Bill Roper Predicts Major PC Shift

Bill Roper, at Game Convention in Leipzig, Germany, stated in his keynote address that PC Gaming is on the verge of a major shift. From the GI.biz article: "I'm going to get on my PC soapbox for a few minutes...PC games are on the verge of a major market shift, as PC developers and publishers start to move from selling CDs of single-player games to retail outlets, to selling online games to those with broadband connections. We're already seeing primitive multi-platform games on the PC... Players want to get online and play."

Comments

Re:Ah, nope

[kannibal_klown]

It depends on the game and the AI, as well as the people.

Personally, I hate playing online. You have team-killers and the like, but then you have the whole "quality" thing.

For example: I'd rather play Star Craft in skirmish mode against the AI than risk getting Zerg-rushed against some pre-teen jerk. Or better yet, joining a 2 vs 2 game, and have your teammate immediately log so it becomes a 2 vs 1 game.

Complain about the AI as much as you want, but I'll take mediocre AI over stupid people any day.

Re:Ah, nope

[badasscat]

Complain about the AI as much as you want, but I'll take mediocre AI over stupid people any day.

Hell, I'll take mediocre AI over *smart* people too!

I have played RTS games online I believe twice. The last time was Rise of Nations, which was a brutal experience. There I was, working at what I thought was a pretty fast pace, only to get bum-rushed and knocked out of submission by an opponent who was a full two ages ahead of me already within seven minutes of starting the game. He knocked me out before I could even manage a defense.

Now, this may be "challenging", but I wouldn't call it "fun". In fact, from what I know of it, making AI "challenging" is no problem whatsoever - it's making it a good match to the skills that most average people have that's the issue. I would rather play a well-tuned AI than an expertly-honed real person who knows a game's weaknesses inside and out (which seems to be most of what you run into online) any day of the week. I'm not into games to develop and perfect my mad skillz; I'm into games to have fun.

If I can play against friends, then the experience is better, and in fact I used to play UT, Quake 3 and even Serious Sam against some of my co-workers after hours and I enjoyed it. I didn't even suck so bad compared to some of them.

But against random people, forget it. I'd rather not bother. And the problem is everybody has such different tastes that it's often tough to find friends who like the same games as I do - nobody I know likes RTS games, for example, or flight sims.

I think it probably is possible to design a game such that it's fun for everybody, whether you're a n00b, an experienced but relaxed player, a cheap bum-rusher or just a cheater. BF1942 came pretty close to this ideal, because there were just so many different ways to play - different objectives, different "jobs", etc. If you wanted to, you could just hang out inside a bomber and strafe the players below. You could run around on the ground on your own, you could sit and snipe (a perfectly valid activity given the setting), you could get together with others and plan a real attack, you could be a driver, you could be a fighter pilot. And the game world was large enough that if you really sucked, nobody would even really notice anyway.

But online games like that are rare. Most online games are just not very much fun if you ask me, because most random people are either jerks or they've just learned how to exploit a game's inherent flaws (and every game is flawed in some ways). They play cheap and dirty, which is fine if they want to play that way (it's not their fault a game has flaws to be exploited), but it sure doesn't make me want to play them.

Re:Right back atcha.

[Bastian]

I think you misread me. I'm not saying that online games with no story are better. I'm saying they're what seems to be making money right now, and they seem to be the direction in which the industry has been headed for quite a while.

Personally, online gaming isn't for me, either. I think that adventure games are where it's at, hands down. But the genre still died, because the industry moved on.

Similarly, I don't think 3D makes a magically great game. Really, I like sprites - they have style. But 2D games are all but long gone, because 3D is what someone has decided is cool.

I want to play, not organize play-time

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahmen Brother, ...
I just want to play a game at a reasonable (non-twitch) pace, whenever I want.
If my wife calls me for dinner or the kids, I want to pause the game. Not lose because I just abandon my character/team.

Unfortunatly, the game market is catering to their most vocal buyers (multiplayer) and those with the most time and cash (teen & college).

I have plenty of cash. (That happens when you get older.) What I don't have is plenty of free time. And my friends don't have free time either. If we want to get together it is on the weekends (usually withthe wife & kids). Maybe 5 minutes of IM at night.
None of use have the desire to arrange a 3-4 hour play session across multiple time zones. If I want to play a game I want to play it NOW, and stop NOW. Not at some pre-arranged social time. I also don't have time to deal with mad l00t 3lit3 13 year olds talking trash in some pick-up game.

People like me are being ignored by the market.

It is to be expected. The movie industry stopped caring about anyone over 19 and any weekend after the opening weekend a long time ago. That is just what the game industry is doing now.

My reaction? You know I never finished Planescape: Torment. Maybe I should do that now. Instead of playing Dungeon Siege 2 (which has gone all Diablo on me. Yeah being in that beta cooled my desire for the game.).

Umm, nope. I'm tired of that MYTH

[Moraelin]

"He's predicting something that's pretty much already happened."

False. It's something that keeps getting predicted, but never actually happened. It's been almost a decade of hearing that bullshit about how MMOs and online play are the wave of the future, but in practice it never happened.

"The RPG world has turned into the MMORPG world."

False. Single-player console MMORPGs routinely outsell any MMO, WOW included.

The MMO market is now at 10 million users world-wide. There still are more people playing on the GameCube alone, which never had _any_ kind of internet connection, than that.

Now also add PS2s, GameBoys, PSPs and everything else that _is_ a gaming platform and used offline. Simply put, the number of people playing SP games on those simply _dwarfs_ the MMO and online FPS markets combined.

So nope, sorry to burst your bubble, the vast majority of gaming still happens off-line.

Yes, l33t CS clansmen and the like are an awfully loud (and sometimes obnoxious) minority, and like to pretend that the whole world revolves around them. But the keyword is: minority. Just because someone makes an awful lot of noise, doesn't make them the majority or anything.

So basically just because _you_ don't give a damn about SP games any more, please don't pretend that the rest of the world does the same. The numbers still are on the SP side.