GDC panel; the viability of PC gaming

[Brother None]

While hoping for more interesting news from the Game Developer Conference, we couldn't skip over this fairly relevant panel on the viability of PC Gaming:<blockquote>Since 2001, annual sales of PC games have fallen significantly. In 2006, of the top ten PC games, five were in Electronic Arts' Sims franchise. Sports games, simulations, and action games are, according to Edery, in "steep decline." Clearly, the reign of the big, triple-A boxed title is in jeopardy.

(...)

Capps, who has worked on Unreal Tournament titles as well as Gears of War, was bleak: "PC Gaming is really falling apart. It killed us to make Unreal Tournament 3 cross-platform, but Epic had to do it to [recap its investment in the production costs]."

Part of the problem is piracy. Big titles get stolen by cyber thieves, and it hurts revenue. "The market," said Capps, "that would buy a $600 video card knows how Bittorrent works."

Does that mean casual games, which exponentially outsell what PC gaming traditionalists think of as A-list titles, will one day rule? Hilleman made a point: casual is a poor choice of words. The average player on EA's Pogo "casual" game network plays "for 24 hours a week. There's nothing casual about that." </blockquote>Link: coverage on ExtremeTech

Spotted on Blue's News.

 

[Jebus]

But will the gaming companies listen? No. Will they learn? No.

They will keep on produce games for the same old saturated market, keep on producing practically the exact same games everyone else does and then - OMG! - be surprised when they don't recap their production costs.

What games do NOT sell less and less, then? The so-called 'niche' games, like the Paradox Interactive titles, the Hitman series, or even the Sim series: games that have a 'hook', something that makes them unique and makes them stand out from the crowd. THAT'S what people buy, not yet another game of which they've played dozens before.

And a prime example of a game that has a 'hook' is, of course, Fallout. Hell, it's got so many hooks it could liven up a dozen Peter Pan LARP conventions.
But will Bethesda use that hook? Will they keep what made Fallout special, or try and cater to that semi-fictional 'casual gamer aged 12-16' market? Because with every passing day, I fear more and more they're heading for that second path.

 

[Makenshi]

"The market," said Capps, "that would buy a $600 video card knows how Bittorrent works."

As if torrents were used only for getting PC games... I know a guy who has already 45 games for his PS2, all downloaded from <snip>

And there are torrents for almost all consoles there. Not to mention that's not the only existing torrent site, or even the most popular.

EDIT: Banned for a week. No warez talk, especially no linking to warez sites. Idiots. -Sander

 

[taxacaria]

So the gamer is the reason for shitty developement?
Software industry is unable to develope a decent copy protection,
so they have to make crappy multi platform games to lower their losses?
lol
A mediocre game becomes a casual product, because it's a mediocre game.
How about some quality? Gamers will play games as long as they're not bored.
Think about the ridiculous short playing time of console games.
If this goes on, we'll see one hour playing time games in ten years.
And they'll say, that's what is wanted by the gamers.
Gaming industry should produce better games instead of complaining about their evil customers.

 

[Sander]

As if torrents were used only for getting PC games... I know a guy who has already 45 games for his PS2, all downloaded from <snip>

And there are torrents for almost all consoles there. Not to mention that's not the only existing torrent site, or even the most popular.

That does it, temp-ban for a week. I'm tired of handing out warnings. You're being made an example of.

 

[Zaij]

If there were more incentive to pay then people would, but at the moment they're stuck between $90AUD for a half finished game or $80AUD for a half finished game and a buttload of bandwidth (steam, etc). Special content for subscribing is the way to go, as well as enough of the trashy cookie-cutter games.

 

[The Vault Dweller]

Part of the problem is piracy. Big titles get stolen by cyber thieves, and it hurts revenue. "The market," said Capps, "that would buy a $600 video card knows how Bittorrent works."

I'm going to kill Ratty once he gets back...whenever he does.

And a prime example of a game that has a 'hook' is, of course, Fallout. Hell, it's got so many hooks it could liven up a dozen Peter Pan LARP conventions.

Great quote!

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller

 

[SuAside]

a few random observations:

i'm sure that the decline of pc gaming has nothing to do with the quality of said games. it's only natural that EA can puke out a dozen sequels of craptastic quality before it hurts sales, right?

i'm also sure it has nothing to do with the continuous harrasment of pc gamers with stupid copy protections (StarFarce, TAGES, etc to name a few). some games simply don't run at all, due to it. others using for instance TAGES cripple their own game causing it to generate fake bugs as a form of copy protection (this obviously is asking for trouble). anyway, all these protections are usually cracked BEFORE actual channel release! the longest that i know of lately was DSO, which took 3 weeks to crack properly. yay! that sure is worth pissing off THOUSANDS of paying customers by implementing a security system that totally sucks and causes a gazillion false positives?

those are probably the main factors to why pc gamers often leech instead of buy.

due to old connections with a gamereview community, i get to test a lot of games without buying them. i do buy those i really like, but the pickings are rather slim.

a recent illustration would be Resident Evil 4. it's a straight console port with no mouse support, not even in the menus. keymapping happens outside the game. gameplay is horrible, plot is full of holes and the cutscenes are uglier than the ingame graphics. mouse support can be added through a thirdparty hack, but then aiming is still crappy (how nice that a random guy can make a mousehack for menus and aiming in one day after release, huh. shows how much work went into the port). then people are amazed pc gamers dont buy this steaming pile o' shit?

PS: @ Makenshi: PS2 leechers need to have a pc to leech and burn their precious pirate treasure.

 

[DirtyDreamDesigner]

Apart from the warez talk, Makenshi does have a point. Everything gets pirated eventually. Blaming the decline of PC gaming on it is quite simply stupid.

The real reason should be sought in the thing remarked earlier; namely, the craptastic development process invested into games: more and more bloom and other useless shit added to games at the expense of gameplay, story, atmosphere and most importantly substance.

The other reason is the inevitable retardation of the society which permeates everything, the consequences of which are not limited to gaming. One needs only channel surf for a few minutes to really see it.

Independent games is where it's at, as is smaller budget games with real work put into them. Hopefully game companies will realize that someday.

 

[Sorrow]

a few random observations:

i'm sure that the decline of pc gaming has nothing to do with the quality of said games. it's only natural that EA can puke out a dozen sequels of craptastic quality before it hurts sales, right?

So true. I stopped regularly buying new titles after playing NWN - my expectations of progress weren't fulfilled - I expected BG to be better than Fallout - it was worser, I expected NWN to be better than BG2 - it was worser, etc. etc. etc.
The genre degraded instead of becoming better and better, but newspapers, were talking about "innovations" and "genre reserructing" games .

i'm also sure it has nothing to do with the continuous harrasment of pc gamers with stupid copy protections (StarFarce, TAGES, etc to name a few). some games simply don't run at all, due to it. others using for instance TAGES cripple their own game causing it to generate fake bugs as a form of copy protection (this obviously is asking for trouble). anyway, all these protections are usually cracked BEFORE actual channel release! the longest that i know of lately was DSO, which took 3 weeks to crack properly. yay! that sure is worth pissing off THOUSANDS of paying customers by implementing a security system that totally sucks and causes a gazillion false positives?

I second that! I really hate copy protection. Not because of errors and fake alerts, but because they are unnecessary to me and not a single thing that is unnecessary for a game to work should be installed on my computer .
Games should be as small as possible (without losing quality) and be as resource-efficient as possible.

Also, I hate to type stupid "keys" when installing a game .

 

[SuAside]

Apart from the warez talk, Makenshi does have a point. Everything gets pirated eventually. Blaming the decline of PC gaming on it is quite simply stupid.

but as said, you cant burn a warez'ed copy of a ps2 game with a ps2. you need a secundary platform (pc) to burn it and often you need a hack or modchip to allow them to play on consoles.

I really hate copy protection. Not because of errors and fake alerts, but because they are unnecessary to me and not a single thing that is unnecessary for a game to work should be installed on my computer .
Games should be as small as possible (without losing quality) and be as resource-efficient as possible.

Also, I hate to type stupid "keys" when installing a game

the exercise does seem questionable when a warez copy is 50 times easier to install.
key ready in a txt file, copy paste.
copy protection removed through hacked exe, no 30 tries to make a legit copy working because the cd isnt recognised (yes, i'm looking at you W40koW).

still, there are some developers who've picked up on this, the most recent example being Infernal, a quite enjoyable (although 'stupid') shoot em up. it has no copy protection and no key. hassle free.

it is worthwhile to point out however that these protection are often imposed by the publisher, not the developer. for instance, in DSO, the devs were not involved at all. the publisher installed TAGES on their own (a security system that changes and hides gamevariables), with all problems that followed...

 

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

The trouble with PC games is getting them, I don't live in the middle of nowhere but if I want a pc game (that's not in the charts) I'll have to get a bus to the next town.

Console games can be bought anywhere, my local supermarket Budgens even has them. Then there's Woolworths, Currys and the Co Op, Tescos etc.

'Game' (then EB) had one wall running the length of the shop plus the back wall and several freestanding shelving units just for PC games, while consoles were relegated to the far corner. Now it's the other way around, hardly any choice of PC games except chart and budget releases. Then most stuff only stays on the shelf for 3 months tops, if you don't buy it in that time hard luck.

Yeah I know there's Steam and it's competitors, there's even places like Amazon, but I don't use credit cards and even if I did I'm not 100% comfortable shopping online, wrong generation.

What I'm getting at is, PC game = Betamax, console games = VHS.

 

[wamingo]

Well, to download console games you need a pc. This extra step might be stopping enough piracy for it to make better business. But apart from that, you're right. It's not piracy that is killing the pc market.
Blaming piracy is simply shifting blame onto something that is completely uncontrollable, as if something could be done - and then it's not likely to be more than a small part of the whole truth.

The hardware race kills off by far the biggest market. End of story. Easier and cheaper to buy the 500 dollar console that'll last at least 3 years, than to spend 600-1000 dollars every other year on pc gear. That's not to mention that consoles do really well in the second hand market. You don't get much pc for just 200$.

Games with better gfx requires better gear and the HW industry is taking advantage of it due to fierce competition between HW manufacturers. Intel, AMD, NV etc don't give two shits that we only buy 2-5 games per hardware cycle.
Game devs feel they have little choice but follow suit because people will almost only buy games with the newest gfx. It's a hit driven market. And if it looks good, it flies good.

Software developers needs to counter this market with smaller development costs. There's no other way. It's unfortunate if it means casual games, because that's simply due to a severe lack of imagination. Proper reuse of content slash proceduralism makes for perfect substitutes yet everyone still handbuilds everything...

 

[Bradylama]

People are sick of the AAA games, that might be why they're playing gimicky "casual" games. Maybe if they would stop designing games for computers that don't exist yet, they could get returns on production.

 

[Sorrow]

So, it seems that software developers killed-off PC gaming. They stopped making good, interesting games, they started introducing weird copy-protection malware, they forced players to buy new PCs instead of new games, they stopped selling games in nice paper boxes.

Damn. That sucks .

 

[Bisonman80]

When I think back, its true I haven't been buying many PC games as I used to. But its not because I pirate them, its because they all seem the same to me. Either they focus too much on graphics, for games like Doom 3, and sacrifice the FUN aspect, or they just copy the same gameplay as older games and just update the graphics .

A lot of the new RTS' did this, and the only recent RTS I bought was Company of Heroes, because the 'cover system' and destructible environments actually add new layers of depth to the game, rather than just making it prettier. It's a new experience, but when I play demos for Supreme Commander and C&C3, I feel like I'm playing an RTS from 2000 but with pretty graphics.

The same goes for FPS'. Doom 3 was pretty at the time, but good lord. I feel sorry for anybody who got through the entire game. Now Half life 2, THAT was a fun game because it did things that were original, and the environment and enemy design were unique and well done.

If they want to make money, they need to set themselves apart from other developers. Piracy isn't new, although its definitely easier to pirate shit nowadays than it used to be. This is the same cop-out ID games said this week. Some developers don't get it...

 

[Diarmada]

Independent games is where it's at, as is smaller budget games with real work put into them. Hopefully game companies will realize that someday.

DDD is right, if you look at how well Darwinia did against say Silent Storm in the US markets, that should teach invaluable lessons to anyone wanting to learn...Darwinia ( basically made by Chris Delay & Andy Bainbridge, with a few others in the audio dept and marketing) utilizing Steam, sold tons, made it's money back and a butt-load more (a semi-sequel coming out soon), where as Silent Storm, with Nival as it's developer (one of the largest in Russia) took a dive in the US market, because of crappy marketing & lack of advanced review copies granted, but also because of the nature of the beast....Darwinia created buzz and word of mouth, it also challenged conventional games by completely de-evolving on purpose; that is to say, old Commodore/arcade style graphics with a novel new feel.

This lesson is one to point out to all of those Gaming Critics and 3D Fanboys, when they say innovashun is the only show in town....I wager that there was the same negative postulation going on when Darwinia was being developed, people poking fun at anyone stupid enough to make a retro game...

so If anyone says fallout 3 cannot be made with an isometric view & turn-based combat, this should be the burning effigy

 

[Muff]

As interplay said

By Gamer's For Gamer's

we need to get that back into the industry before the shit hits the fan an we all have to buy consoles, I have a PS2 an I have only played it a handful of times other than when I have had a friend round an we have played Kill zone.

Admittedly I don't upgrade my pc as much as I should an a play a awful lot of games but as some one said the need to release games that have a higher quality an run on today's PC's not next year's.

The copy protection on some games is a joke, for instance the whole CD key thing is a joke, it may have been effective when every one did not have a internet connection but now most people have a high speed connection now an all they have to do if they did torrent (which I DON'T an don't support in any way shape or form) an they did not get a CD key with the download just have to google the products name an add CD key to the end an they will have hundreds of sights offering them the key or a hack to get around that form of copy protection.

 

[Sorrow]

When I think back, its true I haven't been buying many PC games as I used to. But its not because I pirate them, its because they all seem the same to me. Either they focus too much on graphics, for games like Doom 3, and sacrifice the FUN aspect, or they just copy the same gameplay as older games and just update the graphics .

A good point. I never thought about it, but now, I think that when I went to software store in last two years, usually none of the games caught my attention and none of them made me even consider upgrading my computer. I just saw a lot of soulless, generic clones.

I remember, that in times Fallout/UFO or even Baldur's Gate, I gathered money for weeks to buy them. Now I don't see any game that would make me resign from buying a music CD or a book. I recently bought some older games like Operation Flashpoint or Mafia, but no new games.
Now I just mod/play games from before 2000AD...

 

[Montez]

Maybe if they would stop designing games for computers that don't exist yet, they could get returns on production.

No shit. "Piracy is killing PC gaming! It has nothing to do with the fact that we're making bug-ridden games that require a supercomputer to run and have nothing to offer but cliche action gameplay and shiny graphics."