Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Interesting discussion in the McQuaid topic, min specs and tech.

Something we have talked long and hard on from day 1, min specs.....

It"s an interesting and not nearly as easy to define piece as I thought when we first started, but certainly has enormous ramifications on potential user base.

Every notch you move up, on any component from RAM/Vid card to hard drive space, you eliminate potential users.

Having to balance between that and making a game that doesn"t look like pong....Fun!

Clearly this is the wave of the future:

GeForce 3D Vision Kit

I think most gamers have a system like this: 3ghz dual core, 2gb ram, and some version of an 8800 card.

By the time Curt wants to release his game (winter "10?) I think the gtx 280 series will be a little closer to the norm as the next generation of cards (ati 5870 and gtx300) will have been out about a year.

I"m not sure how more cores will affect this, most games I play seem to actually do worse. My e8600 at 4ghz outdoes my 3.2ghz Corei7 in most games.

Gamers, sure. That"s about 15~20% of your population, maybe, if you"re lucky. Rest of your population are people who bought a sony vaio from best buy 3 years ago or got a Compaq tower from Wal-Mart 4 years ago. No seriously.

Locithon said:

I think most gamers have a system like this: 3ghz dual core, 2gb ram, and some version of an 8800 card.

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Between me and my 5 other gamer buddies, only 3 have systems that meet that spec. One of them *just* upgraded his machine from a "WoW only" box a few months ago.

We (this board) are NOT representative of the gaming community at large.

Zehn - Vhex said:

Gamers, sure. That"s about 15~20% of your population, maybe, if you"re lucky. Rest of your population are people who bought a sony vaio from best buy 3 years ago or got a Compaq tower from Wal-Mart 4 years ago. No seriously.

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True story, Have a coworker that plays WoW casually on a geforce4 still, the guy pays the sub but won"t upgrade his Dell and can barely move sometimes.

Many players ask from time to time on new games stuff like "oh will it run on my 5 years old notebook?".

You guys remember that initially they couldn"t upgrade EQ over the initial min specs? They had to stick to it for quite awhile.

Aion looks fine and runs OK on older systems, they should sell well over that.

Sturdy scalable graphics is the key - and also a bitch to pull out I guess. I would stick to the Pong level and hope it"s not too brown.

Target specs: 40-60FPS in single group or solo situation on a 3-year old PC that was "average" at the time of purchase or a 4-year old machine that was "high-end" at the time of release. Anything more and you will have no hope of WoW level subs (if that is your intent).

The WoW min specs are here:

WoW -> Info -> F.A.Q. -> Technology

Requires only a Gforce 7000 series, which were first available in 2005. List of Geforce generations:

GeForce - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

4 generations old technology (5 if they release GT300 at the end of 2009). The average PC gamer buys a new PC about as often as new consoles come out.

NativityInBlack said:

You guys remember that initially they couldn"t upgrade EQ over the initial min specs? They had to stick to it for quite awhile.

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I remember when they went to Full DX8 and if you logged in with DX7 it was all fucked up. I didn"t even read the patch notes and just logged in to play and thought my computer had died.

really? cause at Best Buy you can get a system like mine for a thousand bucks.

Premium - Intel? Core?2 Quad Processor Q8400 (4M Cache, 2.66 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB)
Graphics 1GB ATI Radeon 3870 X2 graphics card
6144MB 1066 MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048 + 2x1024]
1.5TB Dual Hard Drive Raid 0 "Stripe" (2x1.5TB) - (7200rpm)

I think most people have up graded to systems that make everything else from a few years ago look like complete crap.

Camerous said:

really? cause at Best Buy you can get a system like mine for a thousand bucks.

Premium - Intel? Core?2 Quad Processor Q8400 (4M Cache, 2.66 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB)
Graphics 1GB ATI Radeon 3870 X2 graphics card
6144MB 1066 MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048 + 2x1024]
1.5TB Dual Hard Drive Raid 0 "Stripe" (2x1.5TB) - (7200rpm)

I think most people have up graded to systems that make everything else from a few years ago look like complete crap.

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The average gamer won"t spend $1000 to play a game. The most common cards around now are still Gforce 7 and 8 series. 4 and 3 year old tech respectively.

Steam Hardware Survey

Feel free to cite a better source for gauging the "average gamer PC" though. I wouldn"t mind seeing alternate data.

Also, PC games are suffering a problem similar to why BluRay won"t overtake the standard DVD market anytime soon. With 3-4 year old tech you can make a game that looks "good enough" for the majority of people. Why should someone buy Crysis when there are 100 other fun FPS games that run at half the system specs? Case in point, nothing has dethroned Counter-Strike 1 yet in number of players online:

GameSpy.com - Gimme The Stats!

And that is running on a 9+ year old game engine.

Or if you work for a large enough company, you can often buy the PC"s they"re phasing out (that were old already 4 years ago when they were purchased) for 50 bucks. They play WoW and toontown online pretty well and let the family access facebook. Not much else unfortunately.

I sold more of those in a week to employees then I would "gaming rigs" in a month at best buy.

Edit:

I do housecall PC repairs now (yay new economy. Who needs to program databases when you can make just as much running malware bytes on stupid peoples computers) and I would say that the vast plurality of "gamings rigs" are sitting in the kitchen or dining room and is the family PC. So far, I wouldn"t put crysis on any of these PC"s for fear of burning their houses to the ground but seeing a WoW launcher on the desktop isn"t uncommon.

I"m glad games like Crysis get made that push the boundaries of what is popular and possible. But with an MMO you can"t bank on being able to use the engine you create to make a dozen games over the next few years.

I sent Ngruk a PM a long time ago telling him that he was my grandmother"s favorite player. She NEVER missed Kurt play for any reason. Her birthday was approaching (3 months away) so I asked him for a signed ball, t-shirt, even just a simple $4 birthday card signed by him for her. I offered to pay for any of the items and even the shipping. My grandmother adored him, claiming he was the best pitcher to ever play Baseball. He never bothered to take the time to even reply.

My grandmother is still alive and has pictures of you on her walls, how nice and simple it would have been for her to have just one of those pictures signed? A simple ball on a pedestal, paid for by me, or just a birthday card she would have never forgotten for the rest of her life, one simple request I asked on behalf of my unknowing grandmother, and you could not find the time to even reply.

This sir, is my reason to believe you do not care about your fans, then, or even now. This reason is why I believe you are a snake oil salesman, and I will not be purchasing your product. This is my personal opinion, nothing more.

Good luck with your game, honestly. I do not wish you ill will, I remember playing on Povar with your monk, Scythehands Voxslayer killing those dog things outside of Karnor"s before I even knew you played ball. We played several times together for hours on end. You see, this is the problem, you remember these older games you played, but not the friends you played them with. Its not about the game, its about the community.

I"m sure I"ll get negged to hell by your fanbase here, but what if Ut was right? I understand you are a business man first and foremost, and your game is your lively hood, but do you REALLY care? God forbid, but will you even show up in the parking lot when you lay off your entire staff? Sorry, wrong guy, but from where I stand you two look awfully similar.

Ohhhh, this should be good.

I wouldn"t normally share this, but I will in the interest of balance.

I"ve PM"ed Curt a number of times. He has never replied. I never expected him to, to be fair.


I made a similar request for a signed photo for someone else. As was yours, a worthy cause. It arrived at my house, in the UK, posted from 38S studios and, when I passed it on, the person it was signed to was delirious.


Let me triple underline, Curts fame and career mean two things to me - jack and shit. It isn"t possible for me to care about baseball less than I already do. The only things that interest me, with regard to 38S, are quality and ethos. But I think you"re bang out of order taking this public. There are a dozens reasons why he didn"t deal with your PM. It wouldn"t surprise me if he gets a dozen PMs a day asking for stuff.



And people wonder why devs and folk in the industry don"t post more ......

guanna said:

I sent Ngruk a PM a long time ago telling him that he was my grandmother"s favorite player. She NEVER missed Kurt play for any reason. Her birthday was approaching (3 months away) so I asked him for a signed ball, t-shirt, even just a simple $4 birthday card signed by him for her. I offered to pay for any of the items and even the shipping. My grandmother adored him, claiming he was the best pitcher to ever play Baseball. He never bothered to take the time to even reply.

My grandmother is still alive and has pictures of you on her walls, how nice and simple it would have been for her to have just one of those pictures signed? A simple ball on a pedestal, paid for by me, or just a birthday card she would have never forgotten for the rest of her life, one simple request I asked on behalf of my unknowing grandmother, and you could not find the time to even reply.

This sir, is my reason to believe you do not care about your fans, then, or even now. This reason is why I believe you are a snake oil salesman, and I will not be purchasing your product. This is my personal opinion, nothing more.

Good luck with your game, honestly. I do not wish you ill will, I remember playing on Povar with your monk, Scythehands Voxslayer killing those dog things outside of Karnor"s before I even knew you played ball. We played several times together for hours on end. You see, this is the problem, you remember these older games you played, but not the friends you played them with. Its not about the game, its about the community.

I"m sure I"ll get negged to hell by your fanbase here, but what if Ut was right? I understand you are a business man first and foremost, and your game is your lively hood, but do you REALLY care? God forbid, but will you even show up in the parking lot when you lay off your entire staff? Sorry, wrong guy, but from where I stand you two look awfully similar.

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jesus christ

i read this post while listening to this:

YouTube - Eminem - Stan: MTV Long Version

In my opinion, it is perfectly in line. It illustrates what I believe to be a disregard, or at the least a disconnection with his fan base.

Who is Kurt making this game for? His pocketbook, himself, his family"s future, his fans, the gamers, or anyone else? It does not matter, they are all equally valid and reasonable and there is no reason it cannot be for all of the above.

As I stated before this is my own personal opinion, aside from that, I do wish him success. I just have a hard time buying that he is doing anything more than the other one did here a few years back to pre sell VG. I do not believe for one second that he is seeking input or relating to fellow gamers. I believe he is advertising, plain and simple.

He sent you the package, all the way to the UK, that was really cool of him, but busy guy or not, he never said one single word to you. Devs don"t come here to get feedback, devs come here to advertise. At least Brad answered PMs from fans and haters alike.

Gnome Eater said:

jesus christ

i read this post while listening to this:

YouTube - Eminem - Stan: MTV Long Version

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"And all I wanted was a lousy picture or a ball
I hope you know I ripped all of my grandma"s pictures off the wall
I love you Kurt, we coulda been together, think about it
You ruined it now, I hope you cant sleep and you dream about it
And when you dream I hope you cant sleep and you scream about it
I hope your conscience eats at you and you cant breathe without me"

lol that does make me sound batshit crazy I guess. I just don"t know how to get the point across without the background story. Sure, its obvious that my axe to grind is personal, but the point is valid and warrants at least consideration. I am not angry or anything, like I said, this was long ago. At least I am not just spouting random opinions as some here do, but I have provided a reason behind my opinion. I guess between Brad"s showmanship here previously and my personal experience with Kurt, I have lost faith in devs who come to bullshit with people here talking about their projects.

Fuck, maybe I"m way off. I"m even willing to apologize to Kurt for dragging it out in this manner, but if you don"t see the connection either you"re just not getting it, or I"m not relaying my point effectively.

I didn"t mean to come off so personally to you Kurt, and I apologize. Its just hard to trust people in your position these days.

To be fair, I imagine the man gets bombarded with a metric shitton of PM"s every week from people wanting to suck up to him, or try wheedle their way into a job at 38, or telling him about their ULTRA MEGA SUPER AWESOME idea. I"d be surprised if he reads them all.

Part and Parcel of being in the public eye and having a degree of fame is in how you deal with requests from the public.
It varies from one end of the spectrum with Ringo Starr no longer accepting or signing any items for fans, to the story of John Hughes being the pen pall of some random person who wrote to him, and using the idea of her as a fan in making decisions about his films.
Different people will react in many ways, and unless copernicus is a run away hit, it will always be known as that baseball players company. You have two other major names involved in Todd and RA, yet rarely do you hear their names mentioned.

On an even bigger derail, its somethng Ive been meaning to say for some time now, but jesus Flight can you lay off the Curt and 38S cock slobbering? Its really embarressing to be honest. We get it. You do project management and claim to be so great, but are so hungry for a job it hurts. Truth be told, your posts are so stalkery, Im suprised a restraining order hasnt been taken out.
Theres its said. Ofcourse its only my opinion, but I just couldnt let it go on anymore without saying something, as your posts make my skin crawl.

I wouldn"t answer request PM"s either; especially from the likes of guanna. Curt seems like your average gamer who just happens to be able to throw a baseball over 90mph accurately. Suck up PM"s for beta invites usually don"t work so I don"t even bother; let alone autograph requests. That is probably why well known people usually don"t participate in things like message boards. You"ll get a zillion pm"s and constantly have people try to get a rise out of you just so they could say "Hey, I made Curt Schilling curse at me!" (see: Utnayan) He could either spend time answering a shit ton of PM"s or spend that time gaming, I know I would pick the latter if I was famous.

You know, I don"t even read my PM"s half the time and mine are usually just of the "hey how do i get posting rights?" and "I want you inside me" variety. Hell, to get Tuco to read his PM"s you have to call an escort to his house and ask that they tie a note reading "check your PM"s" to the escorts penis.

Saying that Curt not checking his PM"s is the final evidence that proves he"s just here to advertise is fucking retarded. Of -course- he"s here to fucking advertise. Anybody that thinks he"s just hanging out as one of the guys is a goddamn moron and anybody who thinks we don"t realize that is batshit goddamn insane (case in point: Utnayan).

He gets to advertise for basically free, we get some insight into the minds behind Copernicus. It"s basically win/win for everyone all around except the handful of people who thought Brad was going to usher in a new era of majestic gaming for the elite and might be tempted to glue themselves to Curts balls because their former mesiah was a false prophet.

I"d go on but my waffles are done. Cliff notes is stop fucking crying, send an email to 38s asking how you can go about requesting a signature for your tl;dr who gives a fuck reason and then man the fuck up.