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Game Devs On the Future of PC Gaming
Shacknews wraps up a developer panel at PAX East discussing the future of gaming on the PC. They cover topics including DRM, digital download platforms and cloud-based gaming services.
"Joe Kreiner of Terminal Reality: 'If you look at it from a giant publisher perspective, then the numbers on the PC just really don't make financial sense for you to bother with it. But if you start out with the mindset — you know, you're targeting that group, you make a niched product that's going [to] do well, if you look at a lot of the titles on Steam, Torchlight's a really good example — as long as you know that's your audience to begin with, and you make something inside of a budget that you know you're going to be selling those kinds of numbers, you can be very successful. I think it just takes a targeted developer. ... There is no [PC] platform, really. It's just a mish-mosh of hardware, an operating system that kind of supports games. The problem with that platform is, there's no standards and piracy is rampant, so why would we want to make a video game for that platform unless you had some sort of draconian DRM thing to keep it from being stolen?"
WoW gives Blizzard 11 million times ~$12 per month and an unknown amount of starting purchases.. that's not financial sense?
..stop shipping them as obvious console ports. Pretty much every major PC release in the last 2 years has had their control systems ported to the PC in a manner that can only be described as half-assed. Where it's most obvious is in menu systems (Dead Space), Vehicle controls (Red Faction, ME1), and Quick-Time events (Pick any game that had them). If you're going to put something on PC then you need to stop porting crappy control configurations and do the job right.
I think the solution to piracy is to make all games multiplayer. Multiplayer in a way that actually adds value to the game. It comes down to market forces, singleplayer is proven to be a rip-off fest so the publishers can whine all they want but it won't change things. A world like Second Life is something of what I see as a start for the future. But instead of just walking around looking at the latest hair pieces you instead raid the corporation down the street with your buddies. Doing multiplayer would refine it, massive worlds change the value from being on your computer to being on the network and the network is a lot easier to monetize (how I hate that word).
Shh.
...they could start with A. not making PC games that crash when you do anything (yes an exaggeration, but you get the point) and B. letting me play the game without insane drm hoops. When it's easier for me to play a downloaded copy than it is to play the copy you are selling, there is a serious problem.
And don't argue that Ubisoft's newest DRM scheme is the answer. Paying customers are having just as much trouble as the pirates.
Living With a Nerd
News to me. And it costs money and angers customers. I already know several people that will wait for the last UBI games to be cracked, instead of buying them as they had planned.
Don't forget that the current higher initial sales for some draconian DRM is due to a) people not knowing about the restrictions they are getting and b) crackers till having to adjust to the technology. I expect in the end it will result in huge losses. Personally, I will not play titles that phone home and my experience with one of those that do it optionally (Mass Effect 2) was that when trying the online thing (required for DLC), it failed to run. Had to reinstall it and play without online connection. Seeing how people have problems with the Settlers 7 and AC2, I expect they will wise up.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
FTA: John Abercrombie: "If everybody would stop pirating, if everybody would stop doing DRM, it would be a much happier world, wouldn't it? We'd have a lot more PC games sold and a lot more happier customers."
Just yet another industry guy who is either lying or fundamentally doesn't understand. Stop wasting your breath on this endless chicken-and-egg moral persuit of cosmic justice, and focus on what's best for you as a developer/publisher, and that is that removing DRM will increase your sales.
I think the problem with Ubisoft's idiocy is that it adds nothing of value to the player and takes away real enjoyment. As a legitimate player there is no value to having a constant internet connection for a single-player game and also as a legitimate player it is annoying when your single-player game is artificially restricted by network connectivity. Single-player games should not pause because of a flaky DSL modem: there is a literal disconnect between the purpose of playing the game and the hoops the publisher makes you jump through. Punishing legitimate players for the actions of non-legitimate players may in the end turn out to be lucrative but it is a shitty thing to do to a customer: hopefully enough people will see this and Ubisoft will die.
Shh.
I'm only interested in PC exclusives now... i.e. Indie games, and Starcraft 2. Mount and Blade: Warband looks/seems amazing.
It looks to only be a problem for highly expensive productions.
Smaller games that start giving benefits after some thousand sales will thrive on a market devoid of big fishes.
Which is fine by me.
There is no [PC] platform, really. It's just a mish-mosh of hardware, an operating system that kind of supports games. The problem with that platform is, there's no standards and piracy is rampant, so why would we want to make a video game for that platform unless you had some sort of draconian DRM thing to keep it from being stolen?
Every point of that has been true for the last 25 years. It hasn't kept PC game companies like Blizzard or EA from becoming multi-billion dollar ventures which rival the largest console companies -- without draconian DRM, without any hardware sales, without a monolithic platform. Why? PC games interfaces are not dumbed down for a living room interface, and thus can present more of a challenge to either creativity (Sim City, The Sims etc) or tactical/strategic skill (FPS, RTS etc). Mario, Wii Sports or Halo might be fun and can be a challenge for hand/eye, but aren't not exactly intellectually stimulating and engaging in the long term.
Removing DRM won't increase sales and may actually cost you some but your customers - the people who matter - will be a lot more satisfied. I think the average piracy rate sits at around 90% so what should publishers do? Moving the content off of the local computer like Ubisoft is experimenting with is an indication but their current implementation adds nothing of value to the customer. It's just another hoop to jump through without a benefit to a legitimate purchaser and that doesn't engender good will.
Shh.
So by that logic, they shouldn't bother to make games for PS2, 360, PSP, DS... Or basically any system except the PS3. And you can soon mark the PS3 off that map since Sony has waived the red flag in front of hackers' eyes.
Those systems are pirated as much or more than PC games are pirated, and it's just as easy. (Easier, for some, like PSP and DS.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
What's a niched product? Seems I spend too much time mainstreaming...
At the bottom of the
I play the occasional game here and there. I stole a few, sure.
But for instance I just bought the Orange Box two weeks ago and I'm not regretting it one bit. I bought Torchlight because it's some of the most fun you can have for $5 (steam sale). I'm going to buy SC2 because it's going to be an awesome game, etc.
I like buying good stuff, or "ok" stuff for a good price. I don't however like the idea of paying $50 for a shit game. (Looking at you, 90% of the market)
o hai
...the PC game industry, has grown obese, too fat, too dumb and too clumsy to survive its own game. This is what happens when you move game production into being something akin to producing a hollywood movie, with all the inefficiencies that follow.
Steam has also shown if you put the price of your game at a level gamers think is a good deal - you sell like crazy.
... comments are laughable. PC games sell less simply because Microsoft pushed the Xbox so hard and a lot of PC gamers left for console land. Now PC's get ports mainly of console titles except titles that are extremely hard to do on consoles without taking away from the game itself.
But either way developers are the only one's to blame here. Does anyone think Starcraft 2 or diablo 3 is not going to sell well?
What about the battlefield games? I'm certain the did just fine on PC. These guys are talking about the PC without noticing that the games that sell on the PC are _good games_. PC players don't like putting up with unfinished buggy crap, how many unfinished or broken games have dev's been releasing lately? A hell of a lot.
The real issue is that developers painted themselves into a corner chasing hardware and graphics if you take development costs from 10-13 years ago and compare it to today there is a HUGE increase. Developers need therefore to focus on development processes that reduce their costs and not blaming piracy.
Piracy is an excuse bad developers use because bad developers are so used to getting money for shitty games on consoles where bad games tend to sell giving developers a false impression of the quality of their games.
We can all rattle off a whole list of unfinished games over the past 5 years released on PC. Another problem is DRM and game costs, if you're game is going to have DRM that means I'm not going to pay $50 for something that will be broken and unsupported 10 years from now.
Lots of old DRM less games can be run offline, the same can't be said about DRM'd games. The industry wants to moved to a forced obsolescence model where no one owns their games and they have total control and it's sickening.
Game servers for old games in console land were shut down, why exactly should we believe developers promises that they will un-drm their game? Quite frankly someone needs to sue the industry. If I want to play a game 10 years from now unconnected from the net and the data-mining anti-privacy mothership I have every right to.
John Abercrombie: "I think there's just too many options out there, honestly. Too many options for people to buy. With the consoles, there's just one. You just go to the store and buy the one."
So would that one be PS3, Xbox 360, or Wii? At least PC games are supposed to run on both NVIDIA graphics and ATI graphics.
John Abercrombie: "I think browser-based games are really cool...you don't need a PC, you just have something that has a browser. That way, people who were targeting PC or multiple configurations on PC before can just target a browser."
With or without the DOM event model? With or without SVG? With or without HTML5 Canvas? With or without HTML5 Audio? With or without Flash? With or without Java?
Joe Kreiner: "Most of the innovation right now, console-side, is designed around a living room environment. That's not typically where you have your PC."
So you ignore the entire home theater PC market, which has grown since HDTVs displaced SDTVs in stores.
Putting DRM on a game nowadays is like shutting the barn door after the horse has left. It only stops people who aren't intimidated by PC games, don't mind infringing copyright, but don't know about the existence of cracks. Those of whom which the 1st and 3rd apply is but a small minority of PC gamers buying anything more sophisticated than The Sims.
Digital downloads (I hate that term) will be great for PC gaming, eventually. There's way too many great PC games that can't be found on Steam for it to be a one-stop shop; consolidation, expansion, or a 3rd party frontend is needed to make more games easily available, to avoid each publisher having their own platform with associated system tray icon, memory footprint and updater.
The PC is the best platform for indie game developers, since there's no devkit to buy or gatekeeper to pay in order to develop for it. Updates are as easy as FTPing a new binary to your server; open source games are especially unlikely to appear on consoles. Interesting experimental or hastily-made games which would never appear on a console due to lack of polish or content can be offered for free on PC. And finally, the standard input devices of mouse and keyboard aren't standard on any console, allowing more precision or more functions for PC games.
Cloud gaming won't be very interesting until bandwidth is high and unlimited and the lag is low. I imagine it would work better in Korea, since it's compatible with the net cafe business model, and they have very high speed internet.
Publishers start funding of downloadable console games at $300k-$500k, so anything expected to gross less than that needs a new funding source. It may be negligible to publishers which rake in Billions per year, but to a two-man team $250k can be a lot of money, the amount a niche game might make. Self-publishing for the PC is always an option.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Better give them back then before they find out they are missing.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
"Oh if you look at the numbers PC games just aren't worth it for big publishers!"
Really? Then why the fuck do they bother? Since about the beginning of 2010 we've seen the release of:
Dark Void
Mass Effect 2
Startrek Online (only for PC)
STALKER Call of Pripyat (only for PC)
Bioshock 2
Napoleon: Total War (only for PC)
Supreme Commander 2
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Assassin's Creed II
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Chaos Rising (only for PC)
Command and Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight (only for PC)
Metro 2033
Dragon Age Origins: Awakening
Settlers 7: Path to a Kingdom (only for PC/Mac)
Just Cause 2
This is just a list of titles from major publishers, doesn't count any indy games or the like. Now I notice a few things about this list. I notice it is quite a few games, I notice that it includes major titles also on the consoles, and I notice that it has major titles that are PC one. Also some of these titles (like Metro 2033) are enhanced for the PC, meaning you get better graphics or the like on the PC version. That tells me that the PC is NOT a minor platform that "Doesn't make sense" for big publishers. Tells me it is still a big platform.
In fact, as far as I have seen, PC game revenues are still the largest out there. They are bigger than any single console platform. They aren't bigger than all consoles combined, of course, but then you wouldn't expect that. Each console is a separate platform, and the PC is separate. Of those, the PC seems to have the highest revenues.
The fact that big, expensive, games keep coming out for the PC, in particular from studios that also publish console titles (like EA and SEGA) tells you that indeed the PC is very worth it to publish for. If it weren't, they wouldn't.
Remember it is real simple: You take all your costs to make something, all the development, support, staff and so on, call that X. You then take all the money you bring in selling that, call that Y. If Y is bigger than X by a non-trivial amount, say 10% or more, then it is worth doing. You are making a profit, and that's what matters.
These people who think that piracy is "killing" the platform need to tie a can on it. It is clearly not. To me it smacks of the same thing Hollywood loves to do when all movies "lose money" on paper and they cry and whine, yet keep releasing them apace. Tells me that there is no small amount of BS going on.
If these big publishers leave the PC market, I don't think much of value is lost. There still is a market for proper shooters and RTS games for PC, so good such games without exaggerated DRM will still appear anyway. Also, games cost more than 100 times as much money to develop than 15 years ago. And yet I don't find them 100 times as fun as the games from 15 years ago. On the contrary, often.
Joe Kreiner! Everything you said basically boils down to "Making games for the PC is haaaaard and we don't make as much money from the flawed, pitiful, weaksauce console ports we try to fob off on you."
Got a request for you buddy.
Keep your whining ass as far away from the PC game market as possible. Thanks.
Leave the PC game making to the folks who aren't afraid of putting in a little hard work to make games for players who are capable of controlling games using more than their opposable thumbs.
Near future, I guess. Because looking at a more distant future, it appears to be a happy place with only free/open source software. If everything evolves, and since proprietary is not optimal, anything proprietary still has evolving to do, ie has a brighter future still ahead. So the future is wide open as in gratis and libre.
Obviously, the future needn't be bright, but the future of computing will only remain proprietary in a future where evil forces use evil force to keep software proprietary (or if we don't get to computing utopia before we collectively snuff it, of course).
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
I used to be a big PC gamer, but broke down and bought an 360 a few years back because I could get that entire system for the cost of a new PC video card alone. I could live with console gaming if they'd give me the option of ditching the controller for a keyboard and mouse. For me, it's the only thing that makes PC gaming more attractive than console gaming. My 58" plasma and home theater really enhance my gaming experience, plus my couch is infinitely more comfortable than my computer chair (particularly for long stretches). Additionally, I like the idea that everyone is using the same hardware and the guys that are killing me every time I turn around aren't doing so because they're getting 10x my frame rate after building a new $5k system. Another benefit to ditching the PC for the console is that I haven't had to update my PC in years. (I'm long overdue for a new PC, but don't have a compelling reason to upgrade just yet)
"The problem with that platform is, there's no standards and piracy is rampant, so why would we want to make a video game for that platform unless you had some sort of draconian DRM thing to keep it from being stolen?"
Your words "from being stolen?" already tells me you have no clue and should just stop now. Nothing is stolen when something is copied. End of story.
I like techdirt's motto: Connect with Fans, and give them a Reason to Buy.
From the summary:
The problem with that platform is, there's no standards and piracy is rampant, so why would we want to make a video game for that platform unless you had some sort of draconian DRM thing to keep it from being stolen?
Why would you want to make a video game? How about: to make money? Instead of focusing on people who play your game without paying for it, why not focus on the people who do play it? This seems to work very well for Stardock.
Big publishers try to adapt the real world to their business model. It's much easier to adapt your business model to the real world. Of course to do that they'd need to get their head out of whatever dark place they're currently keeping it, but I expect to see more pragmatic publishers do very well in the future.
Holy cow, some of this is simply pure garbage:
* "The problem with that platform is, there's no standards and piracy is rampant, so why would we want to make a video game for that platform unless you had some sort of draconian DRM thing to keep it from being stolen?"
In other words, DRM is what we need, and we need more of it! The current DRM cannot be a possible reason for low sales!
* "If you look at how many guys have high-end graphics cards--well, yeah, all of you do--but the more casual players, the more general audience might not. The percentage is probably pretty low."
Thus, you're forced to allow us options to set graphics options - ranging from very simple all the way up to dual-cards. Which is difficult because... ?
* "If everybody would stop pirating, if everybody would stop doing DRM, it would be a much happier world, wouldn't it? We'd have a lot more PC games sold and a lot more happier customers."
Piracy will never, ever stop. And as we've seen very clearly in the past ten years, DRM is quite worthless, succeeding merely in stopping people from buying the originals, as the pirate copies are so much better.
* "I think you're going to continue to see what we've seen in the past five years, which is just console games ported to the PC..."
Which usually don't sell all that well, as PCs are simply more capable than consoles. High-end PCs, that is - the others can have plenty of graphics options.
* "PC gaming isn't dead, it's just in a partially vegetative state."
Which is why the indies are doing so well - have a look at "Plants vs. Zombies", for example...
* "At some point, there's going to have to be a fundamental paradigm shift in how we interface with the PC. The screen's just not going to do it anymore."
I... see. So, let's not use the monitor. Sounds brilliant
I'm sorry, chaps, but that discussion seemed pretty useless, particularly as the DRM attitude of some of the are idiotic (especially Joe Kreiner, Engine Licensing VP - but what do you expect from a manager anyway?)
Ciao,
Klaus
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Self-publishing for the PC is always an option.
But then PC gamers and console gamers tend to like different genres. For example, some games like Mario Party and Smash Bros. and Bomberman are best played on a large monitor with friends in the same room. With few exceptions, these tend not to get ported to PCs due to a perception that HTPCs don exits. So if my team has developed such a party-style PC game, should I try self-publishing it, or should we make and sell a PC game in a completely different genre in order to qualify for a console license?
Publishers who think they have to DRM things to death or the PC market isn't "worth it" who also think that the console market is "piracy" free nirvana (it isn't) should simply leave the PC gaming industry.
Chances are, they are making crap games that are just half-assed console ports, or trying to shove radical schemes (Ubisoft's constant phone home system) down people's throats. Companies that do either should EXPECT TO FAIL, and "piracy" has nothing to do with it.
If these companies leave the market that just makes new room for the next Bioware or similar company to rise. I note that even EA, the 600 pound gorilla has been mostly abandoning DRM of late, first sign of intelligent thought from that company in over 10 years.
The PC gaming industry will never die. The platform is too large, and it is the only platform that is actually open to independent publishers, since you don't have to pay a "Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft tax" just to access the platform. That, coupled with faster and faster internet connections and the rise of digital distribution (I buy all my games this way now) there is more opportunity than ever for competition.
This, I suspect, is why certain publishers actually WISH the PC would die. On the PC anyone who wants to can compete with them. On the consoles, access is restricted in a RIAA/MPAA fashion. I would say that the console publishers are actually the ones clinging to a dying business model, not the PC...
Corporatism != Free Market
I played Dragon Age and it was a decent game, but after playing the campaign there wasn't much for me. I had no desire to purchase additional content from the on-line store. There was no multi-player like there was in NWN1. Also the toolset I couldn't get working for it unless I did some trickery with my SQL express install from Visual Studio.
Quite frankly I had more fun and incentive to buy NWN1 expansions then I have to buy Dragon Age expansions. The NWN1 expansions added more to the single player and more to the toolset which was way easier too install and use then the DA one. I got way more replay value out of that.
Torchlight gave me some great fun, though the limited number of installs will keep it from sticking around on my computer. I've switched to Vista and had a hard drive failure and had to reinstall the game twice. Now I'm eye'n up a SSD to replace the main one which means a reinstall there too. Same thing with Plants vs. Zombies, great game but the limited install options means it won't stick around on my machine too much longer either if I upgrade hardware any time soon.
I noticed there are a lot more nicer game options in my package manager these days on my Ubuntu machine. That and my older games with the less hassle installers go nicely under Wine.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
those draconian DRM things are nothing but a small nusance to those who can defeat them and a real headache for actual paying customers. Case and point, I have a friend that bought the new C&C4, but he can't play it because his DSL drops somewhat frequently, which kicks him out of the game and forces him to start over. He tried to play 4 times before getting aggravated and giving up. If publishers would stop with all the DRM stuff hackers would be less interested and real customers could actually enjoy the product.
..if only to take the piss out of this consoles-uber-alles bullshit.
It seems to me that this guy's only real concern is keeping his work from being "stolen." Funny how the almighty consoles don't prevent this either, but it's so easy to point the finger at the "mish mash" of components on the non-platform of the PC isn't it?
The modern gaming era is a direct result of PC gaming. Were it not for Wolf3d/Doom on the PC, gaming would not have become popular enough to have caused the modern console explosion. Gaming has ALWAYS been a computer thing, going right back to Spacewar. When the original console/arcade meltdown happened in '84, gaming did not disappear: it was alive and well on the computers of the day. Hell back then it was a stigma to have your computer platform known as a "games machine" (Amiga, Atari). It wasn't until ID Software made it cool that critical mass had been reached, and it was a chain reaction. I'd be willing to bet that Wolf3d, Doom and Myst sold more computers than Microsoft Windows did.
What this "industry" needs is another humongous crash. When video games have budgets to rival major Hollywood movies and yet only give you a few hours of "gameplay," I think we've reached the point of ultimate hubris. It's another bubble...somethings got to give.
Is it just me, or are these developers just a bunch of whiny little bitches?
The console crash of: 1983 was caused by two main reasons: over-saturation of the market and very low-quality software. Comparing that to today: over-saturated - yes, and low-quality - somewhat.
Shh.
Ignore the whole article. Or anything after "Theres no standard".
The real thing here, is that some game dev's have moved to the console, where can live easier, can "monetize" everything than on the PC is free. These dev's want the PC platform to die, and are badmounthing it. Just ignore these people.
The PC platform is in good state, and is evolving, theres less of the AAA "megablockbuster generic shooter" games, and more indie and "small" games with genuine original ideas. PC gaming is evolving to a market of Culture and Quality. While the Console platform and these developers are evolving to a remake of the Hollywood culture.
Some people like Blockbusters like Independence Day(HALO), other people like 'smaller' movies like District 9 (Stalker). There are more in Stalker than where you will ever get from Halo.
Another reason to attack the PC platform, is that theres a type of gamer, the fanboy, that really like to read about how correct is his decission to love a platform, and how wrong is to choose other platforms, or like more other platforms. Badmounting the PC platform is lame fan service.
If PC gaming is dyiing, then probably Steam will close soon, Ok? do it look like Steam is the wrong thing and will close soon?
Maybe the future of consoles is Steam, a service like Steam to download games from internet, socialize, and things. The market of the very noise MegaBlockbuster Teenager Generic Shooter is not that big anyway. For every FPS gamer, there are 3 RTS gamers/players and 8 puzzle players. Hell... there are 85 million of FarmVille players. How much people play Halo 2 or BF2 now on the console?
-Woof woof woof!
Of one billion PC users.
Sure, you can carve that up with whatever limitations and excuses you want, but throwing away a market with potential like that shows either an incredible ignorance of economics, or a willful strategy of shifting retail practices to closed mediums where users can be controlled and gouged on price.
"The problem with that platform is, there's no standards and piracy is rampant, so why would we want to make a video game for that platform unless you had some sort of draconian DRM thing to keep it from being stolen?"
The problem is that the draconian DRM isn't keeping it from being pirated. Pirates get to play free while us paying customers sometimes don't get to play what we payed for. The system is inherently broken, and it's starting to push toward a trend of 'rented game licenses'. By pushing DRM, you are only hurting your paying customers.
I know this might come across as flame bait... but please bear with me.
I firmly believe that Microsoft has had a big hand in killing off PC gaming, despite having a big hand in standardising 3D APIs; hands up here who remembers the first 3DFX and Rendition Verite cards... each had their own APIs. It was a mess until DirectX came along...
Then Microsoft goes and kills it all with shenanigans such as making Halo 2 DX10 (and Vista) only when there was no technical reason for to do so. One has to simply fire up Halo2 on XP via WoWLoader to see that Halo2 works fine under DX9 (and runs 30% faster when compared to Vista).
That one experience convinced me that this was the day PC gaming truly died.
Since then a couple of gems have come along (Torchlight.... Borderlands) but the majority have been Console ports or just rehashed iterations of the same FPS games.
Shame since console gaming (yes I have one) these days mostly concentrates on FPS titles... which is shocking considering how utterly SHIT console controllers are at FPS games (good luck with that head shot) when compared to PC mouse based controls. Titles such as Fable 2 and Sacred, which I can multiplay locally with my wife (we are both Diablo addicts) are very far and few between.
PC Gaming -> RIP
I haven't had a console since the N64. I'll probably grab one so I can play with the kids in a few years (when they're old enough to demand one), but I'm happy with the PC for now. It's much cheaper entertainment than the consoles thanks to great user-created mods and maps --and I don't really mind unobtrusive DRM. For instance, Steam is DRM done right (IMHO); Ubisoft is the devil. I've bought games from those jerks that I could only play 1 in 20 times thanks to their DRM fcking up the disc that they demand every time.
Ask me about my sig!
"PC" gaming invariable means coding to direct-x APIs, not a video card direct.
It means coding to DirectX API with workarounds for NVIDIA driver deficiencies on the one hand, and DirectX API with workarounds for ATI driver deficiencies on the other hand.
I am a PC gamer because mouse and keyboard support for consoles sucks for gaming. I still have the various consoles, but I prefer PC to them.
Generally, there have traditionally been five different groups of people who (want to) have a game.
1. The group that cannot afford it and thus copies it.
2. The group that simply collects copies, no matter if it's good or sucks or whatever, gotta have 'em all.
3. The group that kinda-sorta likes the game, or thinks they might, and copies it if possible. If not, so be it.
4. The group that WANTS a game, preferably free, but buys if it can't be gotten another way.
5. The group that simply buys a game and doesn't care about copying.
Depending on your genre and particular game, you may have different weighs in those groups, a sequel will probably have more weigh in group four than a casual game without a brand behind it, which will probably have more weigh in group four or five.
Now imagine you implement the absolute, perfect and unbreakable DRM. What will change.
You will not gain any sales from group one. They couldn't afford buying your game before, that won't change with any DRM you could tack onto it.
You will also not gain any sales from group two. They just collect because it's free.
You might gain a few sales from group three, IF your game price is below the threshold where people would rather abstain if they're unsure whether it's worth it.
You will certainly gain sales from group four, who will now be forced to buy your game. They will even accept any DRM you force down their throat because they want that game.
You will OTOH also certainly lose sales from group five, though, due to DRM and them not accepting it.
The question is now, do you expect your fanboys to be numerous enough to outweigh the losses from the (almost certainly financially potent) group five, who probably didn't care about the price but do possibly care about the paternalism?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm tired of hearing about piracy is the reason for the slow down of PC gaming. Piracy is just as much of a big deal on the Wii and other consoles! Its actually easier to do on the consoles, you just throw in a chip and burn a cd and go. You can find the games almost anywhere, so they can't tell me the reason is piracy. I think its just easier to program for and requires less resources to program for the consoles because the hardware is old and all the same across the board on each console. The xBox has a 50% failure rate. PC gaming all the way......sorry console users but PC gaming is the best way to game especially FPS which is mainly what I play. I wish nvidia and ATI would bring their prices down some for the highest end cards, asking $500+ for a video card is ridicules!!
It's not my blog but I think it is a nice counterpoint to the assertion that PC gaming is dying:
Games of 2010
It lists over 150 games exclusives to the PC platform, spanning a variety of genres and game-styles. Admittedly, not all of these are big-budget commercial titles (most are) but most of them look very good. And this doesn't include any of the multi-platform titles, of which there are a great number.
Many games which are multi-platform are designed that way from the beginning; it's not as if the PC's are getting scraps grudingly scraped off the overfull plate of console gaming. Games are designed to be multiplatform from the start because they are so expensive and publishers need to target gamers regardless of what hardware they play on to recoup the costs. Fewer PC exclusives is less an indictment of the PC platform as it is of the skyrocketing costs of game development. But as evidenced by the link above, PC gaming is still going very strong.
Of one billion PC users.
Sure, you can carve that up with whatever limitations and excuses you want
As I understand this post, you want to downplay the fact that most of these billion PC users use a PC whose graphics are roughly as capable as a decade-old Voodoo3 video card. Entry-level "business app" PCs tend to have onboard Intel GMA graphics, and a lot of GMA chipsets rely on the CPU for T&L. Because the past few years of 3D PC games expect far more performance than the GMA can produce, some people say GMA stands for Graphics My @$$+\-{!*(=NO CARRIER
Chances are, they are making crap games, period. Crap on consoles, too.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Well, one great reason to do it, in spite of its perceived disadvantages, would be in order to make a shitload of money from sales to users. Without any DRM, much less draconian DRM, sales will be higher. And pirates aren't part of the market, so you don't ever have to worry about them; paying customers are who you should be selling to. The most harm that pirates, at their worst, are capable of doing, is tricking you into using DRM, thereby reducing the attractiveness of your product and its sales.
The PC as it stands will always have more potential in terms of what you can do with it, and as such, games can be made to scale higher than a console. That is really a key to why a well written PC game will ALWAYS offer more than a console game. The Radeon 5870 and even a Geforce 8800(by whatever name NVIDIA has renamed it to these days) are better than what you see in the PS3(which DOES have better hardware than the XBOX 360). So, anyone programming for the PC KNOWS that the graphics settings, detail, textures, etc could be made better. Within six months of a console release, a new video card for the PC will be released that will be at least as powerful as well.
When it comes to CPU power, PCs again have greater potential, so that isn't an issue either. For controls, not everything needs to be about a joystick, since the mouse can emulate MUCH of that feel, or just provide support for it. The keyboard on a PC provides many more keys than a console could hope for, so more complexity can be provided(not always a good thing though). The big thing is that PCs evolve much faster than consoles, so at any time a console has an advantage, within two years PCs will have caught up.
The only down side on PCs is that Intel Graphics have held the industry back. If customers actually knew how bad Intel graphics are compared to Geforce and Radeon graphics, customers would know to avoid machines with the sub-standard graphics in them. So, developers have had to program either to just put in requirements that you need a DirectX 9, 10, or 11 compliant video card which excludes the worst Intel graphics, or to scale their titles to allow for the best graphics detail to be turned off(toned down) for those with Intel graphics. That isn't really a negative since anyone who really cares about playing games SHOULD know to buy a computer that has at least acceptable graphics performance for their needs.
When it comes to DRM, the worse the copy protection, the higher the piracy rate will be, it is really very simple. EA dropped SecuROM for that reason, it upset too many people and caused too many problems. EA is actually switching to a different approach, which is to provide additional content to those who have purchased and registered the game. Mass Effect 2 for example has had a number of additional content releases that are not included with the base game, but are downloaded, with additional free downloads being provided for those who registered. Dragon Age also has free downloads for those who purchased and registered the game. So, buying the original game gives you more content than the pirated version. That is an incentive to buying the original, rather than using DRM to punish people who legally buy the game.
Maybe the intention behind the article is just to built up a 'The PC as a gaming platform is dead' athmosphere for 'political' reasons like trying to drive more developers and gamers away from the PC to consoles, where they have more control of the gamers and less problems with piracy.
And as a side-effect also an attempt to justify strong drm protections and maybe rise their acceptance for pc-customers, telling them, if they don't accept those protections, their platform is going to die.
I'd say they are intentionally painting an overly black picture of the situation trying to create a certain athmosphere to manipulate people here.
There are two large divisions in the marketing of PC games and some minor ones.
I think everyone could agree that cd-keys for online play could easily be a sufficient deterrent against piracy. The real problem is the single player portion and what is sufficient.
Online play with cd-key authentication systems quite simply work as a deterrent to piracy. Well it does, if there is a will by game companies to shutdown leaked cd-keys and to close out cracked servers as they appear, then piracy is negligible. There are no cd-key generator that work for online play unless the game company makes a mistake in how it seed the hashes. Monitoring stolen cd-keys is quite easy. It only takes the will on the company to shut them down. Sure there will be a few people complain because they were stupid enough to allow their cd-key to be stolen, but those people are idiots and have no one to blame but themselves. They lone their cd-keys out or load cd-key stealers onto their comp. I have no sympathy for either type of person. cd-key stealers are usually contained in game downloads over torrents or most commonly when they download cheats for online play. Simply to bad for them.
The issue of cracked servers. First thing is to exclude them from showing up in the game server list and in the common server browser programs. The rest of the remaining few servers are easy to find and kill with a simple take down notice. Then the extreme cracked server located on the net are reduced to hiding in some third world country where their use is very limited. Even then there are legal ways to make the server so unplayable as to be useless, but by then the crowd is what? A few hundred players and so full of idiots and cheaters not even pirates are attracted. Ooopps... ya it is usually the pirates that are idiots and cheats. Hardly worth further effort. Doing these simple things means that for the common average person a cracked copy is unattractive, useless and reduces piracy in this online segment to negligible.
So where does this leave the single player game. This is the problem area. Perhaps some choices must be made. People can argue about the causes all they want over semantics, but the reality is piracy is simply about convenience and has nothing todo with some personal philosophy once you start looking at the amount of piracy involved are hundreds of thousands and in some cases millions. This is where for a long time game companies wanted it stopped but it meant unusual harsh methods that would affect their actual customers. I don't blame traditional PC game companies from being pissed at this. However I don't have much sympathy for those same companies that deal in primarily online games with putting in DRM that affects it's online customers. Not when 90% or better buy the game to play online and have little interest in the single player portion. This is where game companies can make a choice about their product. They do have options in how they split single player and online play so that online isn't pirated as stated above.
So this comes down to only single player games or the single player portion of a game that have issues with piracy and heavy handed and intrusive DRM. What Ubisoft has done is hit this issue with a hammer. They took the easy way out with the least cost involved, so of course the solution is horrid.There are registration and monitoring methods for single player that are far less obtrusive but are more costly that can control piracy. Yes it does require a connection to the net, but not a live connection all the time. Ubisoft choose the cheap way, not the best way. At least not the best way for their customers that is. But for those that don't want more control. Well you are living in a dream world where there is free beer. I'm sorry but the days of free beer are over and large scale piracy is to blame.
Now there are game companies or their publishers that are greedy. There is no doubt about that. They have new models in mind that are strictly to increase profits. However this primarily has noth
I really hate when they try to use piracy as an excuse not to develop for PC.
As an owner of both a PC & an Xbox 360, I can say that I've bought 1 360 game in a year, but pirated many. I've bought a LOT of PC games over the last year (MMOs & via Steam mainly), and pirated maybe 1 or 2.
While I can understand the frustration with having to make games scale, it's just a lame excuse not to develop or just to port games over.
I really get sick of these articles on the state of PC gaming being written by developers who make games almost exclusively for the console. Not only this, the games TR makes are either rehashes/flat out repackages of old games, or just really lame games. I mean, come on, why would we listen to a development house who hasn't made a PC only game since 2001 (the only PC games since have been BloodRayne & BloodRayne 2, which were bad ports).
Any gamer with half a brain sees the gaming world as a complex ecosystem that has room for consoles and computers. Sitting there and decrying a platform because it's "too hard" just shows how bad your developers are, not how bad the platform is.
You can't exactly pirate WoW. There are a few hacked servers out there, but people aren't terribly fond of them. If every game had to follow the WoW model where you couldn't play at all without having a unique user/pass, that would probably solve a lot of piracy issues (sarcasm mark here).
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
PC gaming is it's own worst enemy. I doubt the percentage is very high of PC games who have not pirated at least one game in their life time. PC gamers I know pirate almost all of their games (except for MMORPGs), and rely on hacking sites to provide the necessary work-a-rounds. And, when developers try to protect their property with DRM, they get crucified in the internet world for being overly protective.
Games cost millions upon millions of dollars to create today - far too much of an investment to leave in the hands of a dishonest gaming community. Are all PC gamers pirates? No. But, there are too many game pirates out there to make the PC a lucrative gamer market - unless you (the developer) include draconian security techniques or your are producing an MMORPG.
On the otehr hand, you really don't have that issues like above with console gaming. You sell a 5 million copies, there are pretty much only 5 million users (there is still some piracy, but far less than PC). Form an economic stand point, what do you expect game studios to do?
I am Slad.
For me gaming on a PC is very painful. I have never gotten Wine to work with any game. VirtualBox doesn't work either for games. Most game companies ignore direct ports to Linux entirely. So for me a good gaming console is a nice thing to have. I would love to play high end games on my computer but I refuse to run Windows or the Mac OS. I can do everything else I ever want a computer to do with Ubuntu except play a game. The console plugs that hole. I am a casual gamer and I like single player style games because I don't always have time to do multiplayer online games. My Internet connection sucks so Internet only games are completely out.
Will I miss playing Diablo 3? Sure, but I can play Dragon Age: Origins/Awakenings on my XBox 360 so I do have access to a RPG style game. If Blizzard wants my money they will need to have a XBox 360 version or a direct port to Linux version. I would happily buy either one.
I also enjoy being out of the extreme hardware cycle for my computer. 99% of what I do on a computer only requires the most basic hardware to accomplish. Chasing high end hardware for just gaming is getting expensive and since I am not a hardcore gamer, increasingly irrelevant.
Make online games? You can't pirate a game and expect to be able to play online. Look at starcraft, people are still buying that to play on battle.net. I don't buy single player games because there isn't a single player game that doesn't get boring after a couple days.
"It's just a mish-mosh of hardware, an operating system that kind of supports games."
You program games on a PC, and then complain because the operating system "Kind of" supports games.
What?
all types of pc games. They purposely focus on medium-graphics RTS that have a multiplayer component. They don't make big-budget single player games like Alan Wake which are the most vulnerable to piracy.
World of Goo was pirated just as much as everything else even though it was DRM free and only $20
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-piracy-rate-near-90.ars
Pirates are motivated by a desire to pay without playing. You can't expect a publisher to just look the other way as 90% of the people that play the game don't pay for it.
started on atari, moved through all the consoles..
i am a PC gamer now, and never looked back since doom & my 28k modem. u want my continued money.. keep games like Age of Conan, and Battlefield 3 coming.
and fawk terminal reality, i hear they suck balls
so far it has kept the PS3 from becoming like the PS2 which had a black market when it came to games. Perhaps you think the people buying those black market games weren't a real loss?
People pirate because they don't want to pay. Within every group of pirates is a subset of people that would have payed if they had no choice. When you have a 10:1 piracy rate it only takes a 10% conversion of pirates to legit customers to double sales.
Single player 'hardcore' games do not sell as well as they used.
I also don't buy that it is the interface that determines the challenge. There are plenty of challenging and tactical games on consoles. PC gaming is not as special as you would like to think.
Last I checked, there is an XBOX, XBOX 360, PS, PS2, PS3, DS, PSP, and many other sections on torrent sites for a reason. While you can't play online with pirated copies of console games, they basically invited pirates to hack their XBOX 360's and such by offering cheaper, less feature rich versions of the consoles ("Arcade" Edition?) that are perfect for cracking, while the main uncracked console is used for online.
Just because they have good sales numbers doesn't mean pirating isn't happening on consoles. I know many people with cracked XBOXs and Playstations from every console generation. It only shows their desire for one thing: money. Gone are the days of game makers making games for the sake of the game or their own interest. And while I know that this is a capitalistic society, it pains me to see them turn a blind eye to piracy on one front because it makes more money for them at the moment.
Also, we are about 1 or 2 generations away from consoles essentially being a PC (the original PS3 shipped with a Linux boot option!). They need to realize that there will always be pirating no matter what they do. PC Gaming shouldn't be treated like some kind of ghetto where you are guaranteed to not make a profit unless you are targeting a "niche audience".
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
and your post proves it.
Sell me an awesome game dirt cheap or I'll just pirate it. I don't care about the fact that in the gaming industry winners cover losers. I don't care that $50 is cheap when you consider inflation over the last 10 years. I know how to pirate so you better offer me the perfect game at the perfect price and even then I probably won't pay for it since I'm saving my money for a new video card.
Congrats on having the mentality of most pc gamers. This is why publishers are moving to consoles, online-only games or casual games like The Sims that are sold to 12 year old girls who don't have the same entitlement mentality as your 18-35 year old male that knows how to torrent.
All the people that pirated crysis wouldn't have paid for it? Even though it required a burley pc to run?
So Crytek has bad developers since they complained about piracy?
Actually most of the leading pc developers have complained about piracy in the last 5 years. They must all be bad. There can't be a problem. Everything is fine, please go back to making games and just ignore the fact that most pc gamers skip out on the bill.
it's not the existence of piracy on the pc, it's the fact that the majority of people playing the games are pirating them.
Find me a 360 game that had a piracy rate of over 10%. You won't be able to.
However pc piracy rates of single player games are always over 70%. Torrents are tracked publicly and publishers can see where the pirates are.
consoles are just plain better for the living room.
rates. It's appeals to a demographic that is far less likely to pirate.
The panel was talking about the 'hardcore' section of pc gaming. Casual games and MMOs are doing great and no one disputes that.
If games like Alan Wake are only on consoles then I could care less about pc gaming. I'll go where the games are and at the moment the pc doesn't cover enough genres.
compared to consoles.
They aren't making this stuff up, torrents are publicly tracked and it is clear that the pc has a serious piracy problem. Or maybe you don't think that a 90% piracy rate is a problem.
Oh and you're wrong about the PS3 having pirated games, it has DRM that still hasn't been cracked.
The latest and greatest Nvidia gfx card is a little over £420 right now. For that price, I could have a PS3 and a Wii, or a 360 and a Wii. And lets not forget, that's just for the gfx card - if I want the rest of the PC to match it, I'm looking at over £1000. I know this, as I just had a gaming rig built for my son's 18th birthday and it came to just short of £900, and that wasn't a top-of-the-range gfx card.
Since I acquired my consoles, the only things I've played on the PC are clever indie games - Defense Grid, Master of Defense, PvZ, Robot Unicorn Attack. With so much gaming goodness instantly available and always working on the consoles, the urge to replace my somewhat elderly PC rig is non-existent.
The last PC game I bought was HL2:Ep2, and the last PC disc I bought was Trackmania Sunrise. Everything else has been console-based. The PC is for email, word processing, Oovoo and Facebook, and the occasional foray into image manipulation. I don't need a screaming monster rig to do that.
Also, it annoys me when HL2 ran beautifully on my machine, and a lot of other games since then simply fail to run at all, because (presumably) they are so badly programmed. UT3 was abysmal - I could either have 8-bit graphics and 20fps, or recognisable graphics and 2 secs per frame. There's really no excuse.
At some point, my current PC will fail sufficiently to make it worth doing a complete replacement of everything that isn't the mouse, monitor and keyboard, and at that point, I will acquire something decent and play through the handful of PC exclusives that require a better machine than mine (Crysis, etc.). Until then, there are so many other excellent games on so many other systems, that there's really no need to rely on the PC for gaming.
It's give and take. Big money would rather RISK big money than take safe bets. It's easier to get a $10 million producer in Hollywood than a $1 million, because if you manage to double what they've given you, (as your loan suggests the size and expectations of your project) then they'd prefer making $10 million profit than making $1 million profit. If you're working with 10 guys in a garage hammering out a game, and you expect to sell 100,000 copies at $20 and spend $1,000,000 on wages/expenses, then your project made $1 million! Sweet! Who cares if 1 million copies have been distributed online? No one ELSE is making retail money off those, so why be greedy? Yes, if everyone paid, then you'd have $20 million, but you made twice what you needed for the project, so the project can be declared a "success" if you can swallow your stupidity.
Now, with corporations, this doesn't sit as well. They can't afford to swallow their stupidity. They have sociopathic stockholder meetings, summits, enormous payrolls, and expectations. They can afford to blow $50 million on a game just to see if they can make a franchise stick -- and it will show in most games. The current Call of Duty franchise has amazing production values. God of War III looks incredible. The problem is: these kinds of games will no longer be made for PC because corporations are selfish by design, and cannot allow people to have fun without paying -- and people will have fun without paying if it comes out on PC. Any exceptions will eventually be taken care of. For example, WoW has an enormous bankroll, and few private servers let people play for free. Expect WoW to drastically change in the next few years. In the mind of a sociopathic CEO: If something is making money, it could be making MORE money!
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Let's face it, the future of gaming is non-Flash games on HTML5 and HTML6 (draft) compliant browsers running on the iPad.
That's where the money is.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The panel was talking about the 'hardcore' section of pc gaming. Casual games and MMOs are doing great and no one disputes that.
So? It's always the same shit with these windbags, they're completely clueless.
Let's look at the facts here:
- Companies don't keep making games if they don't profit from them. They'd go out of business.
- They keep making 'hardcore' games, including many PC-exclusive ones. Year after year.
What does that tell you?
Always completely clusless, huh? I guess you've got a successful PC games company going, then?
Maybe I do. Do you desire an argument from authority?
though. Many people have made the same comment here on /. before him. Myself included.
Also, not everyone can afford the $12/mo commitment, then go and spend 40-60 bucks on another game.
Ultimately, playing other games was a big reason that I quit WoW. The others were guild breakups, and lack of solo content. There were so many games I never got to play, and I wanted to get back into the FPS genre to play TF2, L4D(2), crysis (which I loved), try out borderlands, as well as play some non FPS /MMORPG genres too.
It wasn't until I was at Infernalan a few whiles ago after I devoured the northrend content when it clicked though...
Wow, look at that game, & wow, look at that game too! Wow looks so dated now, I just can't imagine sticking my mug in there again. (granted so does TF2, but that's a whole 'nother addiction) It was most exciting to see all these games I've never imagined before. Now I force myself to try something new once per quarter.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
There really is only DirectX and OpenGl for API's. I thought that the API's are supposed to handle everything below them, and let the game devs build on top of them.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
No. the solution to piracy is to admit it's not a problem. Blizard, Stardock and Valve have all said in one way or another pirates are best ignored and you'll get more customers by doing right by the ones that have and will fork out money.
Neither of these companies are going out of business, in fact not even the ones that are whining about piracy are going out of business.
Forcing people to be online will only alienate customers and drive ordinarily paying people to privacy. If average people who find it easier to buy a game then wait for a crack have to suffer the downtime of the activation server then they will simply learn that it is easier to pirate.
The horrific rates of piracy are not as bad as the big publishers would have you believe. They also regularly add the number of second hand sales to pad their ridiculous piracy statistics.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Many other ways exist to track pirates more reliably: updates, (master) servers, anonymous connections, high scores, advertisements, etc.
When every retard on the 'net screams his opinion, establishing individual merit has its purpose. Discussing game piracy is not an academic endeavor.
Yup - bought that game twice: once for the PC, second one for the laptop.
Several reasons:
* No DRM.
* I like the game, quite a bit.
* I support the programmers directly, instead of some huge company with moronic managers.
* It's cheap.
I've recommended that game to other people, several of which have bought it.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is it only me, or is this just yet another person trying to legitimize more annoying DRM? There is a bunch of bogus points that simply can't be taken to be the honest opinion of this guy. You should know by now that any marketing dpt always thinks amongst the lines of -theres more of these "PC" things around than anything else, we must make money off them or the competition will- and such, and that managers listen to them because, essentially, they're right.
I cannot believe he remotely thinks the PC is dead as a platform. But he has an agenda of pushing DRM.
I'd like some evidence that you actually have more understanding of how to run a profitable game company than the people you're flinging poo at.