A question from one of our GD members

Can i ask you something? You say on some games pages that a game is "badly optimized". What do you mean by that?

Ahh good question,
Optimization is an ongoing part of a games development process.
The term optimization refers to the developers trying to get a game to run at its best while using the least amount of hardware resource. They can do this by adjusting their coding.
Some games, like GTA IV, are considered badly optimised.

In GTA IV's case this seemed to happen when it was ported across from console to PC. You will notice that some people with very powerful computers cannot seem to get a good performance from GTA IV whereas some people with weaker computers can get the game to run OK. This inconsistency suggests that the game should run on lots of computers but due to it being poorly optimised it does not.

For any game that is regarded as poorly optimized gamers should consider more than just the official system requirements as they do not always give a clear picture. This is one of the reasons for our game ratings page. Each PC game has a ratings page where people can post up their detailed system and FPS scores and everyone else can come along and view them to see which games will run on which computers.

What other games do people feel are poorly optimized?