We spoke to Chris Roberts (creator, Star Citizen) and Jake Solomon (creative director, XCOM: Enemy Unknown) about the resurgence of the PC gaming scene and how it can still lead the industry for innovation and graphical prowess
Right at the start of the year, Microsoft held a pretty important showcase – one that focused on Windows 10 (conveniently leaving out 9), one that promised to be the only format gamers would want to use, one that seems designed specifically for our hobbyist corner of the tech market. This game-centric checklist includes updated DVR, so you can upload movies and images directly from your feed online; it included DirectX 12, graphics software that Microsoft reckons will boost some games’ performance by as much as 50%; it announced cross-platform capability (in case you wanted to play Forza with your Xbox One pals); and finally, it announced the ability to stream your Xbox One session to your mobile device or PC – targeting the Vita’s PS4 streaming directly, it seems.
Fast forward to April and May, and two pretty big things happen for PC gaming – firstly, GTA V is released, and there’s a feeding frenzy: every news feed on the internet is full of crazy physics gifs, mods instantly appear and we see whales falling from the sky, and, every now and then, we’re even treated to a couple of shots of GTA V running in full Ultra. It’s a zeitgeist, still very much underway at the time of writing. “One of my favourite strengths of PC gaming is modding, hands down,” explains Jake Solomon, creative director on XCOM: Enemy Unknown, when we broach this topic. “I love seeing how modders take a game into a different direction, or completely rebuild it. It does so much to keep a game’s community alive and vibrant after the release of a title”.
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Second, early on in May, there was this whole furore with mods on Steam – the publishing platform briefly experimented with offering paid mods for its games, something that hit a controversial peak with Skyrim. Gamers cried out, stating if they wanted to pay for mods, they’d do it themselves, through donations or crowd-sourcing. Otherwise, Steam was the villain here – monetising content it seemingly shouldn’t, going against that community spirit the PC has become known for. Modding, and the sharing of games running on insane PC settings, is basically free advertising for the publishers, and Star Citizen’s Chris Roberts sees this as one reason more and more developers are returning to the PC as a platform: “You’re seeing more original and PC first / only titles and publishers are discovering that there is a big audience that will reward you if you treat them with respect and give them games that play to the strength of the PC platform…not dumbed down ports from less powerful console platforms… which unfortunately was the norm just a few years ago.”
He’s right – think EA, Activision, Ubisoft. Between DRM issues and late releases of the PC version, these publishers muddied their name on the PC format somewhat. “Just look at how well GTA V did recently on the PC when Rockstar bothered to invest time and money in making the game shine on a PC in a way it never could on console, with 4K resolution, higher textures, more fidelity,” explains Roberts.
“It’s a refreshing change from a publisher deliberately dumbing down a PC version so the console version doesn’t look bad. With more powerful hardware, the PC offers so much more in terms of immersion, technology, gameplay and narrative experiences. In addition I think new business models like digital distribution and crowd funding have levelled the playing field for smaller studios allowing them to directly reach their audience as opposed to going through a whole bunch of middlemen.”
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It’s an interesting point Roberts ends on there – yes, you’ve got services like ID@Xbox and the refined PSN luring developers to make games for its platforms, but the PC has long been the domain of the indie dev. After all, where else are you going to develop your game in the first place? “A PC has certain advantages as a development platform,” explains Solomon, “and since digital delivery is well-established for PC games, it’s really opened up what people can create and bring to gaming. A small team can be really passionate about their project, and find a way to bring it out to a wider audience, and potentially draw in more people who haven’t traditionally considered themselves ‘gamers’ per se. And I think that’s fantastic!”
With platforms like Steam, Green Man Gaming and many more allowing direct access to developers and their games, it’s no wonder we’re seeing more young teams test their releases on open platforms like this, versus PSN or on the Xbox, where there’s always the expectation of more sales, of a bigger return. “The PC is essentially an open canvas for developers,” Roberts explains, “it’s always going to be the platform where you’ll see the most innovation. Therefore, you’ll see more original content on the PC and I think that’s the thing that is attractive to gamers. Steam, GoG and others are part of that ‘canvas’ where indies can compete with the traditional publishers and have their products delivered directly to gamers.”
But that’s only one small part of what PCs can offer – on top of a much broader depth of choice for gaming (and we’re not even going to talk about emulators here), there’s the hardware upgrades you can swap in as and when you please, never limited by the ‘sealed box’ as you are with PS4s or Xbox Ones. “There’s usually a game out there that is a real hardware monster,” Solomon tells us, “and I’m always impressed by developers who are pushing what the hardware can do. But over time those hardware specs become more and more common, as processor speeds and memory and graphics hardware increase in power, and the baseline PC gets stronger. I think that’s one of the greatest strengths of the PC as a platform.”
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“For us, using every ounce that the PC and its hardware can give provides the most immersive experience to our players,” Roberts continues. “I think you can see this drive all the way back to the first Wing Commander. The technology that we currently have provides the most immersive experience in our industry’s history. I’ve always wanted to push the envelope when it comes to technology and I think this is one of the reasons we’ve had such strong support on Star Citizen – our backers want a game that really shows off the potential of the PC as a gaming platform.”
But – despite our prolonged praise of the platform, it’s not all positive. There is, after all, a reason why the console market is still so strong… even if it is beginning to drop off somewhat. “Consoles have the advantage of affordability and usually in ease of use (pop the disc/cartridge in and go!),” explains Roberts, “although between the last generation and the current one, consoles have started to behave a lot more like a modern-day PC insofar as usability. There’s just as much day-one patching and load times on modern console games as there is on PCs.”
That’s a point we hadn’t considered as much before our conversation with Roberts, but it makes sense – we’re seeing the console and PC platforms converge, slowly, but the PC has had its entire life to deal with its problems… Problems the console has only just started to deal with (those load times Roberts mentioned have been huge stumbling blocks for both The Witcher 3 and Bloodborne on console).
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“The problem is that people have just ignored the PC for too many years,” Roberts continues. “It’s why I wanted to build Star Citizen in the first place. I was sick of playing bad ports of a console game that was based on seven-year-old tech on my top-of-the-line PC with a video card that could push ten times as many polys. I think if more people make games specifically for the PC audience I know they will be rewarded. The PC gamer has been the most loyal of all gamers.”
Roberts is right; while a lot of gamers have flipped between 360 and PS4 or PS3 and Xbox One, or even Nintendo to Sony, or vice versa, or any combination of the above, PC gamers tend to keep their rigs alive, even if neglected by games for a time while something else grabs their attention. We say this as PC gamers ourselves, as devotees to graphics card-hunting elite. This could very well be the beginning of the PC resurrection, lead in by the likes of GTA V and its mods, lead in by Star Citizen, lead in by all of the announcements from E3 this year.
“PC games are back and in a very big way!” exclaims Roberts. “Without a doubt,” concludes Solomon. “It is a great time to be a gamer and making games on PC.”
Want to know more about the history of gaming hardware? You should give the Videogame Hardware Handbook a read. Download it now.
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