This week, on the Midwest Nerds Podcast…
Tim Schafer uses his rockstar gaming celebrity, and cunning guile, and… the internet to raise a metric crap-ton of money for his next project: an adventure game. This week the nerds talk about what this means for Schafer, gaming, and what other nearly dead game genres should be kickstarted.
Also on the show this week:
-Alienware’s new “console”
-Battleship, the game based on the movie, based on the game
-Bethesda’s Game Jam Sizzle Reel (BOOMSHAKALAKA)
-What some crafty Minecraft modders are up to now
Plus, as ordered by the fans, we’ve had Joel killed. That… or he couldn’t join us because of work or something. And Steve’s Zombie Tip of the Week all lie within 56 minutes of the best audio you’ve never paid for (even though we keep telling you to). It’s the Midwest Nerds Podcast!
Song – Social Distortion – Story of my Life
I think the only way a console-like PC will ever work is if the games sold for less. Which they should, developers don’t have to fork out money to a PC maker like they do for console version of game, yet the games are the same price. If the games were $10-15 less and the console had the versatility of the PC, I think there would be a fighting chance for that sort of concept. It would be like a pay-as-you-go cell phone deal, no contract, but no subsidized hardware. (At one point I think PC games were actually $10 less, but when I bought Skyrim for PC it was full $60)
As for Baker’s comment about ‘hoops’ on PCs – I’ve primarily been playing PC games the last few years and I have never once had to download a driver or do anything but install the game on my computer and hit go. If a game requires some new version of direct x or whatever, it usually installs with the game.
Then you are a luckier man than I. It seems like every time I get a new game I have to mess with something for hours so that I can get more than 10 fps.
PC games being $60 is something you can blame Activision for. I think the trend started with Modern Warfare 2.
My desktop and laptop are both HP. HP has a ‘solution center’ that automatically checks for updates for your computer (if you allow it). I let mine update everything, so maybe that’s why I never have to touch anything. Also, I’m using Windows 7, which could help over past OS’s.
I’d look into purchasing a new graphics card, Nick. It’ll run you about $100 for a pretty good one, or if you are proactive, you can go for a $200-$400 card which will last you for the next two or three years.
I’m running off an NVidia 9800GTX ($100) and I can play Battlefield 3 (Mid-quality), GTA IV (Mid-quality), Mass Effect 2(High-quality), and even that game that takes a super-computer to run, Minecraft.
The only downside to this is you may need to upgrade other components of your PC, such as a power supply or motherboard/CPU, but you should be able to avoid this with proper research.
I actually talk on the next show for a bit about how my PC wasn’t performing at expected levels for 3 years, even after upgrading to a mid-high end graphics card. Turns out my CPU wasn’t playing nicely with my OS (vista) and was causing me to only use about 25% of my max processing power. In SWTOR, I went from 20fps in low graphics to 50′s on high just by downloading some third party application that “fixes” what vista “broke”.
… good times.
Joel runs Microsoft right?? Can’t he just make it rain Windows 7 copies for you guys? =P
yeah, wtf?
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