Tag: gas powered games

Chris Taylor: PC Gaming is Rediscovering Itself

Demigod Screenshot

In an age where pretty much everyone believes that PC gaming is dying a slow death, it’s nice to see some optimism from developers. While Blizzard and Valve have already shown their love for PC, there’s another developer scurring behind them, and that’s Gas Powered Games, known for their PC-exclusive games, such as the Dungeon Siege series, Supreme Commander and last year’s Space Siege.

Chris Taylor, supreme commander of GPG said in an interview that he believes that PC gaming is, in fact, rediscovering itself. The last 10 years of it, have been all about breaking system requirements, and the audience was also crazy enough to buy the latest gear for it. That is starting to change.

“We have to be careful we don’t create games that require four gigs of RAM to run. It’s just not responsible. It kind of was, in the old days; now, well, hardware’s pretty quick. We don’t really need to do that. We should be focusing on the characters, the story, the UI, the design.”

Nice to see it come honest and clear from a game developer. While console gamers have only to buy a disc and pop it into their drives, PC gamers have to inspect the game, compare the requirements, install it, and then hope it’ll run as it should. No wonder even the most hardcore PC gamers have been taking to consoles!

Taylor also thinks that Blizzard has the right idea, “using art direction rather than pure technical showmanship to create visually appealing but less-demanding games.” He says that GPG is working on something very similar with Demigod, their upcoming RPG-Strategy hybrid.

We’ll just hope Taylor’s optimistic tone holds up. Long live PC gaming!

GPG confirms Dungeon Siege III

A Monster from Dungeon Siege II

Dungeon Siege not only represents an idea gone wrong, but also how you can waste about $50 on absolute boredom. While I have yet to play (i.e. never) Dungeon Siege II, I hear that it does not differ much from the point-click-kill-rinse-repeat formula. Seriously, the game had no storyline, no deep gameplay value, no detailed character customization, practically none of the hallmarks of Western role-playing games.

I could go on and on, but I restrain myself now to bring you this. Talking to Eurogamer Germany, Chris Taylor from Gas Powered Games confirmed that Dungeon Siege III will happen. Gas Powered Games is already working on Space Siege, a sci-fi RPG that looks like it will have some depth, but I can foresee that it won’t get nearly as much hype as Mass Effect.

As for details on the game, Taylor confirms that the game will be all about a single hero, unlike multi-character parties from the last game. This will go in tune with Space Siege, which focuses on a single protagonist and the changes he is willing to make on his body to take on alien adversaries. No other details have been announced yet, such as a release date or a platform. GPG’s games have, however, all been PC exclusives, so it’ll be a bit of a surprise if DS3 goes multi-console.