Oh really? Why are there virtually no indie and no open source games that rank anywhere near the best of all time, then?

You're starting to catch on - my computer can do a lot of things consoles can't. IMHO, that pretty much justifies the higher price.



Well, when you start installing digital cameras, printers, memory sticks, scanners, and other devices on your Xbox, we can discuss drivers.

Although most stuff worked just fine with the generic drivers anyways.



Nope. The last few games I bought through either Stardock Central or through Steam, and I'm considering not buying any more games on a disk.

All I have to do is purchase it. It downloads and installs automatically, and when it's done I just have to click to start it. No problems at all.



I suggest contacting Stardock. Sounds like you changed the email address at one time, and SDC doesn't seem to handle that very well at the moment. I think they improved that in Impulse, though.

On whose list?

Do you even know about Indie and Open Source games? Rogue was a small project, it has its own genre. Open Source? It's a matter of opinion, but I can play tens of thousands of good Open Source games that make the commercial games feel like rip-offs.

That's not the point. The point is that you can get a $400 computer and a $300 console, or you can get a $700 gaming PC.



I was talking about graphics drivers.



Now, let's assume that the Console gaming experience were equal to the StarDock/Steam-only gaming experience. That is, all SD/Steam games work instantly and nearly-flawlessly at the moment of release, just like Console games. I don't buy this for a second, but we're pretending.

If you limit yourself to only purchasing what comes out on those two PC platforms, you've basically limited your possible game consumption to a few genres and only a few games in those genres.

StarCraft II will not be coming out on Steam or SD Central. Ever. Neither will the next Total War, or any number of other excellent games. Now yes, Steam is a popular distribution channel. But it isn't all of PC gaming.

In short, you must limit yourself to only buying from certain companies or channels in order to enjoy the same experience you get with every console game.



There are innumerable bugs in Twilight of the Arnor; so many that I have refrained from purchasing it until I see a patch that fixes most of them. I was there for the initial release of GC2 as well, and to call it a beta release would be a statement of undeniable truth.

For a more casual player than myself, giving up on the game within the first few days of its release would not have been unreasonable. Few are the console games that shipped in a similar buggy state. Console games may be getting patches now, but at least the games (by and large) function. They have been vetted by someone outside the developer (unless the game is made by Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo) and pass basic tests of not crashing if left running for a day and UI qualifications.



A genre so niche and irrelevant that nobody who plays the games realizes just how fundamentally disfunctional the genre's core root gameplay is.

I don't mind paying a premium to get better graphics, more customization, less manufacturer lock-in, better multiplayer, and mod support, as well as faster speed on all the regular computing tasks than some shitty $400 Dell.

I don't buy the "you're limiting yourself to only a few genres" argument either - not only does Steam have a ton of different genres, the games that I've downloaded on Steam lend themselves to so much playability that it doesn't matter. I have been playing Team Fortress 2 since Nov 2007. Seven months playing a quality MP game. Something like that matters to me - SP only games are great but I'd rather have a game like this than a variety of mediocre 30 hour titles.

So D&D has fundamentally disfunctional gameplay? Have you ever played a roguelike with a graphics frontend?

I guss I don't either, really.

Big whoop. You really only need to do it once, and it's more the manufacturers' fault than it is the PC itself. I'm sure it could easily be put into Windows Update if nVidia or ATI wanted to.



You mean the console games that had to sometimes be re-released with new disks in the past, or now that consoles have internet access, have patches released online? Don't fool yourself. I'm not really buying the "bug" argument anymore.



Buy it or not, I just installed and ran TrackMania using Steam flawlessly.



Have you seen Steam's selection recently?



That depends on whether Valve can make a deal with Blizzard. They're already made deals with other big name publishers, including some of their largest competitors. It's not as far fetched as it sounds.



All of the previous Total Wars are on Steam. Don't be so sure!

Valve has already made deals with 2K Games, Activision, Atari, Eidos Interactive, Epic Games, Inc, id Software, Majesco, PopCap Games, Inc., Rockstar games, SEGA, Strategy First, THQ, and Ubisoft. You will find a lot of top sellers from major publishers on that list.



Bull. I've tried strategy games on a console, and the experience is nothing like a keyboard and mouse. I'd say that consoles lend themselves to a limited number of genres. In addition, try finding a good MMORPG on a console. In addition, Steam's selection is already very large and getting larger almost daily. I'm not buying your argument.

Okay, maybe we're not quite there yet, but the online markets for PC games are rapidly approaching the point where your arguments are going to be useless. Enjoy having the "upper hand" while it lasts.

By the way, Blizzard just started their own digital download service, and I wouldn't be surprised if StarCraft II and later, World of Starcraft () become available for purchase&download through that.

Almost everybody's. And frankly, I suspect the only reason there are such games on *anybody's* list is because they're biased (most gamers are not...they do not care about the game's roots)



A genre almost nobody plays, and most people would hate (I'm *not* one of them) Incidentally, whilst I like the roguelike concept in theory, all the ones I've played, which is pretty much all of the supposedly best ones, have been quite poor. That's understandable given these things are produced by hobbyists in their spare time.



But are these games *better*? That, too, is a matter of opinion, but frankly I have a very hard time believing your opinion is based on anything other than your bias. It is certainly not a commonly shared opinion, which makes your claim that *quality* suffers when the intent is profit a pretty stupid one.

But quality does suffer when the intent is profit. Profit makes companies rush products, cut stuff out, curb designer creativity and so on. Its not a coincidence that nowadays we get excellent looking titles with little or no original content (notable exceptions serve to confirm the rule) while in the olden days most games were developed on a very small budget compared to today and yet managed to be more innovative and imaginative that modern games.

Why is that? Well, new stuff is risky. When you have a small budget and your office is really a friend's garage, you have little to lose and everything to gain by "going for the vision".
But when you have a huge corporation, studios which employ hundreds of people and budgets which go into millions of dollars, then suddenly its not so easy to chance it all on a risky, never-tried-before idea. Most big game companies do not have gamers and designers on the board, but investors, people more versed and interested in making money than good games.
In fact, it has allmost become a rule of thumb that whenever a good game studio is acquired by a big company, the quality of their products, of their relationship with their gamer fan base and the scope of their vision expressed in their titles declines allmost immediately.
It's not that they got lobotomized. They just lost the say in how things are to be.
It must suck to be a designer then.

Bottom line is, and the one somehow often overlooked: quality is expressed in more ways than just visual and audio excellence. A good story, new and interesting gameplay mechanics and other such "paraphenalia" are in fact what differentiates a title we pick up, play once and forget and a title which we fondly remember and come back to from time to time.

Thank you, erathoniel.

I needed a good laugh.

Popularity or ratings? How would you define "Indie?" Have you considered many teams that started as indie have become commercial? (for example, Counterstrike and Portal)

I dunno, I'm seeing more small companies start to get more attention - Audiosurf, TrackMania, Gish, and some games using GarageGames' Torque engine have seen some attention. It does seem to be growing, and if the large companies start moving completely out of the PC market I think you're going to see Indie games start to explode with activity and fill the hole that the commercial games left. With the online distribution systems now available, it's a lot easier to push smaller games out to a large audience. Both Steam and SDC have a number of Indie games on them.

No, many people who are true hardcore gamers enjoy freeware or open source games. I know several people who I've handed shareware trials or freeware/open source games to enjoy them to the point where they play them almost exclusively.

Excuse me, but some freeware games are made by people who are professionals in the field. The roguelike concept is perfect, but you have to be willing to work with what's available. These things were made to run on console-interfaces, not GUI's, so they've got fairly simple graphics, but their gameplay is extremely deep. Ever played GearHead? Try it (1 is better than 2 right now).

No, I do find that games made for profit mainly suffer in quality a lot. For instance, most every movie game has very poor systems and gameplay presentation. However, free games do have a lack of quality control, but there are several free games that people will swear by and take over a commercial game. Granted, the commercial games have more resources, but it's easy enough to compare the experiences one would have with most of the commercial games on the market to a free or open source game.