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Blastfrog

Is "consolization" real?

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I've been wondering this. How are certain game design elements directly associated with all platforms except PC? What makes PC so special that those kinds of design elements aren't to be even associated with PCs?

I kind of think that some of these are more just general game design simplifications than they are specifically designed for all but one platform. I mean, sure, they show up on console games the most, but what makes them as design elements themselves so exclusive to consoles? Why can't "PC-like gameplay" be compatible with console gaming, and why can't "console-like gameplay" be compatible with PC gaming?

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Sodaholic said:

Why can't "PC-like gameplay" be compatible with console gaming, and why can't "console-like gameplay" be compatible with PC gaming?


They already are. Only to rabid fanboys (see [H]ARD FORUMS and BEST GAMER FORUMS for examples of the worst of the worst) does any of this shit matter.

And I don't know of any "game design elements" that PC has that consoles don't, other than key-bound things and extensive menus, but extensive menus frankly suck.

TO be completely honest, I'm sure screen resolution was also a factor. Given that we now have hi-def Televisions, this is slowly shrinking.

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Crysis 2 seems to be the subject matter when this stupid argument comes up. Only a minor fraction of it is barely justified, most of the whining stems from aesthetic reasons (Skyrim console controls on the PC menu) or saying such things as holding "graphics" improvement back from dated console hardware, when consoles are usually designed to specifically play games. There are some decent complaints, but most of comes from elitism.

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If you go back a good few years, there definitely was a type of game that could characterise one platform or another. A "typical" PC game would tend to be a bit more cerebral and there were lots of "set things up and tweak with parameters" god sims, RTS games and so on that could be found on PC but not consoles where the gaming tended to be that of the more immediate fun type. PCs also tended to have fewer action titles (I think, pretty much, id changed that). PCs also tended to be able to hold more data and had certain inherent hardware advantages but, equally, there were downsides (eg lots of PCs simply not having sound cards). There was also the fact that using a PC used to be a more techy/geeky/specialist thing that required a bit of know-how and quite a bit more money versus the slam-in-the-cart-and-play knowledge required for the relatively cheap games systems.

My guess is that some of this current day attitude is a legacy of those rather different starting points and perhaps that it would seem that the way games have progressed is rather like an example of convergent evolution.

Or maybe not.

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The only thing I have a problem with that could probably be considered "consolization" is simply PCs getting really shitty/lazy ports. That usually means at least one of these:

* Poor performance optimization. Pretty much speaks for itself; sure there are "good" reasons for this, but usually it amounts to the developers just being lazy and/or not having enough time to optimize for all/most PC configurations.
* Bad control configuration. Usually when it's obvious the game was designed to be used with a controller and the keyboard/mouse config was clearly an afterthought (I'm seeing this in Alice: Madness Returns).
* Awful menu management. What may be intuitive menu management with a controller may not be as intuitive for a mouse.

In a few cases I've noticed in some ports where they don't even bother replacing the graphics for what controls you're supposed to use in the on-screen tutorials. I'm looking at you Mirror's Edge; it took way longer than necessary to figure out what keys to use to do what, and it was annoying having to pause every once in a while to look at the key bindings in the settings to figure it out.

For the most part, though, those are all aesthetic issues. As far as actual "gameplay" consolization, we all probably already agree that regenerating health and making the player a slow-moving-damage-sponge has ruined FPSs, but I'd hardly say that's due to consoles. Games in general have become more wide-spread and dumbing them down a bit has been inevitable regardless of platform.

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The obvious cases are lack of customization and poor (or even non-existent in some extreme cases) keyboard/mouse control. Locked 30fps framerates and low FOVs tend to also be associated with consolization. more recently, even poor UIs (such as Skyrim's) are obviously catered towards gamepad-play and not keyboard/mouse (just to take Skyrim as an example, look how much better SkyUI makes it compared to the official game).

On a gameplay stance, it's not quite so clear. Sure Halo and CoD are the starchilds of consolized FPS, but would the FPS genre have really gone in a different direction of those games were primarily (or exclusively) targetted at the PC? That's really hard to say, and I personally lean towards "No". Even gameplay that's simplified to work on a gamepad doesn't necessarily scream "consolized" to me; taking Bethesda as an example again, I thought Oblivion had somewhat too complicated controls, and Fallout 3, Fallout NV, and Skyrim's game styles all work much better and relaxing on a pad rather than keyboard/mouse, even though it's vaguely FPS-like, they don't really play anything like an FPS and can be taken in more casual strides...

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Here, have a link.

This interface rocks on a PC. It also sucks on a console, too bad for consoles.

This interface sucks on a PC. But it works great with a gamepad, so yeah.

Any gameplay that requires precise clicking or ability to discern tiny details will be banned from the "AAA" market, because a triple-A game will have to be developed for the Xbox first, the Playstation second, and the PC a distant third. And when you use a gamepad and stand far away from the screen, you don't want to deal with something that's too detail-rich (makes it confusing; that's why the items you can interact with get highlighted in modern games) and full of tiny stuff. How about text? In a first time, font size got multiplied by two or three or four. Ever seen a computer in a movie? You'll have the entire screen occupied by

CRACKING
PASSWORD
  96%
That fills a typical 19-inch monitor entirely, no room for more text. Because it has to be legible to the movie goers.

In a second time, text was removed entirely and replaced by voice acting. Which makes canned sentences all the more noticeable. Which leads to stupid memes like "arrow to the knee ohmygodsofunny". Yeah, so very fuknee.

The other thing is that there are a few genres that have pretty much entirely disappeared. Realistic combat flight sims? Turn-based strategy? RTS? Ask yourself why the Syndicate remake is a multiplayer-based FPS instead of a real time tactical 3rd person shooter. If you played the original Syndicate, you might remember the last few mission required frantic, lightning fast clicking all over the screen if you wanted to eliminate the opposition before they destroyed your squad. (Damn, that mission in the offshore research station in the Atlantic was a nightmare.)

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Nomad said:

* Bad control configuration. Usually when it's obvious the game was designed to be used with a controller and the keyboard/mouse config was clearly an afterthought.

Yes, I've found those problems in a few games. One I remember (though which game it was I forget) kept putting on screen a picture of the button that I needed to press to do whatever-it-was but the picture was that of a button that simply didn't exist on my system because I wasn't using a console controller.

A number of the other things you mentioned too.

I'm fairly sure that the relatively small levels with loading zones in Thief: Deadly Shadows were as a result of aiming for consoles because PCs almost certainly would have been able to handle bigger levels without the need to split them up and have loading zones between them.

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It becomes blatantly clear PC UI navigation was implemented as a mere afterthought in Skyrim when you try to choose dialog choices with your mouse.

Some of the design choices just boil down to horrible ideas in general though. I can't imagine navigating the perk trees being much more comfortable with a controller. Bethesda have never been good with interfaces. Morrowind's may seem a lot better in retrospect, but I wouldn't exactly call that one brilliant either with the awful sorting (which persists in Skyrim, of course. Health potions with completely different names, sorted alphabetically).

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I've still yet to see any RTS that works remotely well on a console. I've seen attempts time and time again but outside of the Warcraft 2 level of complexity it never really seems to work.

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Gez said:

How about text? In a first time, font size got multiplied by two or three or four. Ever seen a computer in a movie? You'll have the entire screen occupied by

CRACKING
PASSWORD
  96%
That fills a typical 19-inch monitor entirely, no room for more text. Because it has to be legible to the movie goers.

Heh, I remember being wowed by the computer screens in the original Sin game. The game zoomed them to full screen once you started interaction, but as you moved away the entire contents of the screen were clearly readable on the ingame texture.

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The difference is obviously the input. PC has a keyboard/mouse normally, designed for all fingers to push a wide variety of buttons, whereas consoles have a specific controller for all its games mainly controlled with thumbs and fewer buttons. Of course you can install a gamepad on a pc, but there's a wide variety of choices rather than a specific design. If I made a game for a pc designed for a gamepad, not the keyboard, I'd probably have to ship the specific gamepad with the game or tell them to buy it separately just to make sure everyone is using the same one it was designed to use.

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If you ignore the differences in PC hardware at the time, Doom actually suffers from a number of issues that plague "consolized" ports today:

  • Gigantic text and interface? Doom's HUD takes up nearly 1/4th of the screen, with large colorful text indicating health, ammo and armor. A sixth of the HUD is taken up by the character's face, which serves no other purpose than telling you how healthy Doom guy is at a glance. Other Doom engine games had even larger HUDs!
  • Low FPS? Doom runs at a glacial 35 FPS.
  • Low resolution? How about 320x200 upscaled to 320x220? That's assuming you run without the HUD or don't shrink the screen size down for better performance.
  • Limited controls? Doom only uses about 8 buttons: 4 for movement, 1 to shoot, 1 to open doors, 1 to run, and 1 to strafe. You can't even look up or down! As a result, Doom plays wonderfully with a gamepad, and can even be played one handed.
  • Simplified interface? Doom's menus are intended to be navigated by the arrow keys alone, which behave similarly to d-pads on controllers. The menu itself is also very simple and offers very few options. Most options are controlled either by function keys or keyboard shortcuts, but only a select few nerds would care about that. ;)
  • Large items and weapons for easier visibility? Dooms pickups are absolutely gigantic, far larger than their real world counterparts. A pistol magazine is as large as Doom guy's foot, shotguns are almost as tall as Doom guy is, and most powerups are as large as Doom guy's torso. About the only thing they don't do is glow in the dark...well, most of them. :p
About the only advantages Doom has over console ports today are FOV (I believe Doom's is between 85 and 90) and mod support. While I lament the move towards consolization, there's a very good reason Doom was successful, just as console games today are: accessibility. What are seen as shortcomings in console ports today were done in the name of accessibility back then. The other half of Doom's success can probably be chalked up to optimization. Doom ran on just about anything back then, even if you had to run the game in a postage stamp.

It's no wonder then that consoles are seen as the superior medium to play games on these days. However, Doom also allowed for a lot of customization if you wanted it, nicely balancing accessibility with raw power. I believe there is a healthy middle ground between the two, just very few have bothered to implement it.

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Whilst I don't particularly dispute any of those facts, I would suggest that some of them at least would be mainly down to the realistic target hardware of the time and fashion rather than retro-fitted consolisation.

Oh, and the status bar face also indicates the direction you are being hit from. OK, I doubt anyone really uses that information, but it's there. l)

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Gigantic HUD: Still a lot bigger than in the Ultima Underworld engine. Games of the era cheated to have less pixels to render because it was so very expensive. That's why you could reduce the screenblocks even further.

Limited controls: you kinda forgot the weapon keys... Reminds me of my first few tries at Wolf 3D (long ago, before Doom) where I didn't know you could change gun. So I avoided picking up the chaingun because it wasted too many ammo and I preferred the less gluttonous machine gun. Heh.

Interface: I'd chalk it up to a left-over from their platforming days. Design-wise, it's the same thing. The menu code in Doom is pretty much only there because it's absolutely needed.

Large items: come from low resolution mostly. An "accurate" sized clip would be what, 1x2 pixels? There'd be no telling what it is. And given you can't look down, you'd have trouble running over them precisely.

All that said, Doom is a very console-friendly game. Why, it's been ported to the Xbox, the Xbox360, the Playstation, the Jaguar, the 3DO, the SuperNES, the Gameboy Advance, the 32X and the Saturn...

Now tell me, has Dune II or TFX been ported to a console?

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Enjay said:

Whilst I don't particularly dispute any of those facts, I would suggest that some of them at least would be mainly down to the realistic target hardware of the time and fashion rather than retro-fitted consolisation.

Oh absolutely. The list was mostly tongue-in-cheek, but it's interesting that Doom was designed around similar limitations that console games are today.

Gez said:

Now tell me, has Dune II or TFX been ported to a console?

Yes, Dune II was released for the Sega Genesis as Dune: The Battle for Arrakis. One of the earliest RTS games was also released for the system, that being Herzog Zwei.

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I do remember people making a lot of noise about Skyrim's interface being "consolized". I'm not really sure what they mean, because the menu system couldn't be much more unsuitable for a console.

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Does anyone have Torchlight for a console? I know the PC version uses a lot of pointing and clicking - not just for the menus, but picking up items as well. I wonder how well that works on a console.

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