whole story. Sure they get attention in the trade rags..

What makes a great game, and long term sales, is GAMEPLAY. The Civilization franchise is a perfect example. Graphics aren't really it's forte. But, I still fire it up to play every once in a while. And I buy new versions when they come out. SIN's is another great example. Each game is different, and a challenge. Crysis ? Not really. Same linear game every time. Warcraft I, II, III ? MechWarrior 2, 3, 4x ? Mech Commander ? NeverWinter Nights ? BioSphere ? Rogue Spear ? Linear play and no longer on my HD. Doom III ? Same thing. You know the level, and what creature is behind what door, where the secret doors are... Crysis Warhead ? UT III ? Not in my collection, although the originals are..

Will I buy Entrenchment ? You betcha. I KNOW it'll run on my rig, and I know I get more then one ( or a few more ) runs through the game before I get bored.

From a buisness standpoint, perhaps. From an artistic standpoint, no.

Id is a company of programmers. They are founded by and run by programmers. They think like programmers. And for programmers playing with hardware is one of the more interesting things to do in game development. And programmers like nothing more than interesting things to do.

They push the limits of the artform of videogames in their own way. Yes, they might have made more money on Doom3 if it had not been as ambitious. But then again, since the gameplay wasn't that great to begin with, it sold primarily on its ambition and the atmosphere that the ambition created. So maybe it would have sold even less if it hadn't been ambitious.

Id is a company of programmers, and it shows. Blizzard is a company of artists, and it shows. Programmers get in the way of artists, telling them what tools they can use and so forth. Best to choose levels of hardware that there are mature tools for and tell the programmers to go to hell.

Valve is a company of game designers. Everything feeds back into that, programming and art alike. Again, they want to do cool stuff, but they're going to push things in a direction that feeds into gameplay. The physics in the Source engine/HL2. The Apeture Science Hand-Held Portal Device in, well, Portal. The Director AI in Left 4 Dead. And so on.

Yes, but you bought them. That's all they care about, from a business perspective.

As far as business is concerned, infinite replay value is a bad thing. Because if you're still playing game X, you don't have the time to put into playing the new game Y that they just put out. It's the WoW problem: WoW itself depresses PC game sales because time spent playing WoW is time not spent playing other games. And money spent playing WoW is money not spent playing other games. WoW is a bargain at $15 a month if it can replace all of your gaming, and your normal gaming habit is one $50 game every month. Of course, that's money that other developers don't get.

it's not rocket science folks.

1. Good Game+(Larger number of people capable of playing it=a)=x

2. Good Game+(a-number of people who have older machines)=x-y

with any number greater than 1

x-y<x

Any decent businessman would prefer x to x-y

period.

Sadly it doesn't work like that, because "Good Game" is not a seperate entity from hardware need.

Err, there is no begging to differ. It wasn't an opinion - it was fact. I have (repeatedly) put together PC's for under 800$ that could run Crysis on more-than-max settings (file-edited for extra oomph). And that was the cost of that PC at the time of Crysis' release - those costs will have gone down dramatically by now.