Games
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
Authorized Regular Threads
Related communities
PM a mod to add your own
Video games
Generic
- !gaming@Lemmy.world: Our sister community, focused on PC and console gaming. Meme are allowed.
- !photomode@feddit.uk: For all your screenshots needs, to share your love for games graphics.
- !vgmusic@lemmy.world: A community to share your love for video games music
Help and suggestions
By platform
By type
- !AutomationGames@lemmy.zip
- !Incremental_Games@incremental.social
- !LifeSimulation@lemmy.world
- !CityBuilders@sh.itjust.works
- !CozyGames@Lemmy.world
- !CRPG@lemmy.world
- !OtomeGames@ani.social
- !Shmups@lemmus.org
- !VisualNovels@ani.social
By games
- !Baldurs_Gate_3@lemmy.world
- !Cities_Skylines@lemmy.world
- !CassetteBeasts@Lemmy.world
- !Fallout@lemmy.world
- !FinalFantasyXIV@lemmy.world
- !Minecraft@Lemmy.world
- !NoMansSky@lemmy.world
- !Palia@Lemmy.world
- !Pokemon@lemm.ee
- !Skyrim@lemmy.world
- !StardewValley@lemm.ee
- !Subnautica2@Lemmy.world
- !WorkersAndResources@lemmy.world
Language specific
- !JeuxVideo@jlai.lu: French
view the rest of the comments
Are we just ignoring all of the PC-exclusive games PS5 players will never get to play? And the games that were PC-exclusive until their success prompted a console port? The PC catalog dwarfs the PS5 catalog by hundreds of modern titles, and thousands if you count retro games. Steam (just one of the PC software distribution platforms) added over 14,000 games in the last year and there are fewer than 3,500 PS5 games in total. I can tell you that "targeting integrated graphics and lowest-common-denominator CPUs" has never really been a priority in the PC space; you can see this trend even before consoles like the SNES existed.
A lot of PCs couldn't do Crisis. It was a hardware seller because a lot of people significantly upgraded just to play it. Games in the 2000s looked like that because highly-detailed 3D polygonal models used too many resources (mostly CPU at the time). It made more sense, for developer and user, to limit the polygon count for everyone's sake.
Even in the modern day, World of Warcraft is an MMO and the textures and other assets are deliberately less detailed to optimize performance, so this isn't really a fair comparison and doesn't really demonstrate that consoles prop up the PC market (especially since WoW wasn't available for consoles during the peak of its success and was also a hardware seller due to that exclusivity). It's like comparing Plants vs. Zombies and Half-Life 2, or Destiny and Alien: Isolation.
A lot of PCs can't do a lot of games. That is precisely the point.
If you look at the Steam hardware survey at any given point in time, mass market GPUs are typically mid-range parts two to three generations old. And even then, those are still the most popular small fractions of a very fragmented market.
The average PC is an old-ass laptop used by a broke-ass student. Presumably that still is a factor on why CounterStrike, of all things, is Steam's biggest game. It sure was a factor on why WoW or The Sims were persistent PC hits despite looking way below the expectations of contemporary PC hardware.
The beginning of competent console ports in the Xbox 360 era revolutionized that. Suddenly there was a standard PC controller that had parity to mainstream consoles and a close-enough architecture running games on a reliably stable hardware. Suddenly you didn't need to target PC games solely to the minimum common denominator PC, the minimum common denominator was a console that was somewhat above average compared to low-end PCs.
In that scenario you can just let people with high-end hardware crank up resolution, framerate and easily scalable options while allowing for some downward scaling as well. And if that cuts off some integrated graphics on old laptops... well, consoles will more than make up the slack.
Sure, there are PC exclusives because they rely on PC-specific controls or are trying to do some tech-demoy stuff or because they're tiny indies with no money for ports or licensing fees, or because they're made in a region where consoles aren't popular or supported or commercially viable.
But the mainstream segment of gaming we're discussing here? Consoles made the PC as a competitive, platform-agnostic gaming machine.
It's because of the high percentage of players from developing countries, countries where high-end electronics aren't accessible, or countries with weak economies. Russia, Brazil, etc.
When Sims 4 came out, people upgraded. They cancelled Sims 5 so Sims 4 remains, with largely the same specs. That's not something consoles can change. WoW is similar, which is why there's no WoW for PS5.
That's because Microsoft owns Windows and Xbox, not because Xbox revolutionized gaming. They had the ownership of 2 platforms with significant lock-in. It's like if Nintendo owned both the Switch and PlayStation (which they almost did lol).
So there are 14,000 titles new to Steam in the last year and your conclusion is that they are all either keyboard-only, tech demos, indies, or from a poor nation? Wild. You just said that the Xbox controller opened up a new world over 10 years ago and yet you also believe that these new games just aren't usable with a controller?
You are all over the place here. I'm not doing quotes, either, it's an obnoxious way to argue online.
In no particular order: No, it's not just developing countries on older hardware (although there ARE significant markets where high end hardware is less popular, and they matter). Microsoft doesn't own Windows, Valve owns Windows, at least on gaming, as evidenced by the long string of failed attempts from Microsoft to establish their own store on Windows PCs. The standard controller was part of that, but it wasn't all of it. And yes, most of the 14000 titles on PC are tiny indies that sold next to zero (or actually zero) copies.
Valve runs steam as a gig economy app, there are very few guardrails and instead very strong algorithmic discoverability management tools. Steam has shovelware for the same reason Google Play has shovelware, Steam is just WAY better at surfacing things specifically to gamers.
Incidentally, most of these new games support controllers because the newly standardized Xinput just works. Valve has a whole extra controller translation layer because everything else kinda doesn't and they wanted full compatibility, not just Xbox compatibility because the blood feud between Gaben and Microsoft will never end, I suppose. None of that changes that it was the advent of XInput and Xbox 360 controller compatibility that unlocked direct ports, along with consoles gradually becoming standardized PCs.
I was talking about Counter Strike specifically, because you used it as an example.
They literally do. Look it up. Windows is developed and maintained by Microsoft. They own all trademarks and intellectual property related to Windows.
I never disputed this, but you are arguing that PC games are all shit for some reason or another unless they're ported either from or to PS5.
Newly standardized? Xinput was created in 2005. It has "just worked" for ages, because it is officially supported by Microsoft through Windows. Because they own Xbox, Xinput, and Windows.
So that they can support other controllers that aren't Xbox...
You're talking out of your ass here and not even paying attention to context which you yourself brought up. Not to mention you aren't even aware of why Xbox had such stellar support (Microsoft is one of the largest tech companies in the world and own the PC OS with the largest market share by a longshot) and how that support translated to the modern rise of PC gaming.
Wait, that's what you think you're arguing against?
No wonder this conversation is so loopy, then.
The fact that consoles are a huge asset for PC gaming doesn't mean, and is nowhere near the same as, saying that "PC games are shit unless ported directly from the PS5". Your straw man is not just subtly misrepresenting my point, it's having some entirely unrelated conversation in a different room with a different person.
Consoles get to be a massive asset for PC games without... well, whatever that statement is supposed to imply. PC games benefit a LOT from having a set target for mainstream hardware be a fixed point for five to ten years. They benefitted strongly from access to a large volume of affordable, standardized, compatible controllers (these days things have been that way long enough that the standards aren't going anywhere, but it was a massive deal in 2005, which is the period we're talking about, despite your surprise that we're talking about it). And yes, the target for PC-only gaming today would be both different and significantly less pleasant without those things. The shift to a more PC-centric market already made it so that ten-year-old games dominate the landscape.
It's not just CounterStrike. It's Fortnite, Overwatch, GTA 5, Minecraft, Roblox. PC gaming's characteristics encourage those types of forever games targeting widely accessible hardware. Consoles existing in parallel open the door to additional viability for AAA releases targeting higher end specs. Not that you wouldn't get any of those without consoles, but for the past 20 years consoles have been a big reason that's a whole genre instead a one-in-a-generation thing you'd get when an engine company wanted to flex its tech muscle for potential engine licensors and accidentally made a game in the process.