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Migrating Back To PC Gaming


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Recently, I've been getting a bit of an itch to migrate back to PC gaming. The last game I really played on the PC (and actually still do...it's the only game installed on my desktop in my "office") was Quake III Arena.

 

Since that time, I moved on to the PS3, PS4, Xboxes, etc of the world. Mainly because my gaming time is a lot more limited these days and it's just convenient to be sitting in the living room, grab the controller sitting on the table next to me and I have a game up and running real quick. I can sit back and be lazy in the recliner..you know?

 

I've looked at potentially the Corsair Bulldog and Lapdog. It's supposed to be quiet enough that you can actually sit in the living room and items like the lapdog allow you to use a keyboard and mouse. Sounded good until I kept reading about the lag when using televisions and the fact that this lapdog requires you to pay $120 plus get a K65 or K70 keyboard and I have "higher" arms on the recliner which I don't know if it'd work right anyway.

 

Of course now, over the last few days, I've been seeing these crazy sale prices on Steam. Steam isn't really something I like...I prefer to have physical media....but I've been reading where you can supposedly download your games now and then back them up to a disk? Still though....11 bucks for the entire Bioshock series? Yes, I have all of them for the PS3 sitting on the shelf (2 and 3 never even opened), Very very tempting. Upgraded PC or not. :)

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Yeah those Steam sales are great. 10 minutes ago I got the new DOOM for $36 and System Shock and Deus Ex for only $1 a piece. Can't go wrong there! PCs are the only platform that I regularly buy digital games for. There's really not much of an option anymore anyways.

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You don't need a beast PC to enjoy a lot of games out there. I have a 5 year old video card and a 1st gen i7 and can run Dragon Age Inquisition on higher settings without any issue. Its pretty remarkable.

 

Go with GOG if you want to keep everything yourself. Steam does have a lot of indie games that once downloaded you can just copy the game folder off and run it somewhere else. Mostly indie games without installers.

 

I have to say though, its getting to the point where after I download and try the game.... if I'm not going to play it right away, I delete the game and then mark it to play at a later date. Saves me a lot of hard drive space.

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If I try a game and decide I'm not going to play it right away I delete it and immediately request a Steam refund because deciding I'm not going to play it "right away" means I'll probably never play it. Valve hasn't turned me down since I'm always well under 2 hours and 2 weeks.

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GOG takes returns too (they started it) and they recently link up with your steam account so you can grab some titles you already own on Steam. Good time to be a PC gamer.

 

There's some people out there that box games for you if you want physical copies, indiebox I think they are called.

 

Also: http://www.steamgamecovers.com/

 

Make your own boxes.

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on steam you need to connect to download and install the game. After that if you start steam without a connection it starts in offline mode and lets you play the games. Unless, of course, if the game itself has its own always online DRM. That exists too. But mostly you just start in offline mode and play as normal.

 

I am a GOG guy now. Unless it's a super incredible game, or a completely outrageous price I don't buy on steam anymore. That means I buy on steam all the time, because there are outrageous prices and great games all the time there....

 

The worse part of PC gaming is that instead of never touching half your games, you will never touch even 1/10 of your games. But you'll keep buying, cause damn, for a buck? gimme more.

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The one thing I really like about Steam (aside form it being cheap) is that when you install a new/second PC it's trivial to get a few games installed on it.

There are some games I wouldn't play on my main PC, but that are perfect for a small tablet PC to use during travel.

Edited by Newsdee
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wife and i are getting back into pc gaming i haven't played much because my hp firebird is getting long in the tooth being built in 2009 we built a pretty nice rig using amd and asus parts but she kinda got carried away dropping nearly 1500 on it water cooled huge case and power supply some of it was over kill anyway that new 200 dollar radeon 480 card is a great choice and will be going in our next build for my own personal machine since i doubt we can share this one long

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  • 2 weeks later...

Great article. The conclusion:

 

"Sadly, most players will never make the switch because they rightly assume that it's too much of a headache. I can tell you with some authority, it is."

 

If only you could buy a PC already built with windows installed, it would be so much easier. And if old or entry level PCs also could play fun games, it would actually make PC gaming accessible. But that's nowhere to be seen, so only if you're willing to spend 2k dollars on a system and build it with your own hands could you ever play PC games.

 

Stay away from this nightmare. Just buy a console. They're cheap, never break, don't have anc technical issues, and are always on the very top of the state of the art tech.

 

But ultimately he's right. PC gaming is too hard. He spend over twice the money he needed, and seems to have had a ton of trouble. I do agree with one thing: PC gaming right now is for people who think knowing hardware, software and building a system yourself is fun. If that's a chore for you, just get a console and deal with what it offers.

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If you're from the smartphone and console crowd and gaming is your only motivator to get a PC. Well.. then.. it won't be easy. It's still going to take a genuine interest in the stuff in the box to make it seem easy.

 

I thank Apple and their incredibly well written manuals. Buying an Apple II was like getting a free computer-science course, or maybe you were buying the course and getting a free Apple II? Either way the Apple II taught me plenty of still-useful-today concepts than enable one to assemble a PC and get it going.

 

Before I was age 12 I knew how to pop the top on my Apple II and:

1- remove and insert expansion cards! Even the ones with the strap-ons

2- connect and disconnect the power supply

3- upgrade the memory

4- upgrade for lower-case

5- wire up a sync mod

6- configure dip switches and jumpers

7- adjust motor speed on the disk drive

8- mod the disk drive for no write-protect detection

9- pull out chips and put them back in

10- wire up 2 modems with a 9v battery so they would connect like a serial cable

11- wire up a real serial cable

12- upgrade my printer with a buffer

13- modify BBS software and run an AE line

14- connect stuff to the joystick and game i/o socket

15- install a board for keyboard type ahead buffer and macros

16- install a clock

17- set up the slot saver configuration for the Apple Cat II modem

18- modify MicroModem II firmware for 450 baud operation

19- set up and configure the Mountain Hardware Music system

20- get 2 ramdisks operational

21- format and partition a hard disk

22- crack and copy gamez and wArEz

23- deciding and planning what expansion cards I wanted

24- re-ink my printer ribbon with WD40

25- program in BASIC and 6502 Assembler

26- get 80 columns going

27- diagnose and replace a faulty memory chip

28- backup my important shit

29- learn how databases, spreadsheets, and word processing worked

30- learn how hardware-software-firmware fit in the scheme of things

31- interface analog electronics to digital circuitry

32- program a Lunar Lander game with graphics

33- complete any mission in A2-FS1 or A2-FS2

34- know the difference between smart and dumb peripherals and terminals

..and a whole helluva lot more stuff!

 

And while the actions to carry out the specific tasks listed above are pretty much useless in this day and age, the concepts and ways of thinking required to do so are most definitely not.

 

Today's "raised on a smartphone" kids are missing out. And it shows. Ain't bragging, just saying.

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I don't get why people think you need to drop a ton of cash to play PC games. They also tend to think that the computer is only a game system, when it can do a ton of things. It's never been easier to be a PC gamer.

 

However, like it was mentioned about cell phone gamers, the smartphone can do the most common tasks of the modern user. It's almost replaced the PC in regards to basic tasks.

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I know several flatulent families that use smartphones and tablets exclusively. They ditched the PC completely 100%. And I can see why. The PC is rather clunky compared to slick looking smartphones

 

As far as gaming goes. You can spend thousands (like any other hobby) getting into the rarefied heights of achieving that last 5% in performance. Or get a rather pedestrian low-cost system from a year or two ago and get yourself 90% of the way there.

 

PC Gamers are always susceptible to overspending for that last 5msec lag or 5FPS. They always will be.

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I don't get why people think you need to drop a ton of cash to play PC games. They also tend to think that the computer is only a game system, when it can do a ton of things. It's never been easier to be a PC gamer.

 

However, like it was mentioned about cell phone gamers, the smartphone can do the most common tasks of the modern user. It's almost replaced the PC in regards to basic tasks.

What I personally can't understand is why people chose to use a smartphone at home to type messages and navigate the internet instead of using a PC that's just so much more ergonomic and eficient at those things. But if you only tweet and post emojis on facebook I guess it doesn't really matter.

 

I am super excited about the new graphics cards out there, I run a GTX 750ti, and my card is "outdated". And yet, I can't justify a new purchase, cause there is no game out there that I want to play and can't run at playable settings. So I'll wait, and not buy any cards yet, untill there's something that requires more power.

 

Of course, if I wanted to play everything at 1080p with ultra settings and 60fps I would already have upgraded. But I don't understand this double standart. Consoles don't run the games at ultra, often they don#t even run at 1080p, and more often than not they run at 30fps with framerate drops. So why do you need a billion FPS at 4K and ultra settings on PC? Of course it's expensive if your expectations are completely overblown.

 

And to finish off: The best PC games don't even require much power at all. So why spend that much money just to buy the most mediocre titles at full eyecandy?

 

To me that's all ignorance. Ignorance spread by the dumb "pc master race" kids who want to compare their e-penis instead of just having fun playing games.

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What I personally can't understand is why people chose to use a smartphone at home to type messages and navigate the internet instead of using a PC that's just so much more ergonomic and eficient at those things. But if you only tweet and post emojis on facebook I guess it doesn't really matter.

 

PC = Computer = Complexity.

People are afraid to do anything but tap icons to open apps. Anything more and the perception is something will break.

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PC = Computer = Complexity.

People are afraid to do anything but tap icons to open apps. Anything more and the perception is something will break.

On top of that-convenience. A smartphone user has their phone on or near them most of the time as it's their primary method of communication with the outside world. Phone, email, facebook, forums, twitter along with Netflix, Youtube, games, etc. all accessable from a device that fits in your pocket.

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PC = Computer = Complexity.

People are afraid to do anything but tap icons to open apps. Anything more and the perception is something will break.

 

My mother-in-law and my father are technology challenged but still prefer to use a real computer, even for things that could be done on a tablet or smart phone these days. So that could be an over-generalization or maybe they are just used to a more conventional computer and don't want to change.

 

If I had the time, I probably would tinker with building a sensible PC for gaming. When I was younger, I have many of the things on Keatah's list covered. Of course, that was years ago, but it's not like you lose the basic principals. My son plans to build his own rig, so I may help there, but I am not in a stage of my life where I have the chance to mess around too much. So, yes... it is easier to just use a console even though the graphics won't be up to par to even a mid range setup. Maybe I will have more time when the kids are out of the house, but most of my spare time is coaching and refereeing youth soccer.

 

So I don't think there is anything wrong with one decides to game on.

 

Tablets and direct input do have their place. I can write notes and make practice lesson plans on a tablet, and not have piles of 3-ring binders like I used to have. I sure as hell would not want to write a manuscript on a tablet though.

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I think they all have their place. Console is great to have on the living room to play with kids and/or guests, or to boot up a game without much hassle.

 

PC are better for more general tasks, sungle player, and those games where graphics matter (which really aren't that many as long as you limit yourself to 1080p and 60fps). Once you start building a Steam library you find you can share games easily across machines.

 

For those confused about building a PC, there are complete gaming machines that start to appear with decent performance like the Asus G20. They are more expensive but that's the price of convenience.

Edited by Newsdee
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  • 4 weeks later...

Agreed on GOG > Steam, especially for offline gaming.

I didn't know about the option to link to your steam account I'll have to look into that.

Usually, if I see a game of interest on Steam, I'll check GOG first to see if they have it also. If it's a sale item, many times the price is comparable so why not get the GOG version?

The only sorta downside to GOG is that if there are steam trading cards / achievements that you wanna tell all your friends about, that bit is lost. I do like the trading cards for the occasional smattering of extra artwork, but it's not a gotta have thing.

 

Hex.

[ Wishes I had the time and skill to play like I used to... ]

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