how many people do game developers to actually expect to play their games?

[45HardBall]

Good evening folks!

There is a topic or rant i wanted to throw in the room. So with regards to the latest games or even games that are not as new, there seems to be a problem with the hardware specifications that some game developers seem to think their fans have. I am throwing this topic in the room, because it doesnt get enough attention imo and I wanted to get your view on that. So basically when I built my pc in 2015 i spent just about 1000 bucks on it and upgraded it in terms of gpu, ram and cooler. To this day out of all my friends I have by far the most powerful gaming machine. But even one year later BF1 came out, which is virtually unplayable for cpu reasons. Most games that come out run totally fine, which are supposed to, in R6Siege e.g. i can always expect 100fps or more with good settings. Some new games even with optimized settings will not spit out more than 45fps on low settings and obviously my thought ,,I need to dump more money into newer hardware", but now I am asking myself, when I have a good pc and i cant play some of the newer games, who do game developers actually expect to be able to play a game on PC? I mean Battlefield V on most maps is unplayable, I dont know a single person that has a gaming machine as good as mine, ergo the amount of people who can actually play a game is extremely low, so how is it possible that any significant amount of revenue will actually be made if the games are not playable on 1000€ machines? It just seems odd, especially when a cheapo console will still play many great titles . What is your thought on this, especially when game devs could be making more money if they actually didnt increase their games demand. whats your thought?

[mariushm]

We're in 2020. The hardware that was 1000 euro in 2015, is now probably worth less than 300-500 euro. 

Game developers target hardware from the last 2-3 years, basically testing with the current and previous 1-2 generations of video cards, and optimizing the games to also work well with the current generations of consoles, in order to sell more units. 

 

Look at the Steam surveys and see how many people have your processor and your video card, and then think if it's worth for a game developer to invest man hours into optimizing or supporting such old hardware 

Here's the Survey results page : https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

 

You could also look at it this way... if you as a person have a computer worth 300-500 euro, do you think they expect you to buy a 50-60 euro game (or around a 10-20% of your computer's value) ? You're not their market, you're more likely to play pirated games and save money to upgrade the PC... or you're too poor to buy such games, or you're unlikely to buy skins or weapons (in game purchases), so you're not gonna be making money for them. You're not their market.

 

[Guest]

Maybe your PC isn't as good as you think? I don't know BF1 ran fine on my Phenom II and that CPU was from 2010. Most games still run on low end hardware pretty well if you are fine with turning down settings. Also resolution scaling that most newer games have is a nice trick to get even more frames without having to change the native resolution.

[45HardBall]

4 minutes ago, mariushm said:

We're in 2020. The hardware that was 1000 euro in 2015, is now probably worth less than 300-500 euro. 

Game developers target hardware from the last 2-3 years, basically testing with the current and previous 1-2 generations of video cards, and optimizing the games to also work well with the current generations of consoles, in order to sell more units. 

 

Look at the Steam surveys and see how many people have your processor and your video card, and then think if it's worth for a game developer to invest man hours into optimizing or supporting such old hardware 

Here's the Survey results page : https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

 

You could also look at it this way... if you as a person have a computer worth 300-500 euro, do you think they expect you to buy a 50-60 euro game (or around a 10-20% of your computer's value) ? You're not their market, you're more likely to play pirated games and save money to upgrade the PC... or you're too poor to buy such games, or you're unlikely to buy skins or weapons (in game purchases), so you're not gonna be making money for them. You're not their market.

 

how said my pc was worth 500 euro? I said i was upgrading some parts along the too and despite that its still the case. Also I am not specifically just taking about latest gameS I am talking about games that came out one year after. The AMD counterpart cpu to my cpu was the most powerful AMD cpu on the market, which means that people who bought the most powerful AMD chip in 2015 were not able to play some games anymore in 2016, so one year later and my thoguht is how can this not be a scandal? when the garbage last gen consoles ran the games fine

[45HardBall]

1 minute ago, Medicate said:

Maybe your PC isn't as good as you think? I don't know BF1 ran fine on my Phenom II and that CPU was from 2010. Most games still run on low end hardware pretty well if you are fine with turning down settings. Also resolution scaling that most newer games have is a nice trick to get even more frames without having to change the native resolution.

I am talking about Mutliplayer here  and i know soem maps run smooth in BF1 but St. quentin scar yields like 50fps, while singleplayer yields more than 120fps maxed out at 1440p

[LogicalDrm]

Uh, your title questions isn't same as the actual question.

 

How many people do devs expect = how they expect sales/reach go. To which answer is they use market data and compare to games with similar budget, style etc.

 

Who do devs expect to play games on PC = what is the target audience/specs. To which answer is that they develop expecting systems to be midrange when they release. But there's a twist. Gamers have expectations. Games must look good, run smoothly on high fps, be 4k and have massive multiplayers. Which parts to take and how to optimize is key.

 

So to latter, goal is to have game available for masses who might have midrange gaming PC from 2 years ago. EA/DICE for example is partnered with Nvidia. This literally means that they push high settings requirements so that people who want 4k-high-fps-nice-looks need to spend bit more to get them. If they are good at what they do (EA isn't, DICE at some point wanted to be), the scaling and optimization allows running game with lower end hardware to target more people. But overall, the game will have lower graphical look if its aimed for wider audience. See LoL, Dota2 and Overwatch.

[Soag]

For the sake of understanding your issues better - can you list your specs?

[45HardBall]

5 hours ago, mariushm said:

We're in 2020. The hardware that was 1000 euro in 2015, is now probably worth less than 300-500 euro. 

Game developers target hardware from the last 2-3 years, basically testing with the current and previous 1-2 generations of video cards, and optimizing the games to also work well with the current generations of consoles, in order to sell more units. 

 

Look at the Steam surveys and see how many people have your processor and your video card, and then think if it's worth for a game developer to invest man hours into optimizing or supporting such old hardware 

Here's the Survey results page : https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

 

You could also look at it this way... if you as a person have a computer worth 300-500 euro, do you think they expect you to buy a 50-60 euro game (or around a 10-20% of your computer's value) ? You're not their market, you're more likely to play pirated games and save money to upgrade the PC... or you're too poor to buy such games, or you're unlikely to buy skins or weapons (in game purchases), so you're not gonna be making money for them. You're not their market.

 

i thought one could expect a 500€ pc to run 60fps in 1080p in all games, 500€ is already more than what a console costs

[mariushm]

33 minutes ago, 45HardBall said:

i thought one could expect a 500€ pc to run 60fps in 1080p in all games, 500€ is already more than what a console costs

If you buy a computer today with 500 euro, yes. 

if you bought a computer in 2005 with 500 euro, no. 

 

500 euro is basically 100 euro cpu, 70 euro motherboard, 30 euro ram, 200 euro video card, 50 euro hard drive , 50 euro power supply and case... 

If you tweak the graphical settings in games, you'll get the same quality and fps as consoles.

 

A modern 200 euro video card can do 60 fps at 1080p.  

 

Also keep in mind that consoles cheat, and don't always run a game at 1080p 60fps ... some games are capped at 30 fps, some games have variable resolution (they output 1080p to the TV but internally they may render at 1400x900 or 1600 x something and scale up to 1080p) ... in some games these resolutions are manually configured by developers from scene to scene or for each cutscene. 

 

A console can be 500 euro, because it's mass produced, and it's designed with the minimum components to work.

For example, the designers know the processor will only consume up to 100 watts, so they can design the VRM (the dc-dc converter ) that powers the CPU with 3 phases and mosfets powerful enough to handle let's say 120 watts. 

In contract, a regular computer motherboard has to be designed to handle anything from a dual core processor sipping 30-40 watts to a 16 core processor that consumes 160-200 watts with a mild overclocking, so they have to use VRMs with 6-8 phases, with doublers, with lots of extra components. 

They also buy the memory and storage in volume and solder it directly to the motherboard, so there's no pci-e slots, no sata connectors, no memory slots and no memory sticks and slots and  so on...

 

[Morrie Sells Wigs]

I'm amazed that devs get some games running at all when you consider the vast difference between any two players. 

 

You could have A trying to run it on his low end, dated, hardware, whilst B has the very latest technology, and C is on the least powerful console and D is on the most powerful. 

 

Finding a balance that will ensure it is playable on such a wide range of equipment is actually a testament to the skill of these developers.

 

Yes, of course they are downgraded versions on console etc...but that's even more work.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is developers have to, both from a technical perspective but also a business one, cater to as many different people as possible - and in the end it may be that they don't always succeed and some games, as we all know, are much more demanding. 

 

It's just the nature of the beast.

[LogicalDrm]

18 hours ago, 45HardBall said:

i thought one could expect a 500€ pc to run 60fps in 1080p in all games, 500€ is already more than what a console costs

Consoles are something like €300-450. And they, before upcoming generation, have had 1080p30 or lower (PS3, Wii U with 720p). So expecting €500 PC, if thats only for tower, to be better is reaching. I would expect €700-1000 PC to be able to push 1080p at 60fps minimum on medium graphics. Thats actually what has been standard target, thats the midrange gaming PC. €500 is entry gaming PC, so low graphics settings 1080p 60fps should be possible, but will depend on actual parts. Just saying something is €500 can mean anything from i3 to APU to i5 with wide range of GPUs (thinking of OEM specs I've seen).

 

Comparing PCs to consoles is always bad way to look at things. Consoles are easier platform for developers in a sense that they only have to optimize for 1-6 hardware configurations (and 3 OS'). Of which all might use same CPU/GPU architecture with AMD APUs. With PC it can be anything from Sandy Bridge i5 to newest generation, with GTX680Ti's, iGPUs etc. They might not have access to test on multiple configurations in real life, so its done by simulating system specs on VMs. And at that point it really depends how good they are and to how wide target audience they go for.

[Soag]

On 11/5/2020 at 2:30 PM, 45HardBall said:

i thought one could expect a 500€ pc to run 60fps in 1080p in all games, 500€ is already more than what a console costs

Still value, no specs. Can we make that subject more specific, not just some crystal ball mojo? Or are you worried we might use it as a basis to disprove your claims?