The Imagined Future of PC Games

PC Gamer has up a five-part series prognosticating the future of PC gaming. (part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5) Graham Smith, Kieron Gillen, and a few other PC games folks make some big-picture predictions about where console gaming's aging sibling is headed. Some of their predictions are fairly safe ("6. The mouse won't die, and graphics cards will get more powerful."), but others may be a bit contentious: "4. Steam and similar services will crush PC piracy. There's been a lot of talk from developers - old rivals id and Epic chief among them - about piracy making it harder for them to justify developing PC-only games. There's so little profit in it, apparently, that the poor fellows are left with no choice but to stray from their beloved home-platform and develop for consoles too. And yet the only games out there with a zero percent piracy ratio are all PC-only: MMOGs. They have a headstart in the anti-piracy crusade: connecting to a central server is an integral part of the game, so verifying that the user's CD key is unique can be done without much fuss. And no one's going to complain that a MMOG requires an internet connection; that's pretty obvious from the concept itself."

Comments

Hmm, a serial and a central server . . .

[Maradine]

And yet the only games out there with a zero percent piracy ratio are all PC-only: MMOGs. They have a headstart in the anti-piracy crusade: connecting to a central server is an integral part of the game, so verifying that the user's CD key is unique can be done without much fuss.

Not all MMO's have been PC-only (and of those, there has been piracy, PSO anyone?). Further, I'd argue that connecting to a central server with a CD key is not proof against piracy. Finally, the primary financial outlay surrounding an MMO is purchased time, not software.

Don't get me wrong, the pressures facing the PC side of the industry are very real. But if we're talking about means-to-profit, piracy is not the main threat that the MMO's face by a long shot. As with many things, the fulcrum is much lower elsewhere . . . account phishing and gold farming are by-and-large the most profitable way to attack the system.

I'm also very curious about the implied assertion that game piracy has been licked in the console world.

M

Re:Hmm, a serial and a central server . . .

[paeanblack]

Further, I'd argue that connecting to a central server with a CD key is not proof against piracy.

It's not about "connecting to a central server" that fights piracy, it's changing the payment scheme to a method that gives both parties an incentive to play fair. I think a pay-to-play scheme will win in the long run on simple economic efficiency.

Option A) Player pays full fare up-front for a bug-ridden game and assumes developer will release patches in the future.
Option B) Player pirates enhanced version (no DRM) and developer holds their breath awaiting payment for inferior copy.
Option C) Player and developer engage in ongoing tit-for-tat, exchanging partial payments for patches and additional content.

The first two options both have several variants and variables, such as demos, brand reputation, extra box goodies, lawsuits, delayed purchases, etc., but all of those will either increase cost-of-entry or decrease market efficiency. In both of the first two cases, one party must pay extra to counterbalance the incentive for the other party to shirk, a perverse incentive inherent in the payment schemes.

With option C, the player provides a constant revenue stream for as long as they are interested in the game. The developer uses that revenue to maintain player interest as long as it is profitable. This has occurred historically with expansion packs to games, but it was not until widespread broadband availability that the system was sufficiently fluid to handle small incremental tits-and-tats with efficiency. XBox Live has really pushed forward in this direction with their point system.

The only thing special about MMORPGs and low piracy is that they fall more naturally into Option C, where there is less economic incentive for piracy.

Re:Hmm, a serial and a central server . . .

[the_bard17]

For several months after FFXI came out, the majority of my coworkers (numbering around 20) were into FFXI pretty heavily.

My point? If you're standing in the forest, and most of the trees you're seeing are pine, doesn't mean the rest of the forest is pine, too.

On the other hand, FFXI only lasted for those several months... then they moved on to other games.

The Difference is...

[Shadow Wrought]

If you're playing a MMO than you're wanting to be playing online. Paying for a game that you're playing alone and it still requires a high speed internet connection is just asinine. All they'll do in the long run is push more folks to consoles where they don't have to put up with that.

Re:The Difference is...

[Baldrake]

I'd much prefer an online check to the current situation of having to keep track of and swap CD's all the time.

Piracy Evolves as Anti-Piracy Evolves

[vertigoCiel]

I am reminded of Douglas Adam's Electronic Thumb from HHTTG: half the electrical engineers in the galaxy are working on fresh ways of jamming the signals, and the other half are working on fresh ways to jam the jamming signals. There are ways to get around CD-key authorization besides using someone elses - I believe that people have already found a way to disable the Registration request in the Adobe CS3 beta, by deleting the file that reminds CS3 it still needs a registration number. Piracy is only realy a wide-spread problem after games are succesful enough to be widely pirated - otherwise it's too hard for the average user to find a pirated copy. By this point, the game has made enough revenue to be profitable. It's just the publisher's constant desire for insane profits that forces devs to move to consoles.

Re:Piracy Evolves as Anti-Piracy Evolves

[Osty]

Piracy is only realy a wide-spread problem after games are succesful enough to be widely pirated - otherwise it's too hard for the average user to find a pirated copy. By this point, the game has made enough revenue to be profitable.

Unless you're id, Epic, or other big-name developers and publishers, in which case your reputation in the market is enough for people to pirate your game on day one (or day zero, even), robbing you of that profitable "build-up to success".

IMHO, the solution is not to keep fighting fire with fire. Instead, it's to get into a different game. MMOs are one example. Another example would be similar to what Stardock does. When you buy Galactic Civilizations 2, there is no DRM at all. Instead, you get a serial number that entitles you to game updates. This wouldn't work at all for a typical EA game ("punt it out the door and start working on next year's version"), but it works great for smaller developers with a loyal fanbase. The game of GalCiv2 as it stands today is quite a bit different from how it shipped about a year ago, but if you pirate the game you would not have access to any of those game updates. Also, I'm not talking about intentionally leaving in bugs or any of that crap. You ship as good of a game as you can, and then you support it through its lifetime with feature enhancements (GalCiv2 AI or ship builder enhancements, for example).

Re:M$ Games for windows forceing you to pay for mo

[PIPBoy3000]

Not only bad, it may not be smart. Counterstrike was a fan-created mod which revolutionized the industry. Neverwinter Nights was great because so many people made modules for it. I think we'll see developers looking for ways to leverage user-created content. YouTube wouldn't be worth billions if no one uploaded anything to it.

They said WHAT!?

[Aladrin]

Did they really say that DRM will save gaming on the PC? Are they insane?

Let's be honest, here. Steam is simply DRM with some sugar stuffed around it to make people like it. And it's even broken, already. I've seen quite a few steam-rips out there.

How in the world will an already-failed DRM save PC Gaming?

No, instead, good GAMES are needed to save PC Gaming. Assuming it needs saving at all. Maybe the reason that gaming has been steadily moving back to consoles is because it works better there. The controls and basic interface are familiar, there's no worries about your particular brand of hardware working with the game, the DRM doesn't often bite you, etc. With the exception of a few games that really do play better with mouse and keyboard, consoles have PCs beat. And they are cheaper. Even if you buy them all.

A couple years ago, I'd have laughed in your face if you said I'd prefer console gaming now. But with power of the XBox 360 (and PS3, theoretically... wish they'd go ahead and make a good game for it) and the innovative interface of the Wii, I rarely game on the PC now. Enough so that I am back using Kubuntu as my main OS because I rarely feel the need to be in Windows.

More to it than DRM

[SanityInAnarchy]

Being able to impulse-buy a game and have it playable either in a few minutes or in a day or so is a huge deal. Also isn't bad getting periodic updates (HDR for Half-Life 2 and CS:S).

As for DRM biting you... I've lost, scratched, and otherwise killed game discs, and on a console, that's it, no more game for you. On Steam, just re-download and reinstall -- or burn a backup DVD, or whatever.

I don't like the DRM either, and I won't make excuses for that -- technologically, it sucks, too, as does anything that requires IE to play a game. But it is actually a good idea, and it works very well.

Lockout chip business model

[tepples]

With the exception of a few games that really do play better with mouse and keyboard, consoles have PCs beat. And they are cheaper. Even if you buy them all. What about games by microstudios, which the console makers have historically ignored for the last couple decades? Among the current consoles (PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii), only the PLAYSTATION 3 is open enough out of the box to let a microstudio self-publish, and a self-published game runs under Linux with no access to even 2D acceleration.

Piracy, right... more like too many mediocre games

[blahplusplus]

Piracy, right... more like too many games, and too many mediocre games at that. The truth is there is simply way too many games for the market to support @ 50+ dollars a pop, then add in MMO's with their subscriptions and everything else and you have perfect storm. Next many games offer nothing new, why should gamers buy games that are simply upgraded rehashes? Game developers only have themselves to blame in their quest of chasing their expensive technolust tastes. The truth is the game industry is the cause of their lack of profit... let's see where the game industry went wrong...

1) While the game market has expanded, it hasn't expanded to keep up with development costs of high fidelity graphics that the industry is chasing.

2) Game industry did itself in, gamers do not control where money is invested, nor what it produces, gamers do not control any of the financial aspects of where money is spent in development (graphics vs. gameplay).

3) Capitalism and designing a good game do not always mix well, with it rubs up against the economic model of society. The more time you spend working on a game 99% of the time the better it will be, if you're independently wealthy or have connections like certain figures in the game industry you can take your sweet time. But the drive for short-term profit over long-term gains has been an emerging problem in the game industry since the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube.

The whole industry right now is suffering since gameplay is getting stale and more games sell based on graphics then gameplay. I was never sure that the game industries model was very stable in many respects. It's built on the whims of a customer base which is not only difficult to understand but is just too diverse to pigeonhole with terms like "hardcore gamer" vs "casual gamer", next add in the mad rush for profits and you get a glut of mediocre games. I wouldn't be surprised of gaming slows down (Tanks) for a bit in the future but as long as their are fresh bodies without gaming experience (new kids being born) they may just be able to keep getting away with rehash city.

Re:Piracy, right... more like too many mediocre ga

[Anonymous Coward]

1) This is almost inevitable as you can no longer have one guy his garage make a blockbuster game. Do you know how much the operating cost a video game studio is? Do you think they use pentium 3 800 mhz machines to build their models? Or that their artists work for free?

2) Actually games DO control what games are made. If people weren't buying Madden 2001 2002 2003 2004 etc. by the truck load every year, EA wouldn't be making them. If people were willing to buy single player adventure games, those companies wouldn't be dying left and right. In the end, we're in a capitalist society and demand is what drive the supply.

3) True. However we're seeing more and more support for the next generation of independent game makers, such as Fl0w, Portal, and that thing that Xbox Live was doing where people can make and upload their own game for others to play. Obviously you will not see the next Unreal Tournament made by 3 guys from their college dorm.

If only games where not so expensive...

[master_p]

Perhaps if games were not so expensive, we wouldn't get in trouble to find, download and install pirated games.

Having to pay 60 euros for Half Life 2, for example, is unacceptable, in my opinion. If it was 20 euros, I wouldn't even consider the pirated version.

If you think that the price of 20 euros is illogical, then you should consider that Valve spent 6 years rebuilding the game twice. Why should I have to pay for Valve's engineers having fun and not doing their jobs? Half Life 1 had more content and more substance, and it was delivered in far less time. The price of 60 euros for HL2 does not reflect its real price, also considering that the gameplay is maximum 30 hours (which means that the average gamer can beat the game in a few days).

And since you are indie developer, here are some news for you: games with equal or less gameplay than Space Invaders do not worth more than 1 euro. There are 100s of indie shops out there, all producing games with gameplay seen before a 100 million times, only with a little bit more flashier graphics that do not usually fit in with the game's context. Why should we buy them, just for playing out 10 minutes?

Perhaps a better model would be to be able to rent a game for a couple of days. Movies in DVD format cost 1 euro per day, for 120 minutes of fun. Movies can be copied/downloaded just as easily as games, yet the movie industry does not say that they are about to collapse due to piracy...and that is because they have find a better market model, one that suits people better.