Today is the day I call out the PC Game industry. If you missed my tale about the woe of the industry last week, read it or not here. Quick recap, things ain’t great, pirates are rampant, piracy isn’t the real problem. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, lets talk turkey (my jive is aces, I know).
There are two ways to go about this.
One, do nothing different. This is the most likely way. This is the way I predict. This is way it’s almost assuredly going to go. This is the way the brand spanking new PCGA is appearing to go right now:
PC Gaming Alliance will be the Authoritative Voice of PC Gaming World Wide. We will make data that highlights and promotes the PC platform to analysts, press and the public.
PC Gaming Alliance will also provide guidelines to simplify hardware specifications and speed the introduction of new technologies, as well as improve Consumer PC Gaming Experience by working with developers and publishers and PCGA members to maximize the PC gaming experience in all ways possible.
Well that’s just effing awesome. The claim to be the authoritative voice on PC Gaming world wide. Well kudos to them. My favorite part of that first paragraph is the second sentence. We will make data that highlights and promotes… That’s good shit. They won’t find data, they won’t gather data, they won’t bring new data to light, they will make data that promotes the game industry. But here’s the really fun. They will “provide guidelines” to help things along. Fuck that. This is Intel, Microsoft, Acer, Dell, Nvidia, AMD and of all people, Epic (the same guys saying PCs are great, just not for gaming. Smart call there, PCGA). They are the guys that should be stepping up and getting things done in terms of real standards and computers released with real video cards. What does all of this really mean though? Jackshit. Want to be an adopter? Pay 15k. I kid you the fuck not. Want to be Promoter (which means you’re on the board and have some say, apparently), 50k. Yeah, more of the same.
The PCGA isn’t going to save PC Gaming, so who is? No one. MMOs will continue to either scrape by or thrive. Casual games will continue to grow exponentially and eventually, the market will be some RPGs, some RTSs (that’ll be the true crime, the RTS being a console genre for the most part) and not much else other than MMOs and casual games. Now, to be fair, that’s not a horrible fate. Us gamers will still get great games on the console and some on the PC and we’ll have our MMOs and something to do at work.
What about door number two, Bob?
Door number two is real and true collaboration across the board. This being the PC market and it being so splintered and full of itself, it’ll almost never happen. But what if it did… What if Dell and the rest of their ilk got together with Intel, Asus and the rest of their ilk and start to require video cards on motherboards met certain 3D standards. Then Microsoft promised to support those standards in all versions of DirectX. We’d have a gaming a platform. Yeah, it wouldn’t be perfect, but it would exist and it would be a start.
I can list off a mess of reason why this won’t happen. More than I care to count. Instead, I’ll list the one reason games should continue to be made for the PC. Because they are made on the PC and you can do things on a PC you can’t do on a console. Things like having a better control scheme for specific kinds of games, fan made content (you can’t even begin to tell me how Oblivion was better on the console after looking at the amazing fan made stuff out there, for instance), and things like having more control over your game and hardware (this isn’t a plus for everyone, obviously). Does that mean a lot to your average suit though? I don’t think it really does.
Were you a suit that wasn’t sure if you should continue or get involved in PC Gaming, Bard Wardell has some good opinions.
So here is the deal: When you develop for a market, you don’t go by the user base. You go by the potential customer base. That’s what most software companies do. They base what they want to create on the size of the market they’re developing for. But not PC game developers.
PC game developers seem to focus more on the “cool” factor. What game can they make that will get them glory with the game magazines and gaming websites and hard core gamers? These days, it seems like game developers want to be like rock stars more than businessmen. I’ve never considered myself a real game developer. I’m a gamer who happens to know how to code and also happens to be reasonably good at business.
You’d think that sort of thing would be pretty straight forward. You develop software for your potential customer base. You develop software with a market in mind, not just randomly develop games and hope someone is a) able to run it and b) interested in running it. Common sense that apparently isn’t.
Now, to be fair, that article isn’t perfect. It doesn’t offer solutions for kinds of games beyond small dev houses making games that don’t have your normal FPS audience. What do we do about that sort of thing? Which leads us to our next section.
What do we do about that sort of thing (in the short term)?
That’s a mighty good question and I’m glad you asked. First, let’s define that sort of thing as piracy and lack of sales. They are related and not. One big step is as Brad talks about in his article linked above, aim for the right markets. And know your market. If you’re creating a PC game, for the love of all, don’t limit your audience by making the hardware requirements insane (unless that is your market, Crysis style. They are one of the few exceptions and it still didn’t net them much in the US). Next, don’t worry so much about piracy as people want you to. Yes, your game is going to get pirated. Yes, it’s going to be a lot. Yes, it’s going to suck. Here’s what you do though. You do reasonable DRM, something to make it not too simple. Then you release a stable game that’s fun to play. That’s going to go a long way.
I think that’s most disappointing thing about all of this talk about piracy. As if a stable game that is great fun to play won’t make money anymore. That’s just not true. It won’t make console numbers, that’s obvious, but if you manage your project well and release the afore mentioned good game, you will get sales and sales that are worth while.
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What Would Matt Do: Hope for the best, expect the worst.
Matt,
The second part was a good read. I think I’ll stand behind the post I made in part 1, though.
The console industry, namely Sony and MS, have got it right. They’re doing the things that the PC industry needed to do a long ass time ago. Consoles are evolving at a rate, and in a manner where Moore’s law(cough) wont ever become an issue. And that’s a good thing. The PC market is destined toward mediocrity if the song indeed remains the same.
The archetecture, the software, the designs of the machines themselves need to get out of the current dinosaur stage they’ve been in for the past..what…20 years..or more?
Mediocrity.
Yeah, it was a good read, wasn’t it. :p
But consoles aren’t really evolving unless you’re talking about the Wii. These consoles just push more triangles than previous ones and have harddrives…much like PCs.
The tech is what’s killing the PC industry, the requirements of a game being so high these days and the computer lagging behind in the 3D capabilities. The console market is a very different beast and I don’t think trying to emulate that in the PC market is going to be the way. It’s much less controlled environment and it’s going to be hard to push everyone to use whatever new tech you create.
M
It’s not about the PC market emulating the console market, it’s about the PC evolving into the next stage of what it should be by now. I’m not trying to draw a comparison between the two other than to illustrate how the PC platform has been stagnant for too long.
Seriously, name me one advancement in the PC sector that has been made since the introduction of hardware acceleration. The best one can offer is the ability to push more poly’s through pipeline “improvements”. ……PCI>AGP>AGP2X>AGP4X>AGP8X>PCI-E….all cash cows that do nothing but prolong “upgrade-itis” and, are the chief cause of the disconnect that the majority of gamers have in terms of upgrade costs when compared to the stability and safety of consoles.
Do PC’s push more poly’s now than in the past? Yes. Do the consoles? Yes again. We’ve beaten the dead horse of “why more devs choose the consoles to develope games for” a hundred times now. As long as consoles have the advantages of standard API’s and hardware, they will continue to gain ground over the myopic PC platform.
One thing that I would love to see some hard data on is how the “Hardcore PC Gamer” sector is doing these days. Especially since it’s been widely held that the hardcore market drives the casual market in the demand for games and upgrades.
Are people fed up with upgrading their PC’s and switching to consoles? There has to be some kind of “trickle down” effect going on. The best I can offer is the anecdotal evidence of observing my own friends, who havent upgraded their PC’s in quite some time now, and get their gaming fixes via the internet capabilities of their shiny new PS3′s and X-Boxes.
Ok, so give me a suggestion. Other than a standardized API/Hardware for the PC, which most likely isn’t going to happen, though it really needs to, what else could the PC market being doing to make it easier for games?
I think it’s up to the developers/publishers to use existing hardware and quit always pushing for that next gen look. Graphics capabilities are more than good enough right now to make amazing looking games, imho.
One solution that comes to mind, and one that has been hinted at for quite some time now, is the continued push for single-chip solutions where multiple vendors(Intel-ATI-Nvidia-AMD..ect) join together to produce exactly what you describe in part two of this blog entry. Just imagine the possibilities of having the CPU, Controller/Bridge, User defined RAM amount, Wireless, ect. all on one chip. Basically, put everything on todays current motherboards, with the exception of the GPU, all on one chip. Standardize power supply rails and all that jazz also.
I imagine a new form factor as a part of this evolution. I can also see some mad competition between vendors to produce high-end single chip solutions that can be tailored towards gamers, and/or everyday household or bussiness users.