GDC panel; the viability of PC gaming

[RPG of the year!!]

Clearly, the reign of the big, triple-A boxed title is in jeopardy.

HAH HAH HAH!

Really? Do correct me if I'm wrong, Joel, but that reign has been poking up daisies for the last 7 years.

Perhaps the PC gaming industry's status quo of shipping incomplete, maliciously DRM'd, stagnant puffs of vapour that require out-of-the-box patching or user mods to be even tangentially "playable" holds some sort of clue towards solving the brain-bending puzzle that is the decline of the PC gaming market. MYSTARY!!

Of course, since holding up a mirror is so SCAWWY for an industry whose collective arrogance-to-cluelessness ratio is approaching that of the RIAA...

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."

... Scapegoating piracy*(as if it hasn't existed since the very inception of PC gaming) is infinitely more preferable to all the Todd Howards and Herve Caens and Peter Molyneuxes slaving away on the next IGN's GoTY than glimpsing their own reflection and being forced to lay blame where it actually belongs.



*Not to mention designing games that can be played without owning a suPar K3wL gaeming riggLOL, the mere thought of which would send them into fucking conniptions.

Todd Howard: Design the next TES so it can be scaled down to run on an entry-level Compaq Presario!?

Todd Howard's head: EXPLODE.

"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]."

Considering that the modding community has been regularly cranking out work on par or better than the dreg that passes for commercial quality these days, for years, for free, maybe Epic should fucking question their production costs.

But clearly I'm just being ignorant to say that. RITE?!?1/ ROFFLEMAYO!!

By all rights the industry should be ecstatic that people consider its "latest and greatest" products even worth pirating. Although why they do is beyond me.

 

[Rainstorm]

Aaaahhh,it feels so good to be here,this thread is just chockfull of what I thought when I read it...it just proves that the FO community stands out from the generally media-spread noncense as much as FO stands out as a game.

The "pir8s steal our money,just look at these figures" are based on every user buying the either lousy or overpriced product....and it also forgets the ones who try it via downloading and then buys it since they like it.
If their whining were true,NFS would already be dead,since I did download NFS3 as wares when it was released and it wasn't hard to find on UseNet.(the reason I downloaded it was that the demo sucked _hard_,so I wasn't sure what to expect)
When reading RPG of the year's point about it being available since PC games came,I also remember just how many tapes there where available for the ZX Spectrum and the C64...and this was before the age of the 'net....

It's just the eternal search for a scapegoat that any boss looks for,since it could never be their faulty decisions,so they blame employees,the "market",the end users ignorance and so on...whatever the fault is,you can bet it's never their decisions....

The reason they want to sway from the PC environment is the simple fact that they'll make more money per unit for a console...that certain games (FPS's and cRPG's especially) are more suited for and hence will sell more on the PC environment -as long as they're good of course- is not that important.(because our latest game,which we marketed as an RPG sold very well on the console....)

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.

Look at the 'net,you can find it easier there,you'll -if they allow it- even have it delivered to your door,so you can pay later on and usually at a smaller price...how much more convinient could it be?
I'm a Swede living in a small town and I can't say I've had much problems with finding the games I want from online stores.(I've even ordered some from the UK,since it was in the end cheaper than buying them online from Swedish stores....)

 

[Bradylama]

Aaaahhh,it feels so good to be here,this thread is just chockfull of what I thought when I read it...it just proves that the FO community stands out from the generally media-spread noncense as much as FO stands out as a game.

Contrary to Gamespy article comments, the kind of sentiments in this thread can't possibly be unpopular. (PC Gaming's falling apart, remember?)

I might as well also bring up that a gaming website tried to debunk the declining market myth. I forget who did it, but basically they argued that the drop in revenue for the industry is more accountable due to the lack of accounting for subscriptions to MMOs, and online purchases, which would've raised the figure by a good number of millions.

Essentially what's really tanking are the AAA titles. I hope the industry has a lot of violinists.

 

[TheSarge]

Um, is this guy really trying to blame the decline of PC gaming on piracy? People have been pirating computer games since the beginning of the personal computer. I remember getting a copy of Karateka off the Sneakernet when I was in elementary school. Sure, the piracy has become more wide-spread since then, but blaming pirates is a cop-out.
The real reason is that developers know that Console Gamers are easier to satisfy because their standards are lower.
Most Console Gamers wouldn't know a quality top-notch PC game if you hit them over the head with it. How else do you explain
Prime example: The Rainbow Six series. After R6:RS the franchise was respectable. Bullets killed you. You're shot in the head? You are lilely quite dead. So sorry, no head for you. Start over and try again. But that's to hard for the average (or rather, very average) Console Gamer. They want to go all Rambo on everyone and the concept of "getting shot is a bad thing" just doesn't resonate with them. They think you're supposed to be able to shrug of gunshot wounds. So what does Ubisoft do? They fucked R6 up the ass. So, in Rainbow Six: Vegas. You continually heal. If you're smart enough to use cover and rest between gunshot wounds, you're golden. So, you're essentially invulnerable, but theb bad guys aren't so smart. They never try and shoot you in the head, they never use cover properly, and they can't shoot worth shit. Thank you Console Gamers: Thanks to you, I can now play Rainbow Six without any Console Gamers in the loby, which makes it much more enjoyable.

As for Fallout, while I don't expect Bethsida to capture the Post-nuclear goodness that was (is?) Fallout, I continue to hope they'll get it right. Or at least playable. Dear god, don't let it be Oblivion with guns: Oblivioon is boring enough. I mean, the first hour was captivating, but after that it was all I could do to stay awake.

 

[Mick1965]

I'd say that your average PC game buyer nowadays is a lot better informed than we were 10+ years ago. When I say informed I don't mean intelligent, I mean that there's lots of info that can be gathered about a game from game review sites and forums. You're not just relying on word of mouth or what's written on the back of the shiny box.

I started gaming around the time of Kings/Space quest, and there were many games over the years I've bought that I wish I hadn't. Now I research before I spend my hard earned. Also, the local PC game shop gives a one week cooling off period so you can return a game if you don't like it, no questions asked.

And there are places now that let you trade and hire games, so you'd think the market would be tougher for game companies peddling crappy games. And yet Oblivion sold over 3 million copies. Go figure.

Mick

 

[Rainstorm]

The Rainbow Six series. After R6:RS the franchise was respectable. Bullets killed you. You're shot in the head? You are lilely quite dead. So sorry, no head for you. Start over and try again. But that's to hard for the average (or rather, very average) Console Gamer. They want to go all Rambo on everyone and the concept of "getting shot is a bad thing" just doesn't resonate with them. They think you're supposed to be able to shrug of gunshot wounds.

Considering DooM and Quake are the basis of FPS's and the more realistic came later on,I wonder how you came to that conclusion.(and it's not a matter of shrugging off the damage -at least in those- but a hit on health,just like in FO and so on)
Personally I don't want reality in that form in games,it bores me,I want to do stupid things like rocketjumps,wallbouncing of enemies to keep them pinned and so on....when I play an action game,it's action I'm after and not a sneaking game.

Maybe you should try an action game,the satisfaction of pulling off a rocketjump and avoid their shot with it,while in mid-air killing them is something that's very satisfying.(as I'm sure you find it satisfying to pull off a headshot/sneak past someone)

I'm not objecting to realistic shooters,I'm just objecting to the words used,since I don't think that non-realistic games means they're dumbed down or that they mean that someone thinks the damage could be shrugged off.(cause being hit by a quadrocket is certainly something you won't be able to shrug off)

 

[Bisonman80]

I'd say that your average PC game buyer nowadays is a lot better informed than we were 10+ years ago. When I say informed I don't mean intelligent, I mean that there's lots of info that can be gathered about a game from game review sites and forums. You're not just relying on word of mouth or what's written on the back of the shiny box.

Yeah that's a good point too. If we know a game sucks because we did a lot of research on it, we won't buy it. I don't know if it was just my youth or if it was a trend back in the day, but I didn't used to do that. I would buy it mostly on brand names and trailers/PR.

 

[DirtyDreamDesigner]

Considering DooM and Quake are the basis of FPS's and the more realistic came later on,I wonder how you came to that conclusion.(and it's not a matter of shrugging off the damage -at least in those- but a hit on health,just like in FO and so on)
Personally I don't want reality in that form in games,it bores me,I want to do stupid things like rocketjumps,wallbouncing of enemies to keep them pinned and so on....when I play an action game,it's action I'm after and not a sneaking game.

Maybe you should try an action game,the satisfaction of pulling off a rocketjump and avoid their shot with it,while in mid-air killing them is something that's very satisfying.(as I'm sure you find it satisfying to pull off a headshot/sneak past someone)

I'm not objecting to realistic shooters,I'm just objecting to the words used,since I don't think that non-realistic games means they're dumbed down or that they mean that someone thinks the damage could be shrugged off.(cause being hit by a quadrocket is certainly something you won't be able to shrug off)

He's not talking about a Doom sequel or a Quake sequel, and nobody said they have been dumbed down (they were dumb from the start, it's true and there's no point arguing about it; but that doesn't mean that Dumbed-down in this context is a bad thing, it's just the way they were made, and we love them for it.), what was said was that Rainbow Six has been dumbed down, and in this context that's very negative.

Yeah that's a good point too. If we know a game sucks because we did a lot of research on it, we won't buy it. I don't know if it was just my youth or if it was a trend back in the day, but I didn't used to do that. I would buy it mostly on brand names and trailers/PR.

It's not about perception, or our ability to research a game, it's about how, paradoxically, games are getting worse and worse.

The gamer is more and more informed, so the publishers rely on hype and shiny to cover up the failings of their products.


EDIT: Also, some of you are treading very near the Warez talk line. Don't. Rainstorm, I'm looking at you.

 

[Sorrow]

Um, is this guy really trying to blame the decline of PC gaming on piracy? People have been pirating computer games since the beginning of the personal computer. I remember getting a copy of Karateka off the Sneakernet when I was in elementary school. Sure, the piracy has become more wide-spread since then, but blaming pirates is a cop-out.

Piracy was always so wide-spread, it just became free now. I remember that when I was a kid, I was one of the few people in my country that bought original games. Blaming piracy for the fall of PC-Gaming industry is like blaming libraries for the fall of book industry.

They just can't understand that people who can't/don't want to pay so much money for a game wouldn't buy it anyway.
No, but that's too difficult for them - they must count illegal copies as "lost money".

BTW. Does buying a book or a music CD instead of their shitty games count as "lost money" too?
Maybe they should start counting money they lost because their shitty games can't compete other media?

Maybe some people who don't have money for their games would actually buy them if they didn't force them to upgrade their computer?

 

[Jebus]

Another thing is the lack of diversity in game sales.

I mean - just enter a book- or music store. How many different books and CD's are you going to find there? Hundreds? Thousands?

Your average game store only has about thirty, forty different games, and they are practically all the same.

 

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Look at the 'net,you can find it easier there,you'll -if they allow it- even have it delivered to your door,so you can pay later on and usually at a smaller price...how much more convinient could it be?
I'm a Swede living in a small town and I can't say I've had much problems with finding the games I want from online stores.(I've even ordered some from the UK,since it was in the end cheaper than buying them online from Swedish stores....)

Read my whole post I said I don't use credit cards, kind of hard to online shop without them. But the point of my post is that it's a lot easier to buy console games as they are everywhere while PC games, at least those not in the charts i.e the more original and innovative games from smaller developers, can only usually be found in specialist shops or online. But even the specialist shops and several online store are mored geared to selling console games these days.

I know people who've got a perfectly good computer, a couple of them more powerful than the machine I use for gaming, who never even considered using them for gaming because a there's not much choice of pc games in the shops, and b too much hassle working out if their machine meets the requirements and then loading the game.

Piracy, who actually pirates games? People who can't afford them, people who are too tight fisted to payout, people who think they are rebelling or protesting about some imagined slight by the industry or corporate policies, and people who just can't get the games any other way (it's been banned or just not available in their country). If someone invented a foolproof method of preventing piracy tomorrow would any of the above go out and start buying games? Maybe a few but I doubt there would be any great rise in sales, more likely the sales of secondhand games would rise as well as swapping games. Back in my school days zx spectrum games were easy to copy with a double tape deck, but there was a lot more games swapping going on than piracy.

 

[Mick1965]

It's not about perception, or our ability to research a game, it's about how, paradoxically, games are getting worse and worse.

The gamer is more and more informed, so the publishers rely on hype and shiny to cover up the failings of their products.

There were plenty of very crappy games in the late eighties and early/mid nineties, I know because I bought some of them, and saw plenty of others. We're less likely now to buy stuff sight unseen off the shelf, and therefore most game devs seem to be taking the safe option when it comes to developing a game. Why take a risk when you can follow a proven formula, and the bean counters don't like risks. So now there's a much narrower focus, and a whole bunch of games that are clones appealing to the masses.

I'd say that there are less good games now rather than more bad ones. At least now you're not buying a total mystery box, which when you get it home you find is a complete piece of shite designed specifically to scam money from you. Some people may feel the same way about current games, but at least these are now playable, even of you don't enjoy them.

Mick

 

[Sorrow]

There's one more sign of decline of PC gaming - games are no longer sold in big, cardboard boxes.
Those boxes added a lot of prestige to original games - they showed that one is buying a luxurious good and one could collect them as trophies.
Now we have those ugly DVD-boxes. They make games look like they are worth less money now...

 

[MapMan]

Thats why mod is better than game in many aspects. Mods are made by people with passion, that want to do something for free and to other people enjoy it. They don't care about sales count, if a 12 years old gamer will play the mod or not. There's a lot of game developing companies that make games with passion but often the publisher fucks up the game (ea, ubi...). Now a days most of games are being made for cash and only for cash. Sad but true...

 

[radnan]

i hope you'll excuse my rant..

well games are now big business with big - i think - sometimes overblown costs - the pay demands are higher from the developers .. and publishers expect console like sells ... all i can say is the free market wont be kind to the pc - which is sad because i think its the most flexible and richest invorment

i hope they wont continue blaming piracy ...the real problem lies with the product they should look at is it and how it constantly fails on many counts to provide a solid experience...

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

oh cmon like somone who dishes 600$ on a video card wont pull out 50$ if a title was worth it

the arms (graphics) race isnt helping either as it makes games unaccesible for most pc users (something that doesnt happen to consoles) ....

what the pc needs is i think a comeback of the independent passionate developer ..

mod is better than game in many aspects.

without quality games (pc games) in the first place there can be no quality mods ... hope youll forgive my next line but imho just passion doesnt always give birth to quality

bla

 

[MapMan]

mod is better than game in many aspects.

without quality games (pc games) in the first place there can be no quality mods ... hope youll forgive my next line but imho just passion doesnt always give birth to quality
bla

True but there are some great total conversion mods to not so great games and yes thats true, passion doesn not guarantee quality.

 

[taxacaria]

There's one more sign of decline of PC gaming - games are no longer sold in big, cardboard boxes.
Those boxes added a lot of prestige to original games - they showed that one is buying a luxurious good and one could collect them as trophies.
Now we have those ugly DVD-boxes. They make games look like they are worth less money now...

Agreed.
The lack of manuals ( except for sucking manuals on dvd ) is another point. To save some money, they made games playable without a hardware manual - and now they're wondering about piracy.
As long as a pirate get's same shitty content as a regular buyer, he has no reason to buy it.
Next is that many pirate kiddies wouldn't buy the games because they can't afford them.
To say "There are 2 million illegal copies and therefore we have $120.000.000 losses" is very unrealistic.

 

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

There's one more sign of decline of PC gaming - games are no longer sold in big, cardboard boxes.
Those boxes added a lot of prestige to original games - they showed that one is buying a luxurious good and one could collect them as trophies.
Now we have those ugly DVD-boxes. They make games look like they are worth less money now...

I'd disagree, sure I miss some of the boxes, but the quality varied so much. Some of them were so cheap looking and lasted all of 5 minutes, they didn't add any prestige to the game. Another thing console games use the same dvd boxes so by that logic they should also affect console sales.

My only complaints about the dvd boxes are lack of room for a decent manual, though games have gotten so dumbed down you don't need a manual these days. Plus what is it about computer game cds and dvds, that they are harder to get out of dvd cases than dvd films?

It's the game content that lets PC gaming down, not the packaging.

 

[wolfsrain]

Piracy gets blamed always when the things get terribly wrong. It's the easy scapegoat. The unfinished games rushed out to meet some ridiculous deadline? Not their problem! The fact they are subjecting their customers to a total lack of support? Not their problem. I see more and more unnofficial patches coming out from the modding communities, doing the support that the gaming company should.
Oblivion is patched by baldurdash, an there are enough games in pretty much the same situation.

And then I think to the idiocy of what John Romero said about the modding communities who are "destroying the industry". You can observe its choice of word: industry. And I'm trying to recall the times when they kept a game in production as long as it was needed to polish it(more than 2 years any way).
The most ridiculous deadline was imposed by Lucas Arts to Obisidan for KOTOR2. in consequence, the game came out very bugged, with a lot of holes in the story, because the cut content. Most likely, they skipped the entire betatest process.I do have friends working at various companies and I know the management attitude: it' s all about the deadlines.The beta test department lost its importance. It' vastly ignored. The philosophy is:"it's not a bug, it's a feature" and "we will release a patch after launch".
When after launch, that's an entire different problem.
Invasive protection, protection who are conflicting with the OS(oh yes, I'm talking about the much vaunted Vista).Protections that can destroy your optical drive(I have original staforce protected games thanks to a few gaming companies and I cand see my optical drive hardworking to authenticate, it does its job, but it's like I'm burning the DVD in the same time).

The companies ignoring the hands-on previews, the fact that the customer it's better informed than before. The companies launching demos and trailers after the game launch from fear that no one will buy the c.ap they sell. The companies pushing the hardware requirements forgetting that most of the market has low to average PC's. You can't make money pushing the hardware. Most of the customers will look in other places to cut their losses. They will head towards the inexpensive alternative. The companies censoring the negative reactions about the products on their forums(see CDV, Bethesda, Ubisoft, just to name a few) forgetting that there are a lot of other means to pass the buzz about a game being catastrophic. Despite the fact that those same companies are saying that the buzz doesn't matter, the alternative communication does its job. After a week the sales will drop, after a few other weeks the sales are taking a dive.

The casual market it's rising. You don't need a powerful rig to play those games and their protection it's almost inexistent(serial number based). The small companies are the ones who are trying to inovate. The big names are just sticking to the same old things that they know it sells no matter what. But the big companies must learn, once and for all: graphics are just a part of the game. We don't play graphics, we're playing games. And those are just a few things for why the PC sales aren't as high as they were. Treating your paying customer like dirt it's not recommended in any industry. Point.
Microsoft it's an example for the way they are treating customers: poorly. The fact that their latest OS is bugged, that the much vaunted backward compatibility it's almost inexistent, the lack of decent drivers due to the fact that the drivers are wrote in the same area where their protection which makes the task almost impossible to realize for the driver developpers.
The lack of features included in XP and even Win'98: surround sound and Bluetooth. All that it's the fault of the pirates.
So let's all blame the pirates!

Sorry for the long post: I've got carried!

 

[Pope Viper]

There's one more sign of decline of PC gaming - games are no longer sold in big, cardboard boxes.
Those boxes added a lot of prestige to original games - they showed that one is buying a luxurious good and one could collect them as trophies.
Now we have those ugly DVD-boxes. They make games look like they are worth less money now...

Good point. I remember looking forward to the Ultima series because they included some cool stuff. Always a cloth map, little trinkets, a "story-telling" manual.

Fallout did the same thing.

It's pathetic what is lost for the pursuit of the almighty dollar.