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Sure - I have an Xbox gamepad, which works with pretty much everything - though I avoid using it unless I absolutely have to. Things like Super Meat Boy are pretty tough to play on a keyboard.
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We've got something even better than that coming soon.
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Sure, but it's hardly a big deal. All publishers would absolutely love to not have to pay 20-30% of the price of their sale to an online retailer like Steam. Blizzard, for example, already does this. So it's really just a matter of them being able to pull it off in a way that's worth it to them - the increased money coming in from not having to Steam has to offset the cost of losing sales from not putting the game in front of every Steam user.
I don't see this as "segregating the PC community," though, any more than having the ability to buy a game from Walmart or BestBuy segregates the PC community. If you buy Battlefield 3, you can just install it and add it to your Steam list, and then there's virtually no difference to you where it came from. The biggest hassle involved is having to install Origin, and, as someone with Origin installed right now, I can tell you that its presence is not bothering me in the slightest. -
Sure. Epic recently hinted they were considering another Unreal game (http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/25/epic-on-unreal-series-we-havent-been-giving-it-the-attention-it-deserves/), for example. With free-to-play games taking off, it's only a matter of time before someone builds an arena shooter with microtransactions along the same lines of the League of Legends model - selling access to skins, maps, etc (without selling power-up items and unbalancing it).
id, though, I think is sick of making the same kind of shooter over and over. Rage is very different from anything they've done previously, and I'd expect them to do something different with Doom 4 - something more than Doom 3 with better graphics. -
It's still here, though I haven't been pimping it much lately, so questions have dropped off. Ask a question and I'll probably answer it!
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On and off. I haven't watched any in the past month, but I'm sure I'll see something interesting linked sooner or later and jump in.
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Going all the way back to schoolin': I joined the newspaper staff in high school and college as quickly as I could, and majored in American Literature. I hated literary analysis - that's some major pretentious bullshit right there - but at least it kept me writing often.
Post-college I got an internship at a local weekly newspaper, which I worked for five months. I did the police blotter, the "man on the street" interviews, and covered such exciting events as city hall meetings, school board meetings, and a couple of suicides. Most of it was pretty dull, but I did get to go to the Mountain View, CA NASA campus to cover some of the Mars lander stuff.
Of course, the whole time I was browsing Craigslist for jobs. I applied for an associate editor job at IGN, and though I didn't get it, they offered me the opportunity to write (unpaid) freelance reviews. Having nothing better to do and liking free games, I did a couple of those and thus had something to submit as a writing sample when the PC Gamer associate editor job came along (I also wrote a couple of extra reviews for that).
So if you're looking for specific tips as to how to get started, I'd suggest writing reviews on your own for a bit first. For research, read over some reviews by writers that you enjoy reading, and ask yourself *why* you enjoy them, and look at how they're giving you useful information about the game in question in an entertaining way. Once you've got some writing samples, submit them to a few publications and ask for freelance work. If what you've written is any good, chances are someone will be willing to give you a shot, as quality freelance writers are tough to come by. Bonus points if you can become something of an expert in certain genres, such as RPGs or strategy games. -
This one's getting asked a lot. Sadly, Rockstar isn't big on sharing, and going through their trash or drugging one of their knowledgeable employees, as some have suggested, technically crosses the line between "investigative reporting" and "industrial espionage."
I'm starting to give up hope that RDR will ever make it over to the PC. This goes back to my earlier explanation of why publishers do things: I suspect that GTA IV didn't sell well on PC (might've had something to do with the super-late release and crappy optimization) and Rockstar may no longer see the PC as worth the porting effort. Same goes for LA Noire.
Max Payne 3, however, is announced as a PC game. I'm not sure why that is, but it could be that Max Payne 2 sold strongly enough on the PC that Take Two sees it as a viable PC franchise. -
Mass Effect made a poor first impression. The opening level didn't do a very good job of sucking me into the universe, and it wasn't until I got to the Citadel that it grabbed me and turned awesome.
For the opposite, it'd be Spore. The first couple of stages were charming, and really made me want to develop my critters into something more complex and interesting. And then...the rest of the game happened. It never became the complex and surprising game I wanted it to be, only a simplistic gallery for interesting but useless creations. -
Of course I do. Gamers are like, totally awesome.
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Er...outside of the box in the office, where we have only one or two copies of every disc (there may be a few missing ones)...I'd say eBay.
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Yes, I can absolutely honestly say that. I'm not a big brand loyalty guy - a developer is only as good as its last game in my eyes. Actually, being a big developer with virtually limitless resources and following up an amazing and unique original only works against Valve in this context - expectations were sky-high. Hell, if a first-time developer had come out of left field with a game like Portal 2, that would've been even more impressive.
I'm not sure what flaws you might be referring to beyond what I pointed out in the review, except maybe for the loading screens between levels. But loading screens between levels don't bother me, because...well...they're between levels. If you'd like to be more specific, I'm all ears. -
This particular conspiracy theory always makes me scratch my head. Why would publishers lie about a game not selling well when it actually sold well and made them lots of money, and then use that lie as an excuse to not make more games that would sell well and make them more money?
Remember, game publishers exist for one reason and one reason only: to make money. If something makes them money, they WILL do more of that thing. Conversely, if something does not make them money, they will do less of that thing. Every time you wonder why a publisher does something, the answer is almost always "Because of money."
Also, the NPD isn't secretive about game sales - the NPD exists entirely to reveal that information. It's publishers that are secretive about their sales numbers. From their perspective, any information they share on whether or not a certain type of game did well or did poorly is only helping their competitors, so they have no incentive to share it. And Valve won't tell anyone how much money they make off of Steam because if they did, a bunch more people might start competing with them to get a piece of it. -
I originally wrote "Well, yes and no" but then was forced to admit that I'm a "Yes." I'm willing to put up with some crap because I like a franchise - for instance, I played through Star Trek: Legacy not once, but twice (the second time was because I couldn't believe it could be as disappointing as I remembered it). Likewise, I played both Operation Anchorage and Mothership Zeta because I like Fallout 3.
But I have my limits. Bad Star Wars games, no. I've been burned too hard too often. -
There are no install limits, you're not being forced to activate online, you don't even have to have a disc in the drive...and that's not DRM-free enough?
All CDP is trying to do here is restrict *ongoing support* to paying customers. Considering that "registration" amounts to you creating a fake email address, it doesn't seem like too much to ask. -
It's fair to say that there aren't a whole lot of really system-crushing games anymore. There's definitely been a shift in the past six or seven years where putting out a game that requires cutting-edge hardware to look good has gone from a mark of prestige to suicidal stupidity - after all, the cost of making such a game has gone way up, and limiting the people who would buy your game to the rich and/or foolish people that buy $600 GPUs every year reduces the probability of turning a profit (or breaking even) to the point where you might as well buy a couple of million lotto tickets with that same money.
But I certainly wouldn't say there's no point to upgrading. Even with most cross-platform games, you're going to get some benefit from having a powerful PC. Higher resolutions, view distances and LOD, maxed-out AA and AF, high-rez textures, DX11 effects, etc.
Specific games off the top of my head: Rage and Skyrim, -
Can't you see all this arguing is tearing this family apart?!?!
But it's very possible. We're adding all kinds of fun stuff to the site all the time. -
It's doing very well. I have no idea how much money it makes, but there are a lot of high-fives going around.
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One of the perks of being EIC is that you get final say on everything that goes into the magazine. So technically Logan does.
But there's not a whole lot of "final saying" going on in reviews at PCG. If there's something in a review someone doesn't like, there's a conversation, and eventually a compromise. For example, if a writer turns in a review and I feel that there's a problem (eg the text says the game sucks but the score says it's pretty good) I'll go back to the writer and ask what he was smoking. I'll ask him which actually reflects how he feels about the game, and then ask him to change either the score or the text to match that.
I don't think that there have been more than one or two occasions in my years as Reviews Editor when an EIC has kicked a review back to me to change a score, and no one has ever made an arbitrary change without bringing me and the writer in. -
I've just pictured Deus Ex: Human-Cyborg Relations, starring C-3PO. And I want to play it.
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Dan Stapleton’s Bio
I'm Reviews Editor at PC Gamer. That involves playing lots of games, writing lots of words, and being a gigantic nerd.
PS - If you leave your name with your question, we might print it in the magazine. Please do!
