Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with pcgames

Whose game is this?

MrMulan — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:54:49 -0800

Who owns the games on Steam?(or any digital download service) Are there any online, resources, blogs, sites that are keeping track of what seems to me a big looming question regarding IP?

When I purchase a game from Steam, am I buying or renting?
What will it take for this to get litigated? What are the possible ramifications of any decision?

If I purchase a game, I am free to resell the game after I play it, be it for console or PC. I can resell most anything I purchase.
Steam says that it is against their EULA to sell your free account that you have purchased games for.
I tried going through the Steam forums, but all I get is emotional opinions on one side or the other.

Personally, I am interested because I use Steam exclusively for all game purchases for a variety of reasons, and am wondering what happens 1,10,100 years from now when I want to give or sell Plants vs Zombies to somebody.

We want shirts, but don't want to infringe on any trademarks or copyrights.

IndigoRain — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 19:07:03 -0800

I run a website dedicated to vintage PC games (that is, games from the late 80s, early 90s). Ad revenue has been declining, and a co-admin suggested making t-shirts to sell to support the site. I have questions about what art/words we can use on the shirts. Obviously we can't use actual screenshots or art from the games or boxes. We'd also stay away from using the company's logos and the names of the games, assuming that those are also trademarked.

1. Can we use the game's character's names as a t-shirt slogan? (e.g. "Long live King Bob!") What about the names of the fictional lands within the games? (e.g. "I went to the Land of the Purple Isles and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!")

2. My website domain name contains the name of the company who created these vintage games. It's still okay to use my domain name on the shirts, isn't it?

3. Can we use fan-art on the t-shirts that depict the characters or scenes from the games? How different does the fan-art have to be from the actual art from the game?

4. Can we use any quotes from the games?

Favorite racing games?

clorox — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:37:20 -0800

I need a new driving/racing game to play on my computer. What are your favorite racing games, and why? I'm a huge fan of racing games, but I've played the crap out of the ones that I have. Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, Gran Turismo 1 and 2 (emulated), and the Colin McRae series are all familiar enough to me that I'm not enjoying them as much as I used to.

So does anyone else enjoy driving and racing games as much as I do? Which games have you spent countless hours playing? What did you like about them?

(I'm looking for something a little more realistic than, say, NFS: Underground, but more arcadey than the likes of Grand Prix Legends and Richard Burns Rally, but I'd love to hear about games from all parts of the spectrum.)

Safe, cheap PC games?

Ky — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:15:37 -0800

At Target, there is a tiny little aisle of cheap one-CD software games priced at $10 or less. Which ones aren't insidious? We tried to get our dad a couple of those cheap puzzle/card PC games to fill up his free time, but when he tried to install them and ran into problems, I checked it out and noticed something pretty evil.

The games were published by iWin.com (iWin Games). It would install two things: the game manager, and the game itself. During installation, I believe the install window tried to trick you into installing other games off their website.

The game "manager" software thing must be online at all times and cannot be removed separately from the game itself, otherwise the game won't work. I didn't leave the games installed long enough to see what else that horrible Las Vegas-like manager software did, but I'll bet it's all advertising. After the first game installation and just catching a glimpse of all of this behavior, I couldn't uninstall the damn thing fast enough. I mean, I know it's not illegal and I know plenty of people have no problems with this particular software model, but it's not something I want on the parental computer.

For a paid product, this feels like adware. Then the fact that it must be online to play the simple non-MMO installed game makes it feel like spyware. AND the fact that I had to actually go into Safe Mode (WinXP) to fully remove all the crap it left screams evil in general (why is there an Internet Explorer "hook" DLL that can't be deleted otherwise?).

Geez. So the question is simple. Are there any $10-and-under PC games (of the solitaire/puzzle variety) that absolutely do not have anything insidious about them such as required online connection or tricky "Install this now!" buttons that would confuse older non-savvy folks? ('Cause we know he'd click all them blinky buttons.)

Free would be fine too, though technically these were supposed to be gifts.

TIA

Why does GH3 for PC no longer launch?

ArsncHeart — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:31:46 -0800

When I try to run Guitar Hero 3 for PC, GH3.exe will show up in the Task Manager, but the game does not launch. Until about 3 days ago, it was working fine. What's going on? After enjoying playing Guitar Hero 3 for months on my PC (the lag issues eventually settled down), the game no longer works. GH: Aerosmith still works perfectly.

Clicking on the shortcut, opening it from it's actual location, and trying to get it to auto-launch by reinserting the DVD all result in the same thing: GH3.exe will show in the task manager, but the game itself will not launch.

I have gone through about 6 uninstall/reinstalls, with the same result each time. Another interesting piece of information: I downloaded the 1.3 patch from Aspyr and when I run it it tells me that GH3 is not installed on my machine.

I have a Dell XPS420 straight out of the retail box that was purchased last November. It's running Vista; I'm assuming the 32 bit version. Up until I got this machine, I was a Mac person, so I don't know much about how to get other specs - if you need them to help, I will gladly oblige if you tell me how to find them.

The only thing I could find on this issue online was at AMD Game Forums but it didn't seem to be resolved.

Any help you can provide would be awesome. Thanks much.

Can I use bluetooth headphones to play pc games?

sickinthehead — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:17:00 -0800

Can I use bluetooth headphones to play pc games? I'm actually thinking of getting a pair for my brother who's an army medic who just got a new computer with bluetooth and some games like gta4 command and conquer. I know when I try to hook them up to my ps3 I can use them to chat to other players online, but I can't hear the game sounds. I was wondering if the same would happen with a pc?

What to play on an X31?

pilibeen — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:02:16 -0800

What are some decent offline games I'll be able to run on my new (to me) Thinkpad X31? I just got an IBM Thinkpad X31 off ebay to replace my even more ancient T22.

I'm going to have a lot of time over the next few months w/ no internet connection, and I was wondering what sort've fun offline games I'll be able to run on this thing without causing it to overheat and desolder itself.

I don't game too much, but I like puzzlers along the lines of Crayon Physics and Incredible Machine, and also enjoyed what I played of The Longest Journey.

I was thinking I could probably run some of the older Myst titles...where in the series would be a good place to start?

The PC specs are 1.6ghz Pentium M, and 512 mb ram...I'm guessing these things were just integrated video.

Thanks in advance...

Will The Sims 2 run .iso and retail expansions together?

Roman Graves — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:14:55 -0800

A question for Sims 2 players. I know The Sims can be temperamental. If I have expansions installed from .iso files, and I install a retail copy of the latest one on top of them, will it throw a wrench into the works? Or can they peacefully co-exist?

Who is this professional golfer?

Raven13 — Fri, 05 May 2006 06:56:29 -0800

Help me identify this golfer in one of the Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2006 PC game intro movies. Who is the guy who bounces a golf ball off his club, then off his knee and foot (possibly in reverse order), then catches it and gives the EA sports slogan? I thought it was Sergio Garcia, but the guy in the intro seems to speak perfect American-accented English and I know Garcia is from Spain, thus I would expect him to have at least a slight accent. Thanks!

Doom, but with Nazis

thewittyname — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 19:24:32 -0800

Help me find some simple shoot-em-up types games for either the PC, PlayStation 2 or the XBox I'd like to find some PC/PS2/XBox games for my father-in-law that are relatively simple-minded shoot-em-ups. I'm thinking along the lines of original Doom or Serious Sam. Something with swarms of enemies and not too much in the way of puzzle-solving or strict mission-based play.

The problem is that he doesn't want to play games with aliens or anything too sci-fi. Something more historical with just humans is preferred. However, most games like that, like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, are too complicated for him. He wants something more mindless with lots of enemies.

He has access to a PC and both an XBox (the original, not a 360) or a PS2. Any ideas?

What PC games can be played off a disc with no installation whatsoever?

Jairus — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 20:53:31 -0800

What PC games don't require any installation whatsoever? Or put another way, what PC games could I burn to CD/DVD and play on a system that I don't want to copy any files to? Linux-plus-games-on-a-DVD suggestions are also welcomed, although I would prefer games that would run on an existing XP installation.

Help me identify this game from the 1980s.

grimmelm — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 17:31:59 -0800

ObscureComputerGameFilter [mi] I'm looking for the name of a computer game I saw in a store. Once. In the late 1980s.

I think it was set on a space station. Your character has been betrayed, maybe, and is currently in jail. Maybe. You have to run around the space station, evading security, gathering information, and doing, er, stuff. I believe that the game presented a side-on view: your character could run around, jump (or climb?) from floor to floor, talk to various characters, and, er, do stuff.

It was a display copy, so I remember a few details from the manual. Most notably, there were various classes of people and special locations, of which not all were good. Thus, there were three bartenders (maybe) on the station, of whom two could be trusted. "To find out which," the manual would say, "turn to page XX," where XX was some two-digit number. There were other such things - spaceships? merchants? I don’t remember - and in each case, the manual would say that page XX would tell you which were trustworthy. Page XX itself was blank.

I remember being intrigued by this setup, although the game itself looked like it wasn't very much fun. The only other thing I can remember is that I was also looking at a copy of Infocom’s Suspended at the same time (I think), which suggests a rough timeframe: probably some time 1985-90.

Ring any bells for anyone?