It seemed like a good idea to buy the thing anyway, not only because of the blogging opportunities it offers, always a major consideration these days, when I'm writing about games a lot more than I really play them, (And just how long can that go on, eh? Eh??) but because of that too-good-to-be true "Lifetime Subscription With Every Early Access Purchase" offer.
As a blogger, even if the game tanks, $25 would be a fair price to pay, just to there for the drama. Lots to write about in a crash-and-burn. And if it turns into a success, $25 for permanent subscription-level perks is an insane bargain. Anything in-between would just be par for the course for an EA buy-in so it seemed like a no-lose scenario.
I was all set to Add To Cart when something caught my eye:
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
MINIMUM:
Processor: i9-9900K 3.6 GHz 8 Core
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce RTX 2070
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 20 GB available space
Wait? What? i9?
This is going to sound very strange to a lot of people reading this, I know, but I can't recall ever even seeing a spec for a game I've been interested in that had an i9 requirement as a minimum. In fact, and you'll laugh when you hear this, I wasn't aware there was an i9.
I think the highest I've noticed before was i7. My PC runs on an i5.
I have been looking at upgrades, although only because my desktop, which is nine (!) years old, isn't eligible for Windows 11 so I'm going to have to make some kind of decision about what that means in a few months, when Microsoft switch off support for Windows 10. All I need to do to make it acceptable, though, is to enable Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 in the BIOS, which I could do quite easily, and swap the CPU for one on MS's approved list.
The thing is, it's not the i-number that's the issue there. My laptop, which is already running W11, has an i5. In fact, Windows 11 runs on an i3. There are plenty of them on the Approved list. So, when I've been looking at possible processor upgrades, I haven't been thinking about how much more powerful they are, or how much newer; only how cheap. And there are plenty of relatively cheap CPUs that Windows 11 approves of.
Then there's the question of functionality, aka "if it ain't broke...". The reason my PC is nine years old, by far the longest I've ever gone without buying a new box, is that it runs everything I'm interested in without any noticeable problems.
I have upgraded it a few times. Most recently, I doubled the Ram a few years back. Still only 16GB, which I realize is nothing these days, but more than adequate for anything I'm asking it to do.
I also bought a decent video card (GeForce RTX4070) in the summer of 2023, which made a big difference to my gaming then, although I'm so used to it now I don't think about it any more. I've been doing a lot of video editing recently and that's been painless and comfortable. I haven't run into any games I wanted to play but couldn't up to now. Other than the W11 issue, there hasn't seemed to be any point thinking about further upgrades, let alone replacing the whole machine.
I'm still not sure there is but even if I did decide to swap out the CPU, I'd only be looking at going up to an i7 because my motherboard, a Gigabyte z170 Gaming K3, can't accept anything higher. The incentive to upgrade isn't really there, either. I've looked into it before and the difference between my i5, which has always bench-marked as faster than expected, and the i7s I've considered isn't all that great. If you can't see the difference, what's the point?
If I did decide to go further than that, it would mean changing the motherboard and while I'm okay with a certain amount of fiddling about inside the case that's where I draw the line, so it would mean a new PC. And I am not about to buy a new PC just so I can play an Early Access game where I ride around on horseback solving mysteries.
I could just buy the game and try it to see if it runs anyway. It might. I've played a few games before, where my PC didn't meet minimum spec and they've worked fine. I've never refunded a Steam game but I believe you get a couple of hours grace. Plenty of time to see if it would run acceptably. Or at all.
So, I suppose I might do that. At the moment, though, I'm kind of disposed not to bother. It'd be nice to be in at the beginning but I'll lay odds Equinox:Homecoming will be in Early Access for a year or two so there's no hurry. Also, give it a few months and we'll all have a better idea of whether it's going to be worth our time or not.
Right now, I'm thinking more along the lines of whether I might want to replace my PC later in the year after all. Maybe the i9 minimum for the horse game is a straw in the wind. After all, that processor generation, for all that I didn't even know it existed, is itself about five years old now. If I'm going to carry on playing new games into my retirement, I guess I'll have to get a new machine eventually. Maybe now's the time.
No rush. No need for snap decisions. I might start looking, though. See what's around. Given the volatile nature of both the global economy right now and of computer hardware in general, it's always hard to know when is or isn't a good time to buy. It's always fun window-shopping though.
Finally, dragging my thoughts away from the personal, what does this i9 minimum spec mean for the game itself? According to Games Radar, Colin Cragg, CEO of Blue Scarab, the developer behind Equinox:Homecoming, is aiming for an audience of "horse girls", described evocatively by Ashley Bardhan, who wrote the piece, as
"Graceless, American; rough hands, and breath that smells of apple pie – the stereotypical female horse enthusiast, or horse girl".
Cragg used to be CEO of Star Stable, the well-established long-running horse-based MMO (What? You didn't know there were more?). It's a successful game: "$35 million of recurring revenue every year".
Star Stable, though, has much lower minimum specs than Equinox: Homecoming. My nine-year old PC would have no problems running it. In fact, even my laptop meets the requirements, integrated graphics and all.
The interview and especially Ashley's commentary is full of entirely appropriate and very welcome observations about the need to address the "52% of the world population" currently being ignored by conventional AAA game design, while at the same time making them feel like they're being "catered to" and not infantalized:
"characters say "fuck" like the teenagers they're meant to be, rather than speak in My Little Pony talking points about friendship and magic"
I'm not entirely sure all these points connect, exactly. I'm not a major My Little Pony fan but I never really thought of it as an IP that appealed much to teenagers in the first place, sweary or otherwise. And I don't believe either friendship or magic come pre-gendered.
More importantly, I wonder how many Star Stable players have hardware capable of running Equinox:Homecoming? I don't and my ageing set-up generally falls around average in those Steam surveys, which I'm guessing are already somewhat biased towards both males and hobbyists.
I wish I could run it, though. The more I hear about the game, the more interesting it sounds. I look forward to reading someone else's First Impressions. Sadly, my own will have to wait, for now.
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Having had kids who loved horses growing up (and going to 'horse camp' at the county parks every year), I know the "horse girl" type. One thing that was missed --at least in the States-- is that you have to have money to own horses. Stabling a horse (if you don't have the land yourself), feeding, grooming, etc. all costs money, and that's not counting the cost of the horses themselves.
ReplyDeleteStill, I find it interesting enough that I think I'll keep an eye on this.
As far as I know it's a pretty expensive hobby over here, too. I was unusually interested in the topic when I was about nine or ten. Unusually for a boy, that is. I read all the "Jill" books and the Brumby books and made my mother promise me if she ever won the football pools she'd buy me a black horse with a white star on its forehead. I never actually went as far as getting on a horse, though.
DeleteI went ahead an bought it mainly because the $25 for lifetime access to all story content was a bit too much to resist.
ReplyDeleteAt first glance, i9 seems like a pretty beefy processor to be the dead minimum that will run it. However, doing some research reveals that the first ones came out in 2017, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about :-)
I checked the minimum spec for Once Human on PC after writing the post an dit's an i5 4460. OH runs like silk on my machine at fairly high graphic settings. Wuthering Waves is the same. It seems hard to believe Equinox requires a CPU two generations above either of those. I might just buy it and see what happens. Worst case, I own it and have the Lifetime sub but can't play it until I upgrade. If it hangs around like most MMOs, that won't really be a problem.
DeleteI feel like this is an EA "CYA" requirement, based on nothing but my natural skepticism. The game is probably not very optimized yet and if people complain about that then "Well you PC doesn't meet the minimum requirements" might quiet some of the punters.
ReplyDeleteThe other weird thing is that plenty of gamers use Ryzen processors; can they not run the game?
I read a bunch of reviews of the game on Steam this evening. Although the rating is Positive, many of the favorable reviews specifically say they're cutting it all kinds of slack because horse games in general are so bad and they want to encourage anything that might turn into something better. Few of them reckon Equinox is ready for EA and many expressly call out the performance and optimization.
DeleteThere is one review from someone playing with an i7 cpu that gives precise instructions on some tweaks that apparently make a huge difference but the general tenor of the reviews has made me think it would be a good idea to wait and see how things go before jumping in.