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I'm a PC gamer. I couldn't give a toss what frame rate I'm getting, or what the graphics benchmark is. I get the fascination of tinkering with the build, and o

I'm a PC gamer. I couldn't give a toss what frame rate I'm getting, or what the graphics benchmark is. I get the fascination of tinkering with the build, and optimising stuff, and so on. But eventually it's got to come down to actually playing the game, right? This article is a classic case in point: not once, in the entire article, does it talk about the actual game. It only talks about graphics performance. Who buys games just to run them at 60fps at 4K? Surely at some point you've got to actually, y'know, play the game and enjoy that game?

lucasyvas 3y ago
I think you are right, but what you are ragging on is the meta of PC gaming. It's like an old muscle car nut trying to optimize the top speed of their car, acceleration, etc. They enjoy driving it, but the tweaking is an additive experience. It may eventually become the experience altogether. If this isn't you, consoles or mid-tier PCs are a great fit. I would say I straddle the two - if I buy great hardware, I expect to capitalize on it. But I don't overclock shit or care exactly what speed my RAM is, nor do I need the fastest SSD or top tier everything.
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  yeah, it feels like a parallel hobby - it's not actually gaming, because the game doesn't matter, it's optimising the hardware. The game is just the benchmarking tool for the graphics setup.
- apecat 3y ago
  Due to how my head is wired, I've discovered that I enjoy gaming a lot more after I switched to console two years ago: all settings are curated (for better and worse). I'm not even sure why I didn't switch earlier. The only reasons I can think of are fear of the controller and slow load times due to mechanical HDD on last-gen systems. I don't spend time away from gameplay trying to get optimal setting. I'm just the type of neurotic that I will do that stuff even though I absolutely don't enjoy it. I can jump directly into gaming without anxiety over how my hardware is falling behind. With my PS5 being in my living room, gaming is also time away from my desk, which I, much like doing anything on a Windows PC, associate with my IT jobby job. A console is an appliance. It's like a toaster or dishwasher, except it lets me play games without any work. With PS5, I also don't have to worry about weird glitches with audio through HDMI in my living room setup, since that's how I prefer to play. And PS5 now also renders Dolby Atmos, without any glitches. These are of course all me-problems, but I thought I'd mention it here, since gaming is too much fun to be confined to the tuning-happy garage mindset of PC.
n1b0m 3y ago
I think you’d care if you were getting less than 30 fps and the game is virtually unplayable.
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  I started PC gaming back in the 90's. <30 fps is perfectly playable, depending on the game. Some strategy and RP games are slideshows and play fine.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    It was for me as well, like, I was happy to be able to play Morrowind at ~15 fps at the time. But we can do better now; at the time, hardware was a limiting factor, but now if a game runs like shit, it's always the developer's fault. Recent example, Cities Skylines 2; onereason it runs like shit is that the pedestrians still get fully rendered teeth even though you're far away and can't see them. Why do they even have teeth? It's a city building sim. Or the latest Pokemon game, it looks like it could've been made 20 years ago in terms of visuals, but it runs terribly.
- n8cpdx 3y ago
  Some say that less than 120fps is literally unplayable. I remember when CoD 4 being 60fps on Xbox 360 was a big deal. Virtually unplayable is in the eye of the beholder.
  - dawnerd 3y ago
    Those people are ridiculous. You can have high fps but inconsistent frame timing which makes games feel terrible. I think that was the bigger issue with cod.
poink 3y ago
The overwhelming majority of game reviews address the content of the games, but there are reviewers that concentrate specifically on graphics performance because the difference between a low end and high end gaming PC can easily be $3k+, and half that is in the GPU nowadays. People use articles like this to decide what to buy to get the optimal experience in games they want to play, not which games they want to play in the first place. Alan Wake 2 merits specific consideration on this front because its system requirements seemed to suggest it wouldn't even be playable on a lot of popular configurations.
kevinlou 3y ago
I absolutely love and appreciate folks that push tech boundaries in gaming, but I absolutely agree - let's not lose sight of the reason why we make and play games!
lovepronmostly 3y ago
I know plenty of "gamers" who's #1 obsession is how good the game looks to them, not how well it plays. They generally dislike games with non-photoreaslistic rendering
simondotau 3y ago
Offering a good faith alternative explanation, I would hope that the main reason many people obsess over benchmarks and performance metrics is because GPUs are damn expensive — buyers would want to know that the money they're spending has tangible benefits. I'd like to think that once someone actually loads a game in order to play it, they'll actually focus on the game. (As a parallel example, I love the idea of seeing films in 3D, 4K, HDR etc, but I rarely notice the difference within ten minutes of the film starting. There's a reason why digital cinema got along fine at 2K for so long: extra detail really, really, really doesn't matter.)
deleted 3y ago
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hackerlight 3y ago
There's a big slice of the gamer market that treats games and GPUs like an interest in sports cars. The benchmarks and the visual spectacle is an interest in itself. These are subjective preferences.
causi 3y ago
A company's "give a shit" level is not confined to one area of development. If they cared about the gamer when it comes to graphics they probably cared about the gamer when it comes to gameplay.
JohnBooty 3y ago
I mean, ultimately, yeah -- the gameplay is the thing! But I think there's most definitely room for articles that nerd out on some specific technical aspect of the work and I don't think they imply that the actual "fun factor" of the game is unimportant.

lucasyvas 3y ago

I think you are right, but what you are ragging on is the meta of PC gaming. It's like an old muscle car nut trying to optimize the top speed of their car, acceleration, etc. They enjoy driving it, but the tweaking is an additive experience. It may eventually become the experience altogether. If this isn't you, consoles or mid-tier PCs are a great fit. I would say I straddle the two - if I buy great hardware, I expect to capitalize on it. But I don't overclock shit or care exactly what speed my RAM is, nor do I need the fastest SSD or top tier everything.

marcus_holmes 3y ago
yeah, it feels like a parallel hobby - it's not actually gaming, because the game doesn't matter, it's optimising the hardware. The game is just the benchmarking tool for the graphics setup.
apecat 3y ago
Due to how my head is wired, I've discovered that I enjoy gaming a lot more after I switched to console two years ago: all settings are curated (for better and worse). I'm not even sure why I didn't switch earlier. The only reasons I can think of are fear of the controller and slow load times due to mechanical HDD on last-gen systems. I don't spend time away from gameplay trying to get optimal setting. I'm just the type of neurotic that I will do that stuff even though I absolutely don't enjoy it. I can jump directly into gaming without anxiety over how my hardware is falling behind. With my PS5 being in my living room, gaming is also time away from my desk, which I, much like doing anything on a Windows PC, associate with my IT jobby job. A console is an appliance. It's like a toaster or dishwasher, except it lets me play games without any work. With PS5, I also don't have to worry about weird glitches with audio through HDMI in my living room setup, since that's how I prefer to play. And PS5 now also renders Dolby Atmos, without any glitches. These are of course all me-problems, but I thought I'd mention it here, since gaming is too much fun to be confined to the tuning-happy garage mindset of PC.

n1b0m 3y ago

I think you’d care if you were getting less than 30 fps and the game is virtually unplayable.

marcus_holmes 3y ago
I started PC gaming back in the 90's. <30 fps is perfectly playable, depending on the game. Some strategy and RP games are slideshows and play fine.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  It was for me as well, like, I was happy to be able to play Morrowind at ~15 fps at the time. But we can do better now; at the time, hardware was a limiting factor, but now if a game runs like shit, it's always the developer's fault. Recent example, Cities Skylines 2; onereason it runs like shit is that the pedestrians still get fully rendered teeth even though you're far away and can't see them. Why do they even have teeth? It's a city building sim. Or the latest Pokemon game, it looks like it could've been made 20 years ago in terms of visuals, but it runs terribly.
n8cpdx 3y ago
Some say that less than 120fps is literally unplayable. I remember when CoD 4 being 60fps on Xbox 360 was a big deal. Virtually unplayable is in the eye of the beholder.
- dawnerd 3y ago
  Those people are ridiculous. You can have high fps but inconsistent frame timing which makes games feel terrible. I think that was the bigger issue with cod.

poink 3y ago

The overwhelming majority of game reviews address the content of the games, but there are reviewers that concentrate specifically on graphics performance because the difference between a low end and high end gaming PC can easily be $3k+, and half that is in the GPU nowadays. People use articles like this to decide what to buy to get the optimal experience in games they want to play, not which games they want to play in the first place. Alan Wake 2 merits specific consideration on this front because its system requirements seemed to suggest it wouldn't even be playable on a lot of popular configurations.

kevinlou 3y ago

I absolutely love and appreciate folks that push tech boundaries in gaming, but I absolutely agree - let's not lose sight of the reason why we make and play games!

lovepronmostly 3y ago

I know plenty of "gamers" who's #1 obsession is how good the game looks to them, not how well it plays. They generally dislike games with non-photoreaslistic rendering

simondotau 3y ago

Offering a good faith alternative explanation, I would hope that the main reason many people obsess over benchmarks and performance metrics is because GPUs are damn expensive — buyers would want to know that the money they're spending has tangible benefits. I'd like to think that once someone actually loads a game in order to play it, they'll actually focus on the game. (As a parallel example, I love the idea of seeing films in 3D, 4K, HDR etc, but I rarely notice the difference within ten minutes of the film starting. There's a reason why digital cinema got along fine at 2K for so long: extra detail really, really, really doesn't matter.)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hackerlight 3y ago

There's a big slice of the gamer market that treats games and GPUs like an interest in sports cars. The benchmarks and the visual spectacle is an interest in itself. These are subjective preferences.

causi 3y ago

A company's "give a shit" level is not confined to one area of development. If they cared about the gamer when it comes to graphics they probably cared about the gamer when it comes to gameplay.

JohnBooty 3y ago

I mean, ultimately, yeah -- the gameplay is the thing! But I think there's most definitely room for articles that nerd out on some specific technical aspect of the work and I don't think they imply that the actual "fun factor" of the game is unimportant.