How To Ruin Your Game's PC Port

An anonymous reader writes "An article at Ars goes through some of the biggest sins game publishers commit when porting a console game to the PC. At the top of the list, predictably, are annoying DRM and inconvenient game settings. From the article: 'PC gamers like to play with their mouse settings, adjust the amount of detail in the characters or environment, and change the audio mix between the music and the sound effects. We want to adjust the resolution, the aspect ratio, and even the field of view settings. The more options given to PC gamers, the better. While some engines support more options than others, there is a minimum amount of tweaking that should be available when we jump into the game. For an example of how badly PC gamers can get screwed on this issue, we can take a look at Bulletstorm when it was launched. Not only was mouse smoothing turned on as a default, but there was no way to turn it off. You had to find the configuration files, which were encrypted for some insane reason, and then install a third-party program to be able to turn off mouse smoothing and get the game feeling like it should on the PC."

Extra work required

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Note how 3 of the 5 things actually mean extra work for the game developers and QA department. That work probably causes the 4th thing to happen: delayed release.

Re:220 Volt

[Z00L00K]

I agree, I also did read the heading as "How To Ruin Your PC's Game Port".

Re:Extra work required

[Dexter Herbivore]

My personal favourite is when they leave the "Press X Button" hints in on the PC ports... it gives me real confidence that they've spent the extra time to ensure a seamless PC experience.

Re:Extra work required

[Novus]

2 out of 5, I'd say. Adding lots of configuration menus and control options is extra work, but I'd say DRM and useless network services are things that would be less work if they were never introduced in the first place. Also, wouldn't it be easier to develop the game on PC first, then port to console?

Also, many of the settings mentioned, such as aspect ratio and sound/music volume, should be in the console version already.

How to ruin a port?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Require Games for Windows Live to be installed.
2. Require Securom to be installed.
3. Sell the game on steam with the above two.

Re:Extra work required

[Dunbal]

Games have not been about what "you'd rather" since the mid 1990's, but rather about what the market is willing to pay for.

See entertainment software is in a rather special category - it doesn't really have to be good. It doesn't have to be bug free. It doesn't even have to be fun. All it has to do is "entertain". You can't get a refund from the cinema for a bad movie. You have to put up with 14 shitty songs on the CD that contains 1 or 2 songs you actually like. And no publisher will give you your money back because a book didn't end the way you wanted it to.

So we could argue that games should be essentially bug free because they are software, but the truth is that all they have to do is show a title screen and play some music, and you have been entertained. Anything else is extra. Now that's not the way it should be, but because there are a great deal of kids out there willing to buy games because of the pretty graphics on the box or the cool sounding title or because that company was the one that released MegaUltraBlasterSlaughterFest V so this game HAS to be good amirite? well, we're screwed.

All I can say is try before you buy...

#1 Way to ruin a game?

[goose-incarnated]

Design for console, then port to pc.

Re:Extra work required

[kikito]

So? They are getting extra money. They should be doing extra work.

Re:Extra work required

[CastrTroy]

What really irks me, is when they make the controls completely re-mappable in the PC version, but neglect to have the feature in the console version. They just assume that everyone will want to use the exact same controller mappings, or at best, pick from a selection of 3 or 4 different configurations. Tony Hawk 2 had this problem. I played it on the PC and it was so much better than the Xbox, because all the selectable configurations in the Xbox made it so that you had to move your thumb off the jump button to do a grind. Whereas on the PC version let you remap them so you could press both buttons without moving your thumb.

Follow the money

[elrous0]

The last time I checked the numbers, console and handheld games sales accounted for something like 7x the sales of PC games in the U.S. (about $1 billion a year for PC games, and $7 billion for console and handheld games) And that gap has been widening for years.

So which do you think they're going to prioritize?

In fact, considering those numbers, I'm shocked that any developer still releases any PC-only games at all. If they're not developing console ports, they're basically throwing away most of their money.

Re:All too many times...

[SatanicPuppy]

FUCKING ASSASSINS CREED BLEEEEEAAAARG!

Worst. Controls. Ever.

That is all. Blah, blah, blah filter error. Looks like yelling? Well, duh, that was the fucking point.