Looking at: PC Ports

Master Race

Once a joke about the expensive and elitist nature, the PC Master Race has come to embrace their higher standards

I've said before that, despite primarily playing games on my PC, I have very little hatred towards consoles. One of my all time favorite games, Red Dead Redemption, is only available on consoles, and RockStar have never even spoken about a PC port. It's not just RDR, but there are dozens of games I've enjoyed that never made their way PC side, some of which I've covered on this blog like Persona 4, Metal Gear Solid 3, or Mercenaries. Hell, the next article I'm working on is a look back at the Mario franchise, and there's only one PC Mario game and it's fucking terrible.

The fact is, though, I do prefer PC as my primary gaming platform, for several reasons. The first is just convenience, as finding games to play on PC is incredibly easy. According to my depressing Steam Calculator page I have just shy of 600 games in my Steam library, and something like another 120 in my GOG library. There are other third party services too where I have some games, and never mind titles that I've acquired through... different means. PC gaming has more game available then every console combined.

The other big reason I prefer PC gaming is that, more often then not, the PC version of a game is superior to the console version. PC's have always been able to preform better then consoles because they're not restricted like consoles are. For a long time the joke was that you had to upgrade your PC every year, and while that's certainly plateaued with the life span of most components being much longer then they used to be, there really is some truth to that idea. PC's got better and stronger much faster then consoles, and by the time the fourth generation of consoles was out the PC had far surpassed them.

No where is this more evident then in the last few generations of games, when the idea of multi-platform or PC ports has become more and more common place. With direct comparison the PC version almost always comes out as superior, running faster and smoother, and often with better graphics. So why is it that, in 2015, companies still don't seem to get it.

I'm the Batman

The official statement from Rocksteady explaining why Batman AK was pulled from retailers.

The reason, I'm sure some of you have gathered, I'm writing this piece is because of the recent release of Batman: Arkham Knight, the final part in the Rocksteady Arkahm trilogy of licensed Batman games. While the Arkham games were always meant for consoles, with both previous entries and the Origins spinoff receiving a PC port after the fact, these games at least worked on PC. Arkham City had some issues with PhysX and Direct X 11, but both of these could be disabled and the game ran fine without them till they were properly patched.

For Arkham Knight, Rocksteady decided they wanted the PC version to come out at the same time as the console version. In theory, this is awesome, since PC gamers often have to wait for their version. Most of the AssCreed games have taken months, Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition took a year, and Valkyria Chronicles took six years to make its way onto Steam. So, understandably, the idea of getting to play one of the most anticipated games of the year at launch was fairly attractive to people.

Rocksteady should have made us wait.

True to their word, Batman: AK came out and it was really, really broken. Initial reports said the game was capped at only 30fps, and that was if you managed to get it to run. Many users reported that the game ran like shit, barely able to get above double digit framerates. Worse, there are images showing that the PC version of the game doesn't even look as good as it's PS4 version, despite superior hardware. Basically, the game was unplayable, with only a small number of people reporting few or no issues. Worse, it seems like Nvidia had been lying to people, changing promotional codes to no longer include DLC and speeding up footage to make the game look like it ran at 60fps.

The fallout? Overwhelmingly negative Steam reviews, massive boycotts, thousands of refunds thanks to Steam's new refund policy, and a massive blow to Rocksteady and WB Games PR. Exact numbers are difficult to come by at this time, but I'm interested to see how this affects the launch of WB's Mad Max game later this year. Batman: Arkham Knight has been pulled off Steam and other retailers pending patches, but at last check it had a user rating of 33%, placing it on the same level as 4 PM, a thirty minute long "game" about idiots doing stupid things, and RIPD, the movie licensed game that's literally a re-skin of a different mediocre game.

Steam Games with 33-34% user ratings

Any Port in a Storm

So what the hell happened? Well a few things:

The PC port team at Iron Galaxy

1) The entire PC port seems to have been farmed out to about ten people. Not that great games can't be made with less, but AK was not an indie game, it was a massive AAA title.

2) Reportedly, Iron Galaxy was given only two months to do the port. Even the COD games have over a year in development, and the worst game ever made had a development cycle of six months for one platform.

3) Nvidia. Nvidia has slowly but surely trying to create a monopoly for themselves by forcing developers to utilize their Gameworks API. The issues with this are A) Gameworks is terrible and barely works; and B) Gameworks simply DOESN'T work on AMD cards. Add to that Nvidia's recent issues with faulty graphics cards and Nvidia has been on some very thin ice recently.

4) A systemic history of failed PC ports. Despite the PC being more powerful then consoles, companies just don't seem to put that much thought into it as a gaming platform. Time and time again we see the PC version under-performing, be it be awful controls like the original 2007 port of Resident Evil 4 (which didn't have mouse controls until a fan-made mod added them) horrible optimization from both GTA IV and Saint's Row 2, or just a complete lack of understanding about the PC as a platform from an un-countable number of games.

But the past year and a half seemed to have turned a tide, with developers committing more and more to the PC as a platform. First, there's a slew of fantastic PC ports from games like Dark Souls 2, Valkyeria Chronicles, and GTA V. PC gamers proved they were willing to wait for their games, and all three games I just mentioned have sold fantastically on PC. Even better, it seemed developers were finally figuring out how to do a PC version, with GTA V, Borderlands 2, and Shadow of Mordor's exhaustive and impressive customization and proper optimization. The PC is a viable, and powerful gaming platform.

Fix what isn't Broken

So what can everyone learn from this experience? Well, developers should learn that PC gamers will not and will never settle for a broken, second rate port. They will, however, wait patiently for a proper and well made port.

Historically, when the PC version of a game sucked, PC gamers just had to suck it up. For that matter, whenever any game on PC sucked, PC gamers have had to suck it up. But thanks to Steam's new refund policy, gamers don't have to. This might single handily be the nail in the coffin for a few of the PC's less desirable problems, but chief among them is shitty PC games, be it second rate ports or just bad unplayable games. 

Whether people, or even developers, like it or not the PC is a more then viable tool for gaming. Japan has jumped on board, with countless ports to the PC of varying quality, and we're seeing games that ignored the PC come over like Metal Gear Solid 5, Gears of War, and No Man's Sky. If companies want their games to be bought and played on PC they have to learn how to do a proper port.

The big thing is graphics options. More then anything else this can make or break a good port.  I'm not saying every game needs to be Serious Sam levels of customization, but just having a list of resolutions isn't good enough. The best and worst thing about the PC is how customizable as a machine it is, meaning that hardware configurations are going to vary wildly, and you're game should accommodate that. This is also relevant to frame rates, and while the current generation of consoles continues to completely disappoint in this area, PC's are more then capable of obtaining and holding at 60fps. The simplest solution is to not cap your game, or barring that make uncapping it easy. Field of View is the same thing, make this a simple thing to edit, even if it's in an .INI file, and people will accept your game with open arms.

There are other things, like proper net codes, modding tools, and good and/or customizable control schemes. The point is, you can't half ass a PC version of a game any more, and now we see why. The issues with Batman AK are so bad that, as of this writing on 6/25/2015 has been completely removed from digital retailers on PC until it's fixed.

Cynics once said the PC gaming market was dead. If that's true, then there's a lot of angry zombies out there.

image source:
http://i.imgur.com/wscLiCX.png