What is it with people trying to game on laptops?

[Kitsune]

In keeping up with Mechwarrior Online, I keep running across threads on their forum where people are either saying, "Is this laptop good enough to run the game?" or, "I just got this laptop, so I hope the game works on it."

Did nobody get the memo that laptops are crap for 3D rendering stuff?  Are people just trying to broil their thighs under two hundred degrees of agony?  Or has some magical device been released that can actually support fast-paced rendered graphics and I just didn't notice?

I'm sitting here next to my water-cooled i5 machine with the geforce 670 card in it, in front of a 27-inch screen, and I run across some games even with that system that I feel are a little too twitchy when lots of things are going on onscreen.  I can't imagine someone with a laptop being able to play some of these things smoothly without the graphics turned all the way down to stick figure level, and I can't imagine a laptop's interface not being crappier than a full-sized keyboard.

[Merusk]

It's a mobile world.

In a 5-7 years I expect to see "Hey, is this phone powerful enough to run <big game>"

[Paelos]

People are morons with technology. Almost every game forum on steam has some dicknose asking if the game can run on his laptop with less than a gig of RAM

[IainC]

Most people don't have a watercooled I5 rig. They can swing one computer and because they have to use it for school as well or don't have a permanent desk in the house, a laptop makes a lot more sense than a tower.

Personally I've been playing a bunch of games on my Macbook recently as my actual desktop is getting super-creaky.

[Hutch]

My brother's PC is his work-issued laptop. He wouldn't even have a PC otherwise (Mac fan).

One guy in my WoW guild travels a lot for work, so he joins us in raids from his laptop pretty often.

Every gamer has different circumstances. Having a mortgage and/or car payment and/or kids can put a pinch on your budget. Staying at the cutting edge isn't possible for everyone.

[Chimpy]

The current generation laptops with i-series processors are going to have the same kind of graphics performance as the majority of desktop PCs bought by the general populace. Only people who specifically build a machine to play games or use a multi-monitor setup are going to use anything other than the built in graphics chip which has been moved to the processor die.

The entire discrete graphics business is now a niche market, not just the bleeding edge stuff. It is why nVidia is spending so much of their resources on pushing their products into HPC and creating mobile processors like the Tegra.

[Tannhauser]

I'm a laptop gamer.  Sony Vaio.  Seems to do the job.  After a long day at my desk, I don't want to come home and spend four more hours at my home desk.  Plus I can sit on my comfy couch and watch TV.  Lastly, I no longer play twitch games and MMO's and strategy games do just fine on it.

So neener neener to your obvious laptop racism. Lapism? 

[Kageru]

Because a lot of cheap laptops have been advertised as being "gaming laptops" when in reality they are about a third of the performance of an equivalently priced PC.

Though the serious gaming laptops that cost a fortune, must go through a battery in about 30 minutes and are way too heavy to be meaningfully mobile are also more wtf to me.

[Fabricated]

Laptops suck shit for gaming still but they're better than they were. Intel's integrated graphics are getting semi-usable, and new AMD laptops have APUs which have integrated 6000 series Radeons even on the cheap models which are actually pretty good.

[Ingmar]

The only things I can comfortably play on a laptop are turn based strategy type things.

[Margalis]

Target specs for PC games have barely moved in years, which I think is largely responsible for the recent renaissance. Turns out targeting 90% of your potential audience is better than targeting 10%. Who knew?

[Arinon]

Target specs for PC games have barely moved in years, which I think is largely responsible for the recent renaissance.

That may change as we finish up this longer than usual console cycle.

I don't know how people game with 15'-17' displays, crappy sound, and mouseing on whatever the hell is handy.  Maybe browser games or those that require neither timing or precision.  More power to you if you can (or have to) make it work.  Way too many compromises for my liking.

[Kageru]

Target specs for PC games have barely moved in years, which I think is largely responsible for the recent renaissance. Turns out targeting 90% of your potential audience is better than targeting 10%. Who knew?

The next generation PC/Console games, lots more GPU effects, increasing resolution (I'd love to play at 2600x1440 native on my monitor) will happily consume huge amounts of video performance. The consoles certainly have held things back though. Won't last. Also some games are actually boosting things for PC's and we now have an actual PC games market thanks to steam.

Of course you can get a lot of life out of an older machine by replacing the graphics card.... oh yeah, laptops.

[Logain]

I have one of the alienware M11 netbooks. It's tiny and not too heavy. It has an nvidia GPU(can't remember the chipset) that you can toggle on/off. It pretty much beasts any game I've put on it, but when the GPU is cranked up it will eat the battery in about 2 hours. With the GPU turned off and using the built-in chipset the battery will last as long as any laptop I've used in the past. I used it extensively while I was still in school, now only on extended trips.

Can't imagine being a full-time laptop gamer though. Home setup is one of those specially built, over-powered and expensive machines hooked up to a 55" flatscreen set up so I can recline on the couch. I enjoy it 

[Margalis]

The next generation PC/Console games, lots more GPU effects, increasing resolution (I'd love to play at 2600x1440 native on my monitor) will happily consume huge amounts of video performance. The consoles certainly have held things back though. Won't last. Also some games are actually boosting things for PC's and we now have an actual PC games market thanks to steam.

"Next generation" games could be made for PC today, but for the most part nobody is making them. It's a business decision as much as anything else. Yes, people will make engines that can scale up to take advantage of more power but I think the baseline is going to remain low. I mean, how many games do you see today with kinda shitty models and lighting where the dev says they learned from WoW and are going for style over raw tech? (Saying you are targeting low specs is also a nice way to save on production costs)

The PC games that have been leading the market for the past 10 years or more have been technologically pretty conservative. For a while PC gaming sales charts was literally all The Sims and WoW, with some Roller Coaster Tycoon sneaking in from time to time. Look at the leading PC game makers - Blizzard games are not particularly impressive technologically, the Source Engine is pretty antiquated in many respects. But an antiquated engine that runs on low spec hardware is now a virtue.

Sure, you can always just pump up the resolution and frame rate of a game with more power, and I'm sure that will happen, but I suspect min specs will continue to rise very slowly.

[Kageru]

Since the new consoles are imminent and have to last for the better part of a decade there will be a sudden jump in demand matching their arrival. And that will translate directly into the PC versions.

The past 10 years of PC gaming have been about retail having no interest in it and choking the pipe. The reason WoW and Sims dominated is at least in part because that's all that was being stocked and those numbers are retail sales figures. Thankfully there is the possibility of an alternative now. Though I think part of the motivation is also that games are so damn expensive they need to cross all platforms to make back their money.

[Lantyssa]

Many universities either issue or require laptops for their incoming freshmen.  It's what people either have or first comes to mind when they think "computer".

[Merusk]

I don't know how people game with 15'-17' displays, crappy sound, and mouseing on whatever the hell is handy.  Maybe browser games or those that require neither timing or precision.  More power to you if you can (or have to) make it work.  Way too many compromises for my liking.

The same way we did in the '90s when a 17" display was a 'large' display, sonny! 

Many universities either issue or require laptops for their incoming freshmen.  It's what people either have or first comes to mind when they think "computer".

Also a good point. Nobody's buying a PC and a Laptop for their kid, so laptop is now the default gaming rig for a lot of folks.

I want to revise my "phone" statement to "tablet."   I realized this as I was playing on the iPad last night.. which is even smaller than a 15" display. 

[KallDrexx]

I game on a latpop because it allows me to game in the same room as my wife when she's either using her computer (kitchen) or watching tv (bedroom or living room). 

Why would I want to seclude myself to the corner of the house just because I want to game?

[Kail]

I use a laptop because it was only about $500 more than a comparable PC when I bought it, and I can use it for school and on trips and the occasional LAN party.  My next computer will probably be a desktop, but the laptop works fine for almost everything out now, since modern games will run on just about anything put together in the last four years or so.  PC gaming is like 90% ports from consoles which are half a decade old, and most of the rest of it is indie or casual games which you can run on a slide rule, so I don't have much of an issue with anything.  The only release I've had problems with was Rage, which I can live without.

[MisterNoisy]

In keeping up with Mechwarrior Online, I keep running across threads on their forum where people are either saying, "Is this laptop good enough to run the game?" or, "I just got this laptop, so I hope the game works on it."

Did nobody get the memo that laptops are crap for 3D rendering stuff?  Are people just trying to broil their thighs under two hundred degrees of agony?  Or has some magical device been released that can actually support fast-paced rendered graphics and I just didn't notice?

I'm sitting here next to my water-cooled i5 machine with the geforce 670 card in it, in front of a 27-inch screen, and I run across some games even with that system that I feel are a little too twitchy when lots of things are going on onscreen.  I can't imagine someone with a laptop being able to play some of these things smoothly without the graphics turned all the way down to stick figure level, and I can't imagine a laptop's interface not being crappier than a full-sized keyboard.

I actually like and kinda feel for those guys with the notebooks (or random crap OEM desktop) that are trying to play games on them.  GPU vendors and CPU makers have made it a complete pain in the ass for 'Joe Consumer that doesn't keep up with this crap' to know just what will and won't work on what, and the situation is even worse when it comes to mobile GPUs.  At least they're interested in PC gaming still, though I've noticed a big bump in PC gaming chatter even among console diehards as this console generation winds down.  Since the manufacturers of the hardware have made it a complete pain in the ass for noobs, they've gotta ask somewhere.

[Logain]

Target specs for pc games aren't moving much anymore because they're starting to bump up against a wall when it comes to making the chips smaller/faster. That's why there are so many multi-core processors, hell I've got an 8 core in my desktop. The clock speeds don't change much, and if they do you need a crazy cooling system to keep it from melting.

As far as consoles go, I hope the next generation of consoles fail horribly thereby leading to a pc gaming rennaisance. Tired of shitty console ports that were obviously designed for people that can't handle more than a dozen buttons. A mouse is far superior to thumbsticks any day. Maybe then we'll be able to buy games in a retail outlet instead of basically having to choose between Steam and..uh...Steam.

[Pennilenko]

I have a bleeding edge desktop that I game on frequently, however I also have a $1200 dollar laptop that plays every single game that my bleeding edge desktop does. I find myself using the laptop more and more just because i can kick back on the couch and exist in the same space as my wife and my son and get my gaming fix at the same time. The seclusion that my desktop imposes using its fixed location is fitting into my lifestyle less and less.

[Merusk]

As far as consoles go, I hope the next generation of consoles fail horribly thereby leading to a pc gaming rennaisance. Tired of shitty console ports that were obviously designed for people that can't handle more than a dozen buttons. A mouse is far superior to thumbsticks any day. Maybe then we'll be able to buy games in a retail outlet instead of basically having to choose between Steam and..uh...Steam.

Not likely.  Even if most consoles are played multiplayer via the internet vs. in the same living room these days, consoles at least give you that option. Plus they're worlds cheaper than a PC and require less maintenance.   I'm a PC fan but I understand it's going to be a niche market for the remainder of the time it garners any support.

Consumers want plug & play and appliance-levels of required support.  That's never going to change and PCs aren't that platform.  Consoles will be king until the next platform (which looks more and more likely to be mobile/ tablet) unseats them.

[Logain]

Yeah, I know it's unlikely to the point of never going to happen, but I can dream right. I've been building and gaming on PCs since I was 8 and it's sad that pc gaming will inevitably die. We'll all be reduced to dumbed down, lowest common denominator shit. Gaming on a touch screen tablet doesn't sound very appealing either.

[IainC]

Yeah, I know it's unlikely to the point of never going to happen, but I can dream right. I've been building and gaming on PCs since I was 8 and it's sad that pc gaming will inevitably die. We'll all be reduced to dumbed down, lowest common denominator shit. Gaming on a touch screen tablet doesn't sound very appealing either.

Devs will make games that will sell. As long as there are people who want more complex or deeper game experiences, there will be companies producing it. The current AAA model will almost certainly die but it will be because the model is unsustainable and not because the platform won't support it. Gaming will evolve to match the hardware, I remember when mobile gaming was Snake and now there are retail quality games available on mobile platforms. There was a demand for it so developers built them.

[Soulflame]

I game on a latpop because it allows me to game in the same room as my wife when she's either using her computer (kitchen) or watching tv (bedroom or living room). 

Why would I want to seclude myself to the corner of the house just because I want to game?

Yea, this covers my case as well.  I use a reading desk to hold the laptop, and that seems to work very well to keep the heat away.  In terms of performance, my laptop runs D3 adequately.

[Kageru]

I game on a latpop because it allows me to game in the same room as my wife when she's either using her computer (kitchen) or watching tv (bedroom or living room). 

Why would I want to seclude myself to the corner of the house just because I want to game?

Yea, this covers my case as well.  I use a reading desk to hold the laptop, and that seems to work very well to keep the heat away.  In terms of performance, my laptop runs D3 adequately.

My living room is mostly a big table with two PC's on it, hers and mine, facing each side. so I can look across the table from my PC and see my wife on hers. The PC has pretty much replaced everything else, we don't have a TV (she does have TV card in her PC, and a sofa behind) and most of the media we watch is streamed :)

[kildorn]

The only reasons I stopped using gaming laptops was the cost (they're about twice the cost of an equivalent desktop at least), and the inability to piecemeal upgrade. But they're entirely functional.

What you see a lot of on forms are "can my shitty integrated graphics card run this", less than "can my laptop run this". Laptops rocking actual 3d cards instead of wonky pseudo supported shit are actually pretty common now. My work laptop does the integrated/nVidia alternate path thing when plugged in or running on battery and rocks 8G of RAM. I would see no issues with people owning one of those and expecting it to do everything for them (aside from play DVDs on an plane, good fucking luck with the battery life)

My desktop can always upgrade to a better video card if I find it wanting, but there's nothing wrong with trying to use a gaming laptop if you can afford it. There's just something wrong with trying to use a non gaming laptop for high end games (you will be miserable/have compatibility issues all over the place)

[UnSub]

Maybe then we'll be able to buy games in a retail outlet instead of basically having to choose between Steam and..uh...Steam.

Nope. But mainly because retail is being squeezed (at least for video games) and the next console generation will see publishers go fully digital download ala Steam. Probably not day 1 of the new console launch, but over time, with simultaneous physical and digital launches.

[Kageru]

Retail for products that are innately digital pretty obviously has a limited lifespan before it becomes not viable. Especially since the retailers dealing in second hand games has made them even more of an impediment than the cut they take out of the profits.

There's not really much differentiation in games retail either, the publishers call the shots pretty much.

[Surlyboi]

I've been gaming on my portables for years. My current rig eats everything up, as did my last one. 2.7ghz i7, 16 gigs of RAM, 768gig SSD and a 1gig GT650M. Does it get hot? Fuck yeah it does, but it's not sitting on my lap and hasn't been since 2008.

[Kageru]

And it probably cost you about 2-3 equivalently powerful desktops (trying to build an alienware machine with those specs comes out about 3k$). Which is cool if you've got the money, need a powerful portable rig or have limited space to put a desktop. But a lot of people don't have any of the three, get suckered by salesmen promising them the budget laptop is a "powerful" gaming machine and then complain when it's a dog.

That said the intel onboard graphics (I have a netbook) probably doesn't need to be quite as lame as it is.

[raydeen]

I started mainly using laptops back in '01 or '02 so that I could game/work and watch my then infant daughter at the same time. My last really good machine is from '06 and I'm just now hitting the point where new games just won't run at all on it (Secret World). My work MacBook is picking up the slack somewhat (WoW, D3, Witcher) but I'm pretty much at the point where I've got everything I want and probably won't upgrade for a couple of years (unless something super duper comes out that I must have). I'm probably part of the growing majority that just likes having one machine that can do everything sorta kinda well and be portable rather than have one uber rig that is mind blowing but stationary.

[Miguel]

The fact is most modern titles are CPU bound at most laptop's native panel resolution.  The GPU power isn't needed until you start connecting them to external displays that force more pixels.