and one extra post for czg. 

go map! 

Nobody wants a mouse and keyboard on their coffee table. Controllers are the way to do on consoles.

nobody isn't my name. 

"nobody isn't my name."

Good point. Another good point is that you are in the extreme minority. 

with a smaller keypad device for my left hand

People might say im crazy. Imagine if I'm still making quake maps in nine years time, under the visor of RickyT33 or somthing...

Then we'll all be crazy! 

Console games are easier to use.

press button, put in the silver thing, close hatch. Press play. Admittedly, it's not obvious which side of the disc is up, so that could be improved.

My dad plays console games. He doesn't play PC games anymore. There were too many problems with getting some of them to run.

He likes those tank and helicopter games, but has problems memorizing like 30 keys for all the little actions. A console controller has much fewer buttons. Granted the games have fewer options, too.

It's sad, but it's probably attributable to a general loss of skill, interest, attention span, and willingness to learn. Plus stress and lack of time. On the other hand, I can understand how a console game is more accessible and thus more fun (for a short while, admittedly.) And that's not bad.

It's like that with a lot of things. Many people prefer fast food over real food, even if real food is theoretically better and cooking is not only fun but also a basic human skill (we're losing it though.)

When people build a carport, they buy a kit instead of building it from scratch. They lost the skills to make proper joints and connections of wooden parts. Instead, the kit is assembled using pre-drilled metal connectors and nails.

With PCs, most older people never really learned how they work. They learned Windows, and MS Office, and Outlook. They didn't learn "PC". Among younger people, there was a time when it was cool or interesting to learn about PCs and networks. It was useful to impress girls by making their PCs work. It was necessary to play Doom multiplayer. But that time has passed. Most teenagers today are totally uncritical and expect things working out of the box, and things you can buy with money. Money = problem solver. Knowledge = tedious and time wasting.

PCs are too complicated for the majority of people. My parents can't get a cable LAN running, don't know the difference between a telephone and network cable, and need a tech support guy to set up their DSL connection. They watch TV (several hours per day), do some gardening (same), shopping or talking on the phone instead of investing time into learning how computer things work. My dad has never heard of DirectX and OpenGL. He just wants to play a car racing game now and again, so he bought a gamecube. And suddenly, Larry the cow was in control (like the Gentoo slogan goes.) I do love my parents, make no mistake, but they are pretty typical computer users.

He has a strategy/tank game (Battalion Wars) for gamecube, but almost never plays it because it has dozens of different units and slightly complicated key combos. Also the missions get pretty hard pretty soon.

I like that game, but I'm not normal. My dad likes watching me play it. Same with the car racing (NFS). My family thinks I have unreal gaming skills, but I didn't even beat those games yet. I never saw the helicopters in NFS :-/ and I lost interest in those games quickly, mainly because I couldn't edit them.

I remember playing Tony Hawk 2 long after I beat it, because I always built new skate parks and tested them.

Personally I think it's not good if companies own online platforms and distribution channels. It gives me a creepy feeling. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but I don't use battle.net or Steam. I prefer a game in a box that I can stash on my shelf. I also prefer a server run by the community in the Internet. I mistrust companies. I don't buy online much, but I use torrents occasionally (for legal things, gosh.) But I'm not normal.

I don't have a TV. Did I say I'm not normal? 

It's like that with a lot of things. Many people prefer fast food over real food, even if real food is theoretically better and cooking is not only fun but also a basic human skill (we're losing it though.)

It's far more than a theory. Fast food is, basically, poison.

With PCs, most older people never really learned how they work. They learned Windows, and MS Office, and Outlook. They didn't learn "PC". Among younger people, there was a time when it was cool or interesting to learn about PCs and networks. It was useful to impress girls by making their PCs work. It was necessary to play Doom multiplayer. But that time has passed. Most teenagers today are totally uncritical and expect things working out of the box, and things you can buy with money. Money = problem solver. Knowledge = tedious and time wasting.

That's old-fogey talk to be honest. We learned how everything worked because we HAD to. It wasn't a choice that anyone made. If you wanted to play Doom over a network you HAD to figure out how to make it happen.

It's easier nowadays and that's a good thing. The lower the barrier to entry, the more people will be playing.

They watch TV (several hours per day), do some gardening (same), shopping or talking on the phone instead of investing time into learning how computer things work. My dad has never heard of DirectX and OpenGL. He just wants to play a car racing game now and again, so he bought a gamecube. And suddenly, Larry the cow was in control (like the Gentoo slogan goes.) I do love my parents, make no mistake, but they are pretty typical computer users.

I don't know how my car works. I use it every day and have no idea how to fix it if something goes wrong. The only problem I know how to solve is - "the gas tank needs filling".

How many people here are car mechanics?

Why do we view computers as something that people should spend time learning the mechanical and low level details of? They SHOULD be able to just turn it on and have it work. That's why I switched to using Macs at home for computing and consoles for gaming. They work.

I don't have a TV. Did I say I'm not normal?

That's a shame, you're missing a lot of good shows. 

but 'no video input' means video card is dead right? 

you have to be a car mechanic if you own a russian car :)

letss discuss what can be done to make PC gaming stay afloat 

it means no signal passes to the monitor :P maybe something else died in the 'box' (does it start at all) or the connection is broken 

computer boots up, but the screen displays that message and then nothing happens. 

512M 9800GTX is better than 512M 8800GTS? 

Its is! Extra 10+ fps in crysis, better DX10 support, faster clock speeds...

Heh - get a GX2! :-) 

yeah, like 10% (or less) faster and 150$ higher price http://www.ixbt.com/video/itogi-video/0408/itogi-video-cr2-wxp-1600-pcie.html 

here, it's $20 more :) 

and I dont have vista, so dx10 is out of the picture for now. 

 

Its a fucking good card!!! I run Crysis in 1280x1024 with the dx9 very high hack, 0xAA and its pretty fast!

Everything else runs at that resolution at 60fps+ when maxed out on details.

But the 9800GTX is gonna run Crysis faster, it's more future proof and for $20 I would say it's worth it!

If you really want future proof though then get a 9800 GX2. Those things are mean! >:-\ 

there might be a slight misunderstanding, I wasn't trying to ridicule console users or computer illiterate persons.

I think we are basically saying the same thing. Notice how I said I can understand how console gaming is more accessible, and that _that_ isn't bad. I also said that the era of teenage computer mechanics passed.

:-) you're right. There. But I'm not buying a TV. I wouldn't want to pay a de facto TV tax (Germany, sigh) when I only play some console games and watch DVDs. 

Gb

Heh, OK, that's cool. Hey, sorry about getting so hyper in this thread. Some subjects push my buttons and I sometimes lose sight of the goal - mapping and having fun.

I'm not here to disrupt the community, I'm here to participate. Let me get back to my remix map. :P 

UK top 10 http://kotaku.com/391939/british-sales-charts

NPD PC chart (no numbers tho) http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/872/872243p1.html?RSSwhen2008-05-07_145500&RSSid=872243

some revenue stats from Activision report
Segment/Platform Mix
Publishing:
Console $1,683,204
Hand-held 192,557
PC 115,870
( http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=%20292694 )

~15x times... these guys have the bestselling PC title - cod4 (#1 PC game in units and dollars in the U.S. and Europe for the quarter ended December 31, 2007)

meanwhile AMD http://game.amd.com/us-en/default.aspx 

games still sell as well as they did before, it's just that there are these non-games (sims, wow, brain training) on top of that.

But since games cost more and more to make nowadays it's not feasible to continue advancing the state of the art in pc games. 

Depends what you call "normal games" but CoD4, Halo, and GoW probably fall into that category, and they all sold ridiculously well.

Games cost more and more, but sales are going up alongside that (on consoles anyways), so it slightly evens out probably.

It's not because the graphics are much better that the games are so much longer/harder to make. That's probably true on a large scale, but you can't ignore the fact that the production tools and workflows have also much improved, making content creation easier/faster. 

In Russia
#384 posted by Speeds [78.37.31.230] on 2008/05/20 12:20:49
you have to be a car mechanic if you own a russian car :)

My first car was a late 70's model Mustang. A lot of real shit came off the assembly lines of Detroit at that time, and it didn't help that I bought it when it had over a hundred thousand miles on the odometer. I would find myself getting up early in the morning working under the hood just so I could go to school. 

are my eyes lying or have you turned slightly pink?

I thought Lada was actually a reasonably reliable car because of its simplicity. Though not as reliable as modern ones.