YAPCVC Debate (usability) *spyawn

[(((interference)))]

What's the TL: DR for this thread?

Are some people actually trying to argue that consoles/tablets etc can match PCs for general usability?
Or is this just the nth iteration of 'it's easier to game on consoles'?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

What's the TL: DR for this thread?

Joker thinks older people are cowering from technology which is why they buy consoles instead of PCs, even though they have may have been using PCs for years. He argues they are "set in their ways" unless that way has been using a PC then choosing to use something else. That's the fear biting

I.e., it's nonsensical bollocks.

 

[joker454]

Joker thinks older people are cowering from technology which is why they buy consoles instead of PCs, even though they have may have been using PCs for years. He argues they are "set in their ways" unless that way has been using a PC then choosing to use something else. That's the fear biting

I.e., it's nonsensical bollocks.

Nope, but whatever.

 

[goonergaz]

What's the TL: DR for this thread?

Are some people actually trying to argue that consoles/tablets etc can match PCs for general usability?
Or is this just the nth iteration of 'it's easier to game on consoles'?

A little bit of this and a dash of that.

And regarding all this 'old people don't like change' I think it's more a case of 'if it's not broke why fix it!?'.

Just because I don't buy a new car every year doesn't mean I'm scared of new cars, disposable income (or rather lack of) and time are major factors that joker seems to be completely ignoring. The graph supplied does little more than highlight the top level data which in any walk of life is completely useless and can be spun however you want it...it's the details within the data that will give answers rather than a bunch of best guesses.

Another factor (completely overlooked) might be that 'older people' have more 'tied up' in iPhone/tunes - why switch phones if you've hundreds (or more) tied into that tech!? Young people have nothing (or much less) invested to it's easier to switch.

I'll put it another way, as a PC gamer with 100s of games on steam where is the incentive to switch to console gaming? I had PS+ since day one, if I were to consider switching to Xbox that investment will clearly be a factor.

It's why a lot of Xbox fans at work didn't switch, they were comfortable with what they knew and what they would expect from Xbox - they had 'invested' in XBL (a friends list). The older (eg longer they have had Xbox) the less likely to switch. People who have switched have largely done it due to costs.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What's the TL: DR for this thread?

Whether PCs offer a gaming usability experience the equal to consoles simplicity yet.

Although it changed into considering a theory that people in their 40s have a natural aversion to change that comes with the species and growing older, especially the idea of trying PC again (despite contributors in this thread making the usability comparison with their own current real-life use of PCs for gaming). This argument came to a head when the evidence of older (40s) people's resistance to change is that more older people own iPhones, proving that the under 30s are dynamic and courageous enough to embrace the exciting, risky world of Android. The cost of iPhones versus Android and the limited income of minors clearly doesn't enter into it.

I think such strong arguments shut the rest of us up, and now I'm going to go do what I've always done and not do anything new because I'm too old for change. Except if what I always did was build and game on PCs in the 90s and then moved on, because I'm too old and set in my ways to do what I used to do. So I'm going to game on consoles because PCs are old news and I won't reconsider them because I'm too old and though I've owned consoles for a far smaller portion of my life, that's apparently what I'll be sticking to forever more. Until consoles die as a concept. Then I guess I'll watch TV, because using a streaming service or gaming PC or gaming tablet will be too new and scary.

 

[goonergaz]

 

[Prophecy2k]

What's the TL: DR for this thread?

Are some people actually trying to argue that consoles/tablets etc can match PCs for general usability?
Or is this just the nth iteration of 'it's easier to game on consoles'?

Do you mean functionality? I understand usability to mean "ease of use", and in which case out of tablets, consoles and PC, PC is by far the worst by a significant margin.

 

[goonergaz]

Well 'ease of use' if you want to do just very basic things, but even some of those are cumbersome compared to PC - highlight and copy some text - PC quicker and easier, zoom in and out, quicker and easier on a PC...did you want to specify what is such a poor design on PC (so much so that in 30 years of evolution PCs are "worst by a significant margin.")? The only thing I can think of is where touch screen helps - and even that is flaky on simple things like surfing the web.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Well 'ease of use' if you want to do just very basic things, but even some of those are cumbersome compared to PC - highlight and copy some text - PC quicker and easier, zoom in and out, quicker and easier on a PC...did you want to specify what is such a poor design on PC (so much so that in 30 years of evolution PCs are "worst by a significant margin.")? The only thing I can think of is where touch screen helps - and even that is flaky on simple things like surfing the web.

I'm talking about the devices being used for their primary functions.

Consoles are dedicated gaming devices, and so provide easy plug and play gaming with very few issues compared to PC.

Tablet and mobile operating systems make them far easier to pick-up and use for people who are using them for the first time. For their primary functions, but also for user's more general purpose computing needs, i.e. web surfing, note taking, e-reading, light gaming etc..

PC's are much better to use for alot of the the more heavy duty computing stuff, e.g. spreadsheets, word processing etc.. But for everything else, other more dedicated devices are easier by their very definition. PCs have to be everything devices, and so by definition you cannot be a jack of all trades and master of all of them at the same time (despite some of the most ardent PC fans thinking it is). PC's are good or what they are good at. But they are not ideal for everything.

 

[Prophecy2k]

* sorry double post.

 

[joker454]

Whether PCs offer a gaming usability experience the equal to consoles simplicity yet.

Although it changed into considering a theory that people in their 40s have a natural aversion to change that comes with the species and growing older, especially the idea of trying PC again (despite contributors in this thread making the usability comparison with their own current real-life use of PCs for gaming). This argument came to a head when the evidence of older (40s) people's resistance to change is that more older people own iPhones, proving that the under 30s are dynamic and courageous enough to embrace the exciting, risky world of Android. The cost of iPhones versus Android and the limited income of minors clearly doesn't enter into it.

I think such strong arguments shut the rest of us up, and now I'm going to go do what I've always done and not do anything new because I'm too old for change. Except if what I always did was build and game on PCs in the 90s and then moved on, because I'm too old and set in my ways to do what I used to do. So I'm going to game on consoles because PCs are old news and I won't reconsider them because I'm too old and though I've owned consoles for a far smaller portion of my life, that's apparently what I'll be sticking to forever more. Until consoles die as a concept. Then I guess I'll watch TV, because using a streaming service or gaming PC or gaming tablet will be too new and scary.

The theory was patently simple. As you get older you get more resistant to change and/or become less interested in fiddling with tech and hence become more status quo. Most everyone on the planet already knows this if you have ever been in at least one marketing meeting in just about any company in existence, unless it's a company that sells dentures. That in turn can obviously lead to people being more likely to choose a console over a pc for core gaming. Somehow though that insulted peoples manhood here, and also resulted in the typical binary thinking of applying it to 100% of the populace without the most basic of understandings that yeah its a generalization and some people will always will different. Your post above is typical, where you mock without the simple understanding that, oh yeah, it doesn't apply to 100% of the population. Some people like me and you are different but you're incapable of removing yourself from the equation. That makes such discussions basically impossible.

So as usual these threads are a waste of time, but that's not surprising as the last thing you ever want to do is challenge console thinking on a console forum. I may as well go talk about Muslim religion on a Christian website, the results would be the same. So I'll let you guys go back to your world where pc's crash and have daily driver issues, and where consoles work flawlessly while cooking you dinner and washing your car.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The theory was patently simple. As you get older you get more resistant to change and/or become less interested in fiddling with tech and hence become more status quo. Most everyone on the planet already knows this if you have ever been in at least one marketing meeting in just about any company in existence

For reference for typical human behaviour across all people in all contexts, you're using a marketing meeting. And you really think that's representative? You think that your interpretation of what advertisers know is a better reference on human behaviour than DSoup's psychologist girlfriend?

Somehow though that insulted peoples manhood here, and also resulted in the typical binary thinking of applying it to 100% of the populace without the most basic of understandings that yeah its a generalization and some people will always will different.

You explicitly called DSoup and myself as being two of those older people more resistance to change. You weren't talking about some people, but us. Here's what you said...

However my point was that these things are less likely to scare away younger people, whereas guys like you and DSoup are done with it, in your mind pc gaming is forever burned in your heads as being one way and that's it. You are now more likely to believe anecdotal evidence supporting your claim than one that doesn't.

Despite the fact we both actively use PCs and talk from experience, and we are informed by personal experience instead of anecdotes, you completely dismiss our views and go with this theory that our belief in PCs having issues is because we're old.

As for being offended, the only thing I'm offended by is persistent, illogical arguments. I don't care if people believe something, nor if their right or wrong. I only get annoyed when the discussion is dragged down Lunacy Avenue by people who can't make a coherent argument based on mind-numbingly obvious data/evidence. Someone believes the world was created 5000 years ago? Good for them. They post that view on an internet forum? Great. They start repeating that in a discussion about the evolution of reptiles saying fossils are created by the devil I'll get pissed off - the discussion they are interrupting is based on talking about the evidence.

You think guys in their 40s are 'burnt' by former experience and resistant to PCs and won't take an open, realistic look at modern PC gaming? Fine. You express that? Okay. You ignore clear evidence to the contrary from the people you're supposedly having a discussion with and ignore their counter arguments and just keep repeating your POV with ludicrous references like a marketing meeting? That pisses me off. On this board we are by and large pretty civil, and I think the current stable population very much so, but we don't tolerate it when dumb fanboys ramble repeatedly about their secret sauce hardware beliefs when we're trying to understand what a machine is and isn't truly capable of, and we won't tolerate rambled, nonsense theories when trying to discuss what the actual experience people have with PCs and consoles is. Especially if you skip over counter arguments to your data points like number of 'PS4 disconnecting controller hits' and 'how you know a choice of handset in an age range is due to attitudes to trying new technology versus price and usability and marketing' and sweeping, pretty baseless generalisations like the console games discussion are only about res and framerate, instantly disproven by a sampling of current discussion in several game threads.

Your world view is wrong. The way you've collected and interpreted data is wrong. The way you've drawn conclusions and made extrapolations is wrong. And you don't pay any attention to all the counterpoints being made. That's why this discussion is futile.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The theory was patently simple. As you get older you get more resistant to change and/or become less interested in fiddling with tech and hence become more status quo.

This is the first thing you've written in this thread that I've remotely agreed with but it's not due to fear, it's due to having better things to do with my time. I bought a 4K 3D smart TV last August and my priority when it arrived was to get it setup and calibrated so we could use it to watch stuff on. Twenty years ago I would probably have spend all day playing with the features, downloading apps and so on, but frankly I don't have the time. It was at least a couple of weeks before we even bothered to try the 3D.

For us technology is an enabler, for others its the be all and end all.

So as usual these threads are a waste of time, but that's not surprising as the last thing you ever want to do is challenge console thinking on a console forum.

I think the bigger problem here is your thinking which is, quite frankly, nuts. Consoles gamers: FUD over PCs. Old people: FUD regarding technology. It's like you feel you have to find a reason to explain why other people make different choices in technology to you whereas the simple explanation really is that others have different product needs, product priorities and product values than you do. What I find unfathomable, is that you can't simply accept that. People are different that's why we don't all crave the same jobs, drive the same cars, wear the same colour clothes and watch the same movies.

 

[dobwal]

Your theory kind of stumps me given that the average age of a PC gamer is actually higher than the average age of a console gamer.

https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/...ion-age-9-and-older-currently-plays-pc-games/

The average PC gamer is 38 while the percentage of those over 9 that engage in PC is 37% in the US.

http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ESA_EF_2014.pdf

60% of people play video games in the US. About 50% of the households own a console and on average those households own two consoles. The average gamer is 31 and mostly plays on consoles.

Thats a product of mass marketing and designing consoles around general consumers. Not fear, apathy or intimidation of the PC as a platform by the older crowd.

...............

People often make the assertion that smartphones and tablets are natural competitors to the console in the gaming space yet the data indicates that most of time spent on mobile playing games is playing casual/social or puzzle/board/card games (46% and 31%) and not action/sport/strategy/roleplay (a combined 11%). They seem more like complementary devices servicing different needs versus encroaching on the core gamer space dominated by consoles and PCs.

The best selling video games by genres and units sold are..
1. Action 31%
2. Shooters 20%
3. Sports 12.7%
Casuals titles make up just 2.3%

The best selling PC games by genres and units sold are..
1. Strategy 38.4%
2. Casual 28.3%
3. Roleplaying 12.1%

 

[joker454]

You explicitly called DSoup and myself as being two of those older people more resistance to change. You weren't talking about some people, but us. Here's what you said...

That was in response to your very typical console owner type reply of mentioning a pc problem like controller disconnects, which I then showed you also happens on a 2 year old console as well in very significant numbers. In return you predictably typically tried to make it seem like more of a pc problem by comparing 10+ years of google searches on the topic over a multi billion person pc audience to a 2 year old search on the issue for a console which is barely at a few tens of millions in use. Yeah, of course your search result will yield more hits, what a shock, that doesn't mean anything. Instead it just adds noise to obfuscate the unacceptable idea that maybe consoles have issues. It would be the equivalent of me saying that the city A is much safer than the city B because it has 10x less murders, and then ignoring the fact that city B has 100x the population and has existed 10x longer. Meaningless. You can't have logical discussions when this sort of fud is thrown around as the basis of argument. Heck for all we know when taken as a percentage of users in the past two years (the life of the ps4) maybe the ps4 actually has more controller disconnect issues that pc does! Would that surprise you? It probably shouldn't when you consider that the ps4 code base is still very young and hence not as tested as many parts of the pc code base which has had multi millions of testers over many years.

But why bother even arguing any of this. It will always come down to "yeah but my pc has driver issues every day" meanwhile ignoring how the latest (insert major AAA game here) is having problems yet again on the consoles. Of course those never count and/or are discounted as "a problem only affecting very few". Meanwhile the same people will quote how pc users on Windows 3.1 were having issues playing games on their 286 like that somehow has relevance today.

Your theory kind of stumps me given that the average age of a PC gamer is actually higher than the average age of a console gamer.

If you take every type of gamer and every type of game, phones and pc's will always win. There are simply more of them out there and more players on them. I'm talking about core gamers and the types of games they play. Sure if you include casuals then pc and phone will slaughter everything else, casuals don't play on consoles. The idea was seeing if traditional gamers would be receptive to switching over because every other type gamer already has switched over.

I think the bigger problem here is your thinking which is, quite frankly, nuts.

Ok.

 

[(((interference)))]

Do you mean functionality? I understand usability to mean "ease of use", and in which case out of tablets, consoles and PC, PC is by far the worst by a significant margin.

Yeah, meant 'functionality, I skimmed through and thought I saw something on people doing homework/document editing on tablets etc and not needing PCs - but maybe that was another thread lol.

It's self-evident that PCs are more usable for anything other than basic web browsing/doc editing. The main advantage tablets/phones/consoles have is the convenience of not having to go to your PC.

Whether PCs offer a gaming usability experience the equal to consoles simplicity yet.

Although it changed into considering a theory that people in their 40s have a natural aversion to change that comes with the species and growing older, especially the idea of trying PC again (despite contributors in this thread making the usability comparison with their own current real-life use of PCs for gaming). This argument came to a head when the evidence of older (40s) people's resistance to change is that more older people own iPhones, proving that the under 30s are dynamic and courageous enough to embrace the exciting, risky world of Android. The cost of iPhones versus Android and the limited income of minors clearly doesn't enter into it.

I think such strong arguments shut the rest of us up, and now I'm going to go do what I've always done and not do anything new because I'm too old for change. Except if what I always did was build and game on PCs in the 90s and then moved on, because I'm too old and set in my ways to do what I used to do. So I'm going to game on consoles because PCs are old news and I won't reconsider them because I'm too old and though I've owned consoles for a far smaller portion of my life, that's apparently what I'll be sticking to forever more. Until consoles die as a concept. Then I guess I'll watch TV, because using a streaming service or gaming PC or gaming tablet will be too new and scary.

Lol...poor Shifty

While I'm pretty sure people generally get more conservative as they age and there is literature to that effect,
I don't know how you can get from that, to positing that someone with your technical nous suddenly becomes averse to doing something they've done for ages (buliding and gaming on PCs) because of this correlation between age and conservatism - you'd think that you would become more averse to switching to console if anything.

...

As for myself, I don't game on PCs anymore as historically it was always more of a hassle to set them up and get games working (this is in the late 90s/early 00s) especially if you didn't have a high end machine. When you did get the game working, I always found myself endlessly fiddling with the settings to get the ideal balance between performance and graphics (more choice is definitely not always a good thing). And then being the nature of the beast (and probably related to having middle of the road hardware) you would always encounter a crash at least every 10 hours of playtime - either because of some bug, loading a new area/ coming across a demanding gameplay section, trying to switch to desktop etc.

So moving to my Xbox in 2002 was pretty damned great as you could play a game like Halo and not have to worry about the latest version of Direct X, updating your graphics cards drivers, low framerates/crashing etc. And I haven't looked back since.

As a result, I don't even have a desktop PC anymore, I first moved to a Dell XPS laptop and now have a 15" rMBP, both are pretty capable as gaming laptops but I don't like gaming on them (aside from the occasional, undemanding indie title on Steam where I can use the integrated GPU) as they make a lot of noise and heat when the CPU/GPU are being stressed - which I find unpleasant (I am the guy who gets irritated by the blinking LED on a portable HDD when watching content from it in a darkened room lol).

I can readily concede that with the advent of Steam and the newer versions of Windows, PC gaming has got a lot more user friendly than 10-20 years ago but since consoles are good enough for all my gaming needs I don't see the need to get a gaming PC. It's like how iPad sales are tailing off, for most people their iPad 3 or whatever is perfectly adept at what they need it to do and so why should they upgrade to an Air 2 for slightly better graphics and performance.

For most people 'good enough' is the enemy of 'the best' and the lack of drastically better graphics or unique gameplay experiences only available on PC is I think the most salient reason why consoles are favored these days.

Remember that 20 or even 10-15 years ago you could get gaming experiences unique to PC (for one, RTSs were all the rage, you had must-play exclusives like Half-Life 2, and there was no online multiplayer to rival the likes of Counterstrike or Battlefield) - this isn't the case anymore so PCs have been relegated to 'more of the same' status like the Air 2 vs earlier iPads.

Interestingly though, the only thing I miss about PC gaming is strategy games - I used to play a lot of StarCraft, Warcraft, Civilization, Age of Empires/Mythology, C&C, city-building sims back in the day but not anymore (I tried the Starcraft 2 demo on my Mac but the fan noise turned me off getting the full game). But, I have nowhere near as much time as I used to, to play games so maybe that's a good thing. Strategy as a genre has also got much more niche these days also.

 

[Sonic]

I game on console and PC. Consoles are easier to use and less of a hassle even since Steam came about. PC's have more issues with setup and general maintenance. I don't have to scan my son's PS4 for malware and viruses every other day. There's no reason to downplay the maintenance issue when it comes to PC's, because it's still very much more a chore and prevalent when compared to consoles. Even with that I still game on PC because some games are just better played there and of course I want it to be gorgeous so will still build a gaming rig every three years. The two can coexist and it need not be a vicious war of PC gamers vs console gamers. There's a large amount of crossover for both when it comes to the core market. But in the end I guess there will always be those on either side that come off as elitist and total dicks at times.

 

[joker454]

The two can coexist and it need not be a vicious war of PC gamers vs console gamers.

Well the "war" when it comes to core gamer style games is all academic really. On the pc side, those style of games can't exist without console versions as the money isn't there to support them anymore. On the console side, it looks like the audience for those types of games is peaking so they will be more and more dependent on sales from non console versions as well to be able to financially support games whose budgets just keep going up and up. So it's becoming a symbiotic relationship of sorts.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That was in response to your very typical console owner type reply of mentioning a pc problem like controller disconnects, which I then showed you also happens on a 2 year old console as well in very significant numbers. In return you predictably typically tried to make it seem like more of a pc problem by comparing 10+ years of google searches on the topic over a multi billion person pc audience to a 2 year old search on the issue for a console which is barely at a few tens of millions in use....

THAT'S a legitimate counter argument and one you should have raised. And after a bit of to-ing anf fro-ing we'd either arrive at some meaningful data or find Google searches aren't much use. (How's about filtering results by year? "PS4 controller disconnects" in the past year - 4,830. "PC controller disconnects " in the past year - 747,000)
Also the argument wasn't console don't have issues. It's that the PC has issues only PC can have do to the nature of the beast. PC gets all the issues of console software and adds to them.

But why bother even arguing any of this. It will always come down to "yeah but my pc has driver issues every day"

Which I never said.

...meanwhile ignoring how the latest (insert major AAA game here) is having problems yet again on the consoles.

Due to the game, not the system.

Of course those never count and/or are discounted as "a problem only affecting very few".

No-one said that. Borderlands crap voice chat on PS3 affected everyone. It was a game issue though, not a system one.

Meanwhile the same people will quote how pc users on Windows 3.1 were having issues playing games on their 286 like that somehow has relevance today.

Nope.

As ever, nowt but assertions not based in the reality of what's being said here or anywhere. You keep repeating your observations as fact despite them not being at all accurate. I've pointed out where your wrong - you ignore me (save on one point you felt you had a reasonable chance of an argument) and repeat yourself some more. Heck, you called me a blind console fanboy incapable of challenging their view on consoles and PC despite the fact in other threads I'm supporting the view that PCs will replace consoles and challenging the view of posters like Cyan, a true console advocate, about the need for consoles. I've posted in agreement with you on some of your views about PC. Yet now I'm disagreeing with you regards your view about age limiting people's adoption of PC, you dismiss me as an irrational zealot or something.

 

[goonergaz]

That was in response to your very typical console owner type reply of mentioning a pc problem like controller disconnects, which I then showed you also happens on a 2 year old console as well in very significant numbers. In return you predictably typically tried to make it seem like more of a pc problem by comparing 10+ years of google searches on the topic over a multi billion person pc audience to a 2 year old search on the issue for a console which is barely at a few tens of millions in use. Yeah, of course your search result will yield more hits, what a shock, that doesn't mean anything. Instead it just adds noise to obfuscate the unacceptable idea that maybe consoles have issues.

It's no less useful than your initial "very significant" data - or the data about age ranges, maybe that was shiftys point (like I said) - you can get data to say whatever you want, here's an example...

I did a search for "dualshock disconnect" - now in theory this should give us 10 years of data as it will cover PS3 & PS4, the result was 102k, I then added PC into the search and the result was 74k - so what are we to make of that?

1) PlayStations have more issues with dualshocks and lots of disconnect issues
2) The figures are skewed by the fact that a majority of of dualshocks are purchased for use on PlayStations and as such the actual result is that (per use) PCs has substantially more issues and PlayStations have very little (100k into 100M is noise)