Just over a year ago, planet Earth was still roughly at the same point on its trajectory round the Sun as it currently is, give or take a few hundred thousand kilometres or so. It’s sort of fitting when you consider that in the year since I posted it, I’m no closer to buying and assembling that PC I said I would get and no closer to smashing the laptop that I’m currently typing this very blog up on to smithereens.
I can probably narrow the reasons for this down to two: firstly, I’m a sucker for shiny things. Each month I set aside money for things like Xbox Live, Netflix and general savings but the rest I keep in my bank account to do with as I please. Naturally, this means I buy shit that’s so pointless it makes throwing money down the drain look like a worthwhile endeavour.
The other problem is that I still don’t really have any clue what I’m doing when it comes to building my own computer. Sure, I might know how to put it together once I have everything, but what actually comprises “everything”? For every gigabyte of RAM that I know I need, there’s a graphics card with a number in the thousands at the end of its name that confuses me; I can’t be arsed with that. I just want to play games!
What PC gaming needs is a super simple way of indicating what components are compatible with which games at a glance – something there on the boxes for both the component and the game that you can easily compare. Think of it like the Gas Mark system used by gas ovens and food suppliers. For most things that can be cooked in an oven, you’ll find a Gas Mark which tells you what to set your oven to and on most ovens you can just set it straight to that Gas Mark. It’s dead simple.
PC gaming needs this level of simplicity; it’s why people still buy consoles. Consoles provide simplicity in every aspect of their being, from knowing what games will run on your console to actually playing them. Being able to associate the words “Xbox 360” on the front of a game with something that will work on my Xbox 360 requires practically no effort on my part – compare this with having to retain an in-depth technical analysis of my PC for comparison with potential PC games I might want to buy. There’s no simple and convenient way to shop for PC games.
An easy way to overcome this would be to introduce a system whereby individual components were tiered off in some way. If a component is good to such a degree, it’ll get a “Silver Tier” or “Bronze Tier” or something like that. Consequently, PC games would list their system requirements as normal but would also include the tier rating for each individual component – not perfect, but it’s a start.
What I’d like to hope is that as more and more developers took to the idea, they’d start to tailor their games to work on a minimum tier – let’s say Bronze, for instance. Publishers could start sticking a big Bronze star right on the front of the box or on Steam, giving you a clear indication that so long as your computer was built entirely from Bronze parts or better, it can run that game. It’s almost exactly like how a developer and publisher bring a game to a console, isn’t it? The difference in this case is that the game is still scalable – if your PC is some game-devouring RAMbeast that can make even the notorious Crysis its bitch, you’re not losing out.
I’m aware that things like System Requirements Lab exist for this very purpose, but that isn’t much use when I’m out and about, or when I don’t yet own the components I want to test a game against. Its feasibility as a means with which to measure game compatibility isn’t absolute, which is why something like a tier system needs to be implemented and be as widely available as possible – on boxes, on Steam, everywhere.
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