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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?"
There still is a market for proper shooters
"Shooter" is a broad category. There are A. bullet hell scrolling shooters, B. shooters from a first-person view in the Duck Hunt/Time Crisis sense, and C. first-person shooters in the Quake sense. Only category C is necessarily better on a PC.
and RTS games for PC
It's not exactly "real time" if you can build an oil refinery in less than the time it takes for your units to cross the map.
You must not have a life, or be a kid.
Why? I'm not a kid, and I have a life, but still play multiplayer games. You can rebut what he supposed if you like, but don't make unfounded accusations against the majority when you're the exception.