The PCGA’s goal is to introduce a quality bar for PC games so customers know better what to expect from PC game purchases.
Remember the PC Gaming Alliance? Founded all the way back in 2008, a few major players have dropped off since. Nonetheless, the alliance is still determined to further PC gaming, and PCGA president Matt Ployhar has just detailed an “OS-agnostic” certification program for PC games, aiming to introduce a quality bar for PC games so customers know better what to expect from PC game purchases.
The program, which is completely opt-in, is in part an attempt to achieve standardization across games within the open PC market, hopefully encouraging more consumer confidence and as a result, more sales for developers. Members of the alliance can get their games certified for free, while the cost for non-members is $500 per title if applicants test the game themselves, or $2500 if they want the PCGA to help test it – still considerably lower than any console certification program.
PCGA-certified games would sport an official logo showing compliance with the standards, designed to be used on physical retail and digital products.
“We don’t need to have it completely locked down and so restrictive,” says Ployhar. “We don’t need to tell people, ‘This is your minimum configuration.’ But, you still need to hit a certain quality bar.” Ployhar says, as an example, games would have be be able to maintain 30 frames per second at 720p on medium settings, and have controller support if it’s a multi-platform title.
Some of you may be having Vietnam-style flashbacks to “Games for Windows – LIVE” after reading this, but Ployhar assures us that that the platform-agnostic nature of PCGA’s program is one aspect that will help make his system more viable that Microsoft’s train-wreck.
Source: Gamasutra
