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

We don't need servers, we need napkins

[WillAffleckUW]

Not all MMO's have been PC-only

Exactly. WoW is PC and Mac. Spore will run on Wii, DS, and PC - altho it's a bit of a Massively Multi-Instance Multi-Player Online-Library Game.

Steam-Like Services *WILL* Save PC Gaming

[p0tat03]

I used to be a huge critic of Steam and its related services, but I've warmed up to the idea over time.

As a softdev (and a small-time indie game dev) I have a hard time justifying piracy, and since I've made the moral choice to buy the software I use, it's hit my pocketbooks pretty hard, but it's a decision I am glad to live with. Most of my colleagues are not so conscious, I'm afraid, and most would buy a PC game if it's CD-key locked and the game was all about multiplayer (CS, BF2, etc), but almost none would ever buy a singleplayer game.

In other words, the concept that developers should just intrinsically *trust* the gamer to be moral and buy the game is hogwash. There may be a number of gamers like myself who strive to pirate as little as possible (if at all), but the majority of the world isn't so dev-friendly. I welcome (legal and reasonable) ways to protect developer content.

Additionally, I'm also a huge singleplayer gamer. I loved games like Deus Ex, Half-Life, and the new C&C3, which I bought mostly for the campaign mode (and it is excellent, btw). Many developers are eschewing singleplayer games in favour of multiplayer-only games, due to the fact that the multiplayer-ness easily lends itself to better piracy protection. This leaves gamers like me out in the cold. It is also why I believe, despite the evils of the technology, we must live with it if we are to see more singleplayer content being developed in this world.

Just my 2c.

My prediction: Enviroment

[EnsilZah]

One thing they didn't mention and i think is going to be important is more malleable environments.
I think this trend was mostly started by HL2's Gravgun, and we're going to see some significant advances in physics and materials in the next few years.
The two best examples i can think of right now are the upcoming Crysis and Star Wars: Force Unleashed.
Sure, attempts like Red Faction didn't do very well, but i think it's time.

Steam is not DRM

[Enderandrew]

To say that Steam is the future of PC gaming is fairly true. To say that Steam directly equals DRM is not.

DRM is a means to strongly limit your right to use something you purchase, to the point of suggesting that you don't really own it.

Steam will allow you to download your content to multiple computers, and freely play your content.

Most music DRM schemes limit your ability to copy your music, or play it on whatever hardware you choose.

Steam is first and foremost a means of digital distribution to skip the distribution middle-man.

Game development costs have skyrocketed, game developers are working more hours for less money, and yet while our expectations rise, our desire to pay more for games has not risen. Something has to give, and many truly great gaming companies have gone to the wayside.

If digital distribution puts more money into the hands of the developer, keeps overall costs down, allows me to purchase a game without leaving my house, install on multiple PCs without even looking for disks, etc. etc. etc., then it is certainly more of a blessing than a curse.

I'm all for digital distribution.

Is Steam perfect? No. But it was largely the first venture in the market, and it is a step in the right direction.