4 ms·

How to ruin your PC port in five easy steps

8 points by carusen 15y ago

ordinary 15y ago
As a PC gamer who regularly encounters this problem, I'm a bit disappointed that they made no serious attempt to uncover the reasons why publishers release gimped PC versions of console games. Surely good games sell better than bad games, and if the "features" enumerated in the article are indeed so universally reviled (I'm certainly no exception, myself), why not make them worth playing? Any HN'ers want to take a stab?
- jameskilton 15y ago
  The games industry is one of the worst industries at learning from their mistakes. They're also downright awful at listening to customers. For a lot of publishers these days, PC gamers are "the other guys" (which is ignoring the fact that we are still far more numerous than console gamers), so PC ports are seen as "appeasement measures" rather than versions fully deserving their attention. Dungeon Siege 3 is an unmitigated disaster. I will never buy anything Bethesda again, and Ubisoft might as well just roll over and die. It's the time of indy games. Braid, Minecraft, Terraria, etc, go play games by people who actually care about their customers, and they're usually a hell of a lot better than the AAA shit we get these days.
  - Symbol 15y ago
    As someone in the AAA games industry, let me address the following quote: "It only takes a little extra work to make your PC games play on the PC, and make gamers happy" Sadly, that's naive. Like any other software company, there are diminishing returns for features / revenue. When the product is slated for release on Xbox, PS3, and PC it is typically done with one codebase with platform specific code where necessary. You often end up with a common denominator where the PC people usually feel left out in the cold.I can attest that it takes a monumental amount of work to support the myriad graphics card configurations for the sole purpose of getting your game to look/feel ROUGHLY the same on all three platforms. To customize the game for one platform would be at the expense of the other two (from a development, production, and QA perspective) and it often doesn't make sense to those paying the bills. Sometimes the PC gets a dedicated port (such as Mass Effect for the PC), and those things that make PC gamers smile get added. However, this port is essentially a new project (SKU in retail games parlance) that is greenlit only if the console versions of the game have sold well enough to warrant it, and is typically done by a third party under extreme time pressure. All these factors contribute to less polish, which everyone involved is keenly aware of. Hopefully I've illustrated that this is a complex problem that can hardly be addressed by a "it doesn't take that much more effort to do a good job" platitude.
    - onli 15y ago
      I think you somewhat missed the point. Sure it is complex to support all gpus. But that's not the point of the article. The article is about small things like being able to customize the controls and not having to login in an useless service. Those are thing possible without much effort. If you dou a port and miss to modify the basics, you ruin your port, your reputation, and thus lose money. There is no point in doing the awful part of the port, like gpu-support, but miss the easy but necessary steps.
      - Symbol 15y ago
        And I'm trying to say that, in most cases, these things appear to be superficially easy but are more complex than you give it credit for. In almost all cases, the sad fact is that a playable version on the PC will generate sales. Any deeper level of polish is only diminishing returns. It may sound like I'm hating on PC gaming but I'm not. I only am giving my perspective from inside the sausage factory.
drdaeman 15y ago
If the port's unplayable - why care about it at all? Treat it as if it had never existed.

8 points by carusen 15y ago

As a PC gamer who regularly encounters this problem, I'm a bit disappointed that they made no serious attempt to uncover the reasons why publishers release gimped PC versions of console games. Surely good games sell better than bad games, and if the "features" enumerated in the article are indeed so universally reviled (I'm certainly no exception, myself), why not make them worth playing? Any HN'ers want to take a stab?

jameskilton 15y ago
The games industry is one of the worst industries at learning from their mistakes. They're also downright awful at listening to customers. For a lot of publishers these days, PC gamers are "the other guys" (which is ignoring the fact that we are still far more numerous than console gamers), so PC ports are seen as "appeasement measures" rather than versions fully deserving their attention. Dungeon Siege 3 is an unmitigated disaster. I will never buy anything Bethesda again, and Ubisoft might as well just roll over and die. It's the time of indy games. Braid, Minecraft, Terraria, etc, go play games by people who actually care about their customers, and they're usually a hell of a lot better than the AAA shit we get these days.
- Symbol 15y ago
  As someone in the AAA games industry, let me address the following quote: "It only takes a little extra work to make your PC games play on the PC, and make gamers happy" Sadly, that's naive. Like any other software company, there are diminishing returns for features / revenue. When the product is slated for release on Xbox, PS3, and PC it is typically done with one codebase with platform specific code where necessary. You often end up with a common denominator where the PC people usually feel left out in the cold.I can attest that it takes a monumental amount of work to support the myriad graphics card configurations for the sole purpose of getting your game to look/feel ROUGHLY the same on all three platforms. To customize the game for one platform would be at the expense of the other two (from a development, production, and QA perspective) and it often doesn't make sense to those paying the bills. Sometimes the PC gets a dedicated port (such as Mass Effect for the PC), and those things that make PC gamers smile get added. However, this port is essentially a new project (SKU in retail games parlance) that is greenlit only if the console versions of the game have sold well enough to warrant it, and is typically done by a third party under extreme time pressure. All these factors contribute to less polish, which everyone involved is keenly aware of. Hopefully I've illustrated that this is a complex problem that can hardly be addressed by a "it doesn't take that much more effort to do a good job" platitude.
  - onli 15y ago
    I think you somewhat missed the point. Sure it is complex to support all gpus. But that's not the point of the article. The article is about small things like being able to customize the controls and not having to login in an useless service. Those are thing possible without much effort. If you dou a port and miss to modify the basics, you ruin your port, your reputation, and thus lose money. There is no point in doing the awful part of the port, like gpu-support, but miss the easy but necessary steps.
    - Symbol 15y ago
      And I'm trying to say that, in most cases, these things appear to be superficially easy but are more complex than you give it credit for. In almost all cases, the sad fact is that a playable version on the PC will generate sales. Any deeper level of polish is only diminishing returns. It may sound like I'm hating on PC gaming but I'm not. I only am giving my perspective from inside the sausage factory.

drdaeman 15y ago

If the port's unplayable - why care about it at all? Treat it as if it had never existed.