Personal Computer Game News

[yourbeliefs]

Remember Godus, the Peter Molyneux game that was supposed to be revolutionary and was funded on Kickstarter? Well, 2+ years later there still is not a full fledged PC release (it's been released on mobile) and is still in Steam Early Access, as it has been for 517 days. Now Peter has moved onto another project and he's saying that they're not going to deliver on many of the things promised to Kickstarter backers. As you can imagine this isn't sitting well with the backers and Early Access gamers (the game now has a "Mostly Negative" rating on Steam.) It's another stern reminder that for all the good Kickstarter has done with games like Tex Murphy: Tesla Effect and Shovel Knight, there's still the good chance for messes like Broken Age, and now a basic disaster as we're seeing with Godus.

Here's the story that exposed all the issues going on with 22cans and the project.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/02/09/oh-godus-what-the-hells-going-on/

To their credit, 22cans did respond to the controversy with a video. Unfortunately, most people were not happy with what they heard..



Peter Molyneux is a legend in the gaming world, having been a major player at Bullfrog and developed classics like Populus and Syndicate. He kept his streak going with the Fable series (even though he CONSTANTLY promised things that he never delivered on) and now it's looking like whatever goodwill he had left is quickly fleeting.

 

[king3pj]

That's why I'm not a fan of the Kickstarter model. I will gladly buy games that come from Kickstarter once they have a retail price but you won't see me funding anything. There is really no incentive for doing it. It's like pre-ordering a video game but worse because there is no guarantee that you will even get the product you paid for.

I'm not against crowd funding in general I just don't like the way companies like Kickstarter do it. They are basically taking advantage of their fans to get a free 0% loan that they never have to pay back. A much for fair model would give backers stock in the product. If the game loses money they don't owe the backers anything but if it's a success like Shovel Knight those backers should get a share of the profit. Even if its just something miniscule like 0.01% these developers should pay their backers back with interest if they make a profit. Obviously the amount you give would determine how big of a cut is yours.

Only in the messed up world of crowd funding can you get your entire project paid for with outside financing, not have to pay a cent of that back, and keep 100% of the profits. It's even more messed up when established people like Molyneux do it who would have no problem getting funding from publishers or other traditional means. That completely flies in the face of the original purpose for kickstarter, which was to give the little guy with a good idea the funding to make their project.

 

[yourbeliefs]

It's even more messed up when established people like Molyneux do it who would have no problem getting funding from publishers or other traditional means.

It's not as simple as that. Don't forget that even though you can get funding and distribution from a publisher, they have a say in the final product and more than likely they're going to own the IP as well, so they could publish your game then kick you out and get another, cheaper company to take over your IP and do whatever they want with it. Kickstarter gives you total control over your IP, which is a big for many developers. Hell, you could argue that Peter has been a victim of it himself with this particular mess. Still, for all the deserved hatred that publishers get, they do still act as that "get this sh*t done" component that many developers need. Then again, as we saw with Duke Nukem Forever, sometimes the publisher is asleep at the wheel.

Regardless this is why I rarely fund games with Kickstarter or any of these crowd funding sites. There's no guarantee that what you're funding will pan out.

 

[king3pj]

It's not as simple as that. Don't forget that even though you can get funding and distribution from a publisher, they have a say in the final product and more than likely they're going to own the IP as well, so they could publish your game then kick you out and get another, cheaper company to take over your IP and do whatever they want with it. Kickstarter gives you total control over your IP, which is a big for many developers. Hell, you could argue that Peter has been a victim of it himself with this particular mess. Still, for all the deserved hatred that publishers get, they do still act as that "get this sh*t done" component that many developers need. Then again, as we saw with Duke Nukem Forever, sometimes the publisher is asleep at the wheel.

Regardless this is why I rarely fund games with Kickstarter or any of these crowd funding sites. There's no guarantee that what you're funding will pan out.

Not only that but publishers have actual business people. Kickstarter projects are sometimes handing game developers hundreds of thousands of dollars. These are often creative people who have built games before but that doesn't mean they know what to do with that amount of money. They might not know how to make a realistic budget for development costs and stick to it. There is a reason that creative media typically brings business people in to handle the financial stuff.

 

[Poke]

Man can't wait for this to come out it will be one of the best PC games in years..

 

[yourbeliefs]

DOTA 2 is Steams first game with 1 million concurrent players.
http://www.polygon.com/2015/2/15/8042171/dota-2-concurrent-users-million-steam-pc

 

[king3pj]

DOTA 2 is Steams first game with 1 million concurrent players.
http://www.polygon.com/2015/2/15/8042171/dota-2-concurrent-users-million-steam-pc

What I find surprising from this article is that League of Legends has had over 7 times that many players at once. Before reading that I thought DOTA 2 was the biggest MOBA on the market. It's always the number 1 game on Steam and I hear it mentioned on podcasts all the time. I never hear anyone say they play League. I've heard of the game enough to know what it is but I had no idea it was that huge.

 

[yourbeliefs]

What I find surprising from this article is that League of Legends has had over 7 times that many players at once. Before reading that I thought DOTA 2 was the biggest MOBA on the market. It's always the number 1 game on Steam and I hear it mentioned on podcasts all the time. I never hear anyone say they play League. I've heard of the game enough to know what it is but I had no idea it was that huge.

Interesting considering LOL is an offshoot of DOTA. Guess the MOBA scene is where it's at right now

 

[king3pj]

As I got a little farther into Far Cry 4 I started having more and more problems with my 7850. When I would get into the more hectic combat moments or if I was driving fast the game would stutter on me. I tried using the AMD Gaming Evolved app to optimize the settings for my equipment. It used a mix of high, medium, and low settings and reduced my resolution to 1600x900 (900p). This got the game running smoothly and it still looked good.

Well, as if everyone who frequents the video game section didn't already know this I'm a bit of an impulse shopper. I didn't like having to lower my resolution to get smooth gameplay. If Far Cry was the only issue I would probably just keep playing with what I have but since the console transition games are demanding more VRAM than the 2GB in my 7850. I had similar issues with Shadow of Mordor. If I'm going to continue to play modern games on PC I was going to want to upgrade for DirectX 12 support within the year anyways. Like I said before, I make sure I get a good tax refund every year for the purpose of buying myself something nice. This is a major purchase but it's still quite a bit less than I have spent in previous years. See, I'm very good at justifying purchases to myself.

I was originally leaning towards the 4GB AMD r9 290 because AMD kills Nvidia on pricing. The fact that they are transitioning to the 300 series within a month or two made me wonder if I would regret buying a 290 though. Not only that but the 970 outperforms it in FPS tests for every game I looked up. I figured that if I was going to spend $300 for a 290 I may as well spend the extra $40 and get the better card. I ended up going with an EVGA factory overclocked 4GB GTX 970 for $342. This will make me much less likely to be looking for an upgrade in 2 years again. This thing is so much more powerful than the PS4/Xbox One that I should easily be set for 4 or 5 years unless I go crazy and upgrade again. The next upgrade will be to whatever the 8 core AMD FX CPU is in a year or two. If I stick to that socket I won't have to replace my motherboard and buy another copy of windows.

The card will be here Tuesday so I'm probably done playing Far Cry 4 until I can switch back to 1080p and crank all the settings up to ultra. I've also been playing quite a bit of Smite at my desk upstairs. That computer doesn't have discrete graphics but it's nice to be able to sit at a desk for mouse and keyboard games. I'm thinking I'll probably put the 7850 in there so I can get off low settings. I was thinking about selling it but it's probably not worth a ton of money at this point and it's probably more hassle than it's worth.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Well.. if you have a graphics card to unload.....

 

[king3pj]

Well.. if you have a graphics card to unload.....

I wouldn't mind selling it but I'm not sure there is a good price to do that at. I'd like to have a GPU in my second computer for keyboard and mouse games. I just looked up my 2GB 7850 on eBay and the going rate seems to be $100. I don't think I could replace it with a better card for the second computer for $100. I'd be open to a less power hungry new card since I'm only running a 430W power supply on that machine but I tested it out tonight and it seems to be running well.

It wouldn't make sense for me to sell the 7850 for $100 and then go out and buy a weaker $100 card to replace it with. I haven't examined all the lower cost GPUs but I'm guessing I would need to spend around $150 to get a comparable or slightly better replacement card. It wouldn't make sense for you to buy it from me for $150 because the going rate for used 7850s is cheaper than that on ebay. Not only that but you can get an r9 280 that's quite a bit more powerful than the 7850 for $189 on Amazon right now. If you wanted to stay with Nvidia the 960 just came out and there are lots of models around $200. It wouldn't make sense for you to spend much on a used 7850 when you can get something that's a lot faster for $200 or less.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I was being facetious about the card. In my current financial situation I can't in good conscious spend money on a new card even if it was $50.

 

[king3pj]

I spent most of tonight tinkering with my computer. First, I installed my new GTX 970. This was pretty simple since I already pulled out my old GPU and put it in my second computer over the weekend. All I had to do was push it into the PCI-e slot and then plug the two 6 pin power cables in. Then I booted up, installed the drivers, and played about an hour of Far Cry 4 to make sure everything was working properly. I'm happy to report that I'm back to 1080p with everything maxed out and smooth framerates.

After that I pulled the case back open to clean off the old CPU thermal paste and apply a fresh coat. I wanted to overclock and make sure the temperatures stayed in the safe zone. I bought an Cooler Master EVO 212 after market CPU cooler when I first built my PC because I planned to overclock it at some point. This is one of the most recommended additions on the Tom's Hardware forums where they specialize in DIY computing. The reason it's a commonly recommended upgrade is because it's a high performance air cooler for about $35.

I did overclock right when I built it two years ago to test but since it wasn't necessary I put it back to stock speeds. Now that I have a GPU powerful enough to be bottlenecked by a CPU it was time to get it overclocked again. I have an FX 6300 6 core 3.5GHz processor. Tonight I overclocked it to 4.0GHz at stock voltage. I'm positive I could have went farther, especially if I was willing to up the voltage. Moving those 6 cores up to 4.0GHz is already a big performance change so I didn't bother trying to push it. It was completely stable and an after an hour of Prime95 testing (all 6 cores at 100% usage) my temperatures stayed under 40C the entire time. Most people running this processor are reporting temperatures that high in normal use at stock speeds with the stock cooler so I have plenty of headroom.

I may see if I can get 4.2GHz or 4.3GHz on stock voltage tomorrow. Other people at Tom's Hardware are running it up to 4.5GHz on air cooling but you have to increase the voltage and I'd rather not do that. Some people are running as high as 4.7-5.0Ghz with water cooling. The point is that the AMD FX CPUs are beastly for overclocking. The Intel i5 series is still the best choice for gamers if you have the extra room in your budget but the AMD FX series CPUs are a great bang for the buck option, especially if you plan to overclock.

With all my tinkering, I didn't have much time to play any games on my new setup. I haven't even tried a game since I overclocked my CPU. Luckily I have tomorrow off so I will have plenty of time to test it out.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Broken Age: Act 2 has finally entered beta

 

[yourbeliefs]

GTA V coming April 14 (allegedly)

http://www.rockstargames.com/newswi...istspc&utm_campaign=gtavheistspc_02242015

 

[Poke]

Star Citizen Crosses $73 Million in Funding

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-citizen-crosses-73-million-in-funding/1100-6425451/

This is going to Rock and had made more money than any other fan funded project in history..

 

[yourbeliefs]

Hotline: Miami 2 is coming on March 10

 

[Poke]

$50 Steam Link streams PC games anywhere within your house

http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/03/50-steam-link-streams-pc-games-anywhere-within-your-house/

 

[yourbeliefs]

Is Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remix coming to PC?

http://gameidealist.com/news/final-...isted-for-pc-with-release-date-and-more-info/

 

[king3pj]

Has anyone ever tried buying games from G2A.com before. I have seen their prices come up on Google shopping before but they were lower than everyone else to the point where I thought they must be selling stolen CD keys or something like that. I did some more reading up on it and apparently it's a mostly legit site. There was a highly publicized story of AC Unity codes being refused in uPlay because they turned out to be stolen. Most of what I can find online sounds positive though.

This is basically how it works. Anyone can buy a game and make a listing to sell their CD key. They are sometimes cheaper prices than you can find on normal stores because this is a global marketplace. Different countries get different sales on games and some countries just get cheaper prices than others in general.

Like eBay each seller has a percentage next to them to show their seller rating. You can choose between several for any game and see whether all of their past sales were considered legit or not. If you don't trust them even after reading their history you can purchase the shield insurance for $1 that guarantees another code or your money back if the key doesn't work.

I'm morally opposed to buying stolen keys but I have less of a problem taking advantage of a discount they offered people in a different country. I'm still not sure whether I trust all of this enough to actually buy anything from them but some of their prices are lower than anything I have seen here. The AC Unity situation makes me hesitate to spend any money their but I was just curious if anyone here has used G2A before.