GDC: The "Tragic" State of PC Gaming
Game design celeb Peter Molyneux (Black and White, The Movies) says the PC gaming market is in a tragic state and fingers spotlight hogging and design stagnation as the primary culprits. "I think it's a huge tragedy," admits Molyneux in this portion of an interview to be posted in full later this week at Eurogamer. "I mean, you might as well say PC gaming is World of Warcraft and The Sims...the weird thing is everyone's got a PC, they're just not buying software for it."
All true. The PC games market today is effectively World of Warcraft and Will Wright spinoffs, with occasional anomalies like Command & Conquer, Call of Duty, and Age of Empires rearing up before being subsumed by a (mostly singular) MMO-hegemony. PC gaming in North America amounted to $911 million of an $18.9 billion industry in 2007. Even something like BioShock, critically lauded as one of the best games ever made and a spiritual successor to a beloved PC gaming franchise, nonetheless sold dramatically more on the Xbox 360 than the PC. I predict that by the end of 2008, even taking into account digitally distributed PC games which NPD's finally tracking, the top five or ten PC gaming spots will be almost exclusively Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard titles. No one needs a crystal ball to tell you World of Warcraft, The Sims, and Spore have those seats all but locked up.
What about the casual games market? It's much bigger than any of the above, and as yet, largely untracked. "There's an enormous amount of gaming happening with PopCap, Big Fish and Reflective," says Molyneux. "The fascinating thing is when they first started, all these games came out like Peggle and Mystery Files and Alice Greensleeves and Diner Dash, and it felt quite exciting. There was a lot of innovation going on. Okay, there weren't great graphics, but there was innovation."
Except that in Molyneux's view, that innovation's completely stopped.
"They're doing the same game over and over again with a different wrapper," he says. "It's like a mini-universe in itself which is emulating what's happening in our industry."
Enter the pop-n-fresh PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA), a group of industry hardware and software mainstays including Intel, Microsoft, Dell, and AMD who yesterday said they were forming the alliance to promote PC gaming as a platform.
Insert "because PC gaming is in dire straits" at the end of that sentence. After all, do we have a Console Gaming Alliance? Or more pertinently, why don't we have one?
PC gaming isn't dead, but PC gaming as it once existed may be. Wargaming as a genre isn't dead (it'll only die when serious history-minded humans do) but wargaming as it once existed -- something that could land a huge cover story in a gaming magazine, for instance -- almost certainly is.
Is that where PC gaming's headed? Toward a small market of specialized gamers? An occasional sideshow to console gaming headliners? Is it finally Alamo time for PC gamers and snarky games magazine editors who love to make fun of gloom-and-doom peddlers?
Well, we know that the games market is growing with record numbers, not just in terms of revenues, but in terms of people who play games. A considerable portion of that market is composed of people who didn't play PC games before, and probably aren't interested in playing PC games at any point in the future. Think about mobile gamers. Think about casual gamers who've transitioned (perhaps permanently) from the PC to services like Xbox Live. Think about the people you know whose first (adult) games console is a Wii.
PCs have the largest platform footprint in the world. Nvidia alone has more GPUs floating around in PCs than the international PlayStation 2 install base, and we're talking by almost double. It's a market practically howling to be tapped back into. But can it be?
Check out Darren Gladstone's thoughts on the PCGA here. I totally agree with Darren. Without proven results to point to, the PCGA is just another bureaucratic figurehead. My own advice to the PCGA's power players: Stop being so reactive, guys -- get your legs under you first, then issue the "save the industry" press releases.
Anyway. Where do you spend most of your time gaming these days? PC or console? And has that changed much over the last couple years?
Replay
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The problem is that the max hardware specs for games keep climbing (just look at what's recommended for Crysis), but actual game design is stagnating (Crysis is effectively Far Cry but with a couple new features). Instead of optimizing their code to work on a wide variety of computers, and work with the least fuss possible, instead we see more and more refined requirements to work with the latest shaders.
There's a reason the Sims and WoW and PopCap dominate in this environment - they aimed for low computer specs and tweaked their art assets to look great despite the lack of a top end machine. I'm sure that StarCraft 2 isn't going to have a hard time selling, and that will be almost entirely because it will run on the average WoW gamers machine while looking and playing great. Same with the next Bejeweled or Puzzle Quest game.
The Steam model of no-fuss purchasing and installation is already proven - and as more publishers pick it up, PC gaming will be more clearly robust.
And not to spam this blog with comments at all, but anyone (like Molyneaux) who can say something like "innovation has stopped" the same week that a game like Audiosurf sees wide release is just completely out of touch with PC gaming.
I believe that one of the things this new alliance has to face is the fact that consoles have a singular advantage over PC gaming due to the "it just works" factor -- you put the disc in and play the game.
Having said that, I prefer PC gaming (FPS to be precise) over consoles. Console gaming just doesn't hold a candle to a good PC game. But -- there are many issues with PC gaming. First and foremost is the "will it play on my machine?" factor. Intel creates machines with integrated GPUs which can't play nearly any modern game -- yet you often see PCs with their chipsets being sold to consumers as "gaming machines." Yeah, right.
I'm a fan of Steam (gotta love Audiosurf as skyknyt mentioned) yet I can't possibly count the number of times a user in their forums is stymied due to an expensive but otherwise crap machine. Vista and DX10 are problematic as well. The alliance should create a "Gamer OS" to boot up without all the unneeded garbage.
Time to play "Audiosurf" now. Bye. :)
PC gaming won't be dead for me. They'll have to pry my mouse and keyboard out of my hands, and burn all my discs. Seriously, how can any game today be considered "Innovative"? The last truly innovative game was Half-Life 2, the first good game since Deus Ex and Half-Life. I'm not saying modern games are poorly made or anything, it's just that it seems like every game is being built to appeal to casual gamers. I liked The Orange Box, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Bioshock, but I was kind of sad that nothings actually improved. Although, to be fair, Team Fortress 2 is pretty damn awesome.
I have been playing online / singlplayer games for 15 years and have no prob with the same old / same old the advancement is what I look forward to seeing if you could play all games on any PC what would be the sens advancement is what its all about take Call of Duty 4 there getting so real its scary if PCs have not gotten faster we would all still be playing ASTEROIDS I cant wait till I can build my first 80 core based PC if I live that long and as Intel is working with 1 now Ill prob see it now lets get out there and kill every body so they can re spawn and kill us
As someone who works in the IT field the first impressions that I heard concerning Vista is that it is a memory hungry resource hog. Upon further review we know it is possible to tone down those problems (to some extent) but for people who heard things like that wouldn't you be a bit leary about purchasing a new system? People want fun games that can be played on their older systems. I don't think many people care much about DX10 compatibility. WoW (as an easily recognizable example) doesn't have mind blowing graphical advances built into its game...but it does look good with what it has. Blizzard took artistic quality and they are relying on that and a quality in their game to take their membership to 10 million plus.
Until people are comfortable with Vista (How about a Vista Gamers edition?!) and until technology begins to slow down enough for people without $5000 to spend on new laptops/computers every other year people will gladly go out and pay $500 for a PS3,Xbox360 or Wii
let see $50.00 for a game +$2000 to make it work on my computer?
plus add to the fact in less than 3 years any mods will be totally obsolete! i shelled out 700 for a ps3 that will have games to play for 10 years + 5 and 10 dollar games for ps 1 n 2.
the cost just isnt worth it for the long term
I haven't the money to keep pursuing this P.C. gaming. I had games that didn't work or worked poorly. So I bought a new P.C. only to find my joystick and racing wheel would't work. Now with a Dx10 Vista machine with a W.E.I. of 5.4 and can't play M.S Combat Flight Sim (Europe). Thats my favorite! Guess nascar is obsolete too.
I feel like I've been hung out.
When ImaPhake said, "The alliance should create a "Gamer OS" to boot up without all the unneeded garbage," he really hit an "a-ha!" moment.
1. Dual-booting PCs. Nothing new here.
2. Gaming Edition as a boot-up option
3. All resources available poured into gaming architecture.
I like it!
I can play Crysis (high settings, 1024 by 768) with a $500 PC (overclocked 7950 GT), so I don't get all this 'system requirement' stuff