The State of PC Gaming
By Adam Russell - March 27th, 2008
Will future generations of gamers know the significance of these keys?
As usual, I seem to be writing about the PC again. That’s not to say I don’t love consoles, too: The ‘Hottest Party’ is every night at my house (bad DDR joke [you’re tellin’ me – ED.]). But as a diehard PC Gamer hearing all the recent talk about the future of the PC platform, I feel the need to address a few things.
This isn’t so much my opinion on the future of the PC, but rather a review of the current popular ideas that are floating around. The waters have gotten a bit murky as of late and are in need of some clearing up.
First are the detractors. Those that subscribe to the quite common belief that the PC Games platform is dying, if not already dead. Recently we have seen some high-profile developers call into question the validity of the PC. There was Cliffy B. of Epic games saying that the PC is in a state of “disarray,” which isn’t too surprising considering that his main focus is on the console. However, even Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games (his last game being Supreme Commander, a big PC title) believes people are going to stop making big investments on the PC “when it just doesn’t work” and instead take their investments more console-centric, so that games will only be “ported back over to the PC.”
Quite probably the most popular sound bite comes from another person at Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, who was famously quoted as saying “PCs are good for anything, just not games.”
All this talk inevitably causes many people to shout “The PC is dying.”
This is nothing new though, as PC Gamers have heard this cry many times before. What’s interesting this time around is the presence of another, somewhat dissenting opinion, that seems to have taken hold. The idea that PC games aren’t dying, but rather they are evolving into a new form. Proponents for this argument see the future of the PC as more mainstream, appealing to a wider audience. Web-based Flash-style games that take hardware out of the question, or games that emulate the few mass market successes in the PC like The Sims and World of Warcraft complete with their low system requirements. The more recent examples like upcoming Battlefield Heroes (developer DICE and EA’s latest entry into the Battlefield franchise: it has low spec requirements and is free to play as it gets its revenue from micro-transactions and advertisements) or Quake Zero (Quake in a browser) are used to illustrate the perceived direction that the market is heading.
Personally, I find the latter argument the most interesting. The initial question that comes to mind is “Is this a healthy future for PC gaming?”
The answer, as always, depends. Specifically it rests on exactly how you define PC gaming. If your definition is merely “games that are played on a PC,” then yes. All is rosy.
However, I don’t think the definition of PC games is as simple as that. If tomorrow the only games released on the Xbox 360 were Live Arcade games, would that be considered healthy for the system? While technically they are 360 games, I don’t think you’d get any argument if you tried to say that the Xbox was “dead,” too. Then the same must be true of the PC.
If all the future only holds is flash/web-based games then those games might as well be on a cell phone, for all they represent PC as a platform. PC games, as they are traditionally defined, require discrete graphics hardware (like a video card). They tend to ride the cutting edge of technology and are typically deep games, possibly complicated, and they ultimately lead to very rewarding experiences. As many PC enthusiasts lament, any future that does not include these aspects is no future at all. So the somewhat startling conclusion of both arguments is ultimately the same: the cessation of PC gaming as we know it.
What has changed with the PC, then, to warrant all this increased scrutiny? If you look closely, nothing really much has changed with the PC: it’s still an expensive, time-consuming and more challenging hobby. What has changed are the consoles. They have become more attractive and the technological gap has narrowed even further so that they offer an easier and affordable alternative to the PC. But that’s at the cost of reduced depth, complexity, and freedom. The PC is competing for consumers’ dollars, and possibly more importantly, for the attention of publishers. But the console, by design, has a wider audience and so seems poised to win the lion’s share of both.
Now I can’t go this far without interjecting a little bit with my own take on the situation. Ultimately it’s my opinion that the size of the market will be the deciding factor of the PC’s fate. Specifically, enough people need to buy PC games to keep their further development financially feasible and enough people have to keep buying graphics hardware to fuel further research into graphics hardware. As long as these two markets are big enough to support each other, then we will continue to see a healthy environment for the types of PC games that we are all familiar with.
For those fans of PC gaming, the PC is not just a “third” console; it is unique unto itself. There are benefits to PC gaming that just aren’t offered on the consoles and they are significant enough to justify the choice. Only time will tell if there remains enough people that feel this way to keep the PC a valid and viable gaming platform.
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9 responses so far:It’s the couch vs. the desk… where do you like to game? As long as people want to game on their couch, the PC will be the preferred “platform” for RTS and FPS fans. There’s no getting around the benefit of the keyboard and mouse for better control of complex games.
Kirk: That’s exactly why I tend to not game on the PC. I’m at a desk nine hours while I’m working - I don’t want to be at it for gaming.
Now this would of course change if I had a fancy TV that had a VGA input jack. Then I’d definitely play more PC games - but from my couch.
Another thing that kills PC gaming is rampant piracy and the need for users to upgrade hardware often to run games at their full potential. I can’t be bothered with that, so I only upgrade if someone is giving me their old, unwanted hardware. Otherwise, I’m fine.
PC gaming is different. I think that is safe to say. And for those that do PC game, they appreciate the difference. But those differences come at the cost of increased time effort and money.
PC gaming certainly isn’t for everyone. The console is more attractive for many people, hence its popularity. But I think what is important to note is that as long as their remains a critical mass of PC gaming enthusiasts then there will continue to be a PC gaming platform.
Those that say the PC is “evolving” into more mainstream-friendly games, miss the point. It’s not the platform that is important, but rather what it represents: ie. the type of game experiences you can have. If those are lost, then so is the platform itself.
I’ve been tweaking Crysis recently, to finally do my singleplayer playthrough. So much time spent getting it to look as good as it can while stiff giving decent performance. In the process I ran into a command (time_scale x), where you can quite literally change the rate time passes in the game. And not just that “clocks move faster”, but if you slow time down, then the whole game slows (eg. slow motion). Which has caused me to lose many hrs just messing around all “Matrix” style, slowing down time and fighting tons of soldiers.
All this isn’t something you are going to encounter on the console.
I have spent a considerable amount of my waking life playing the Sims and I totally agree with the couch versus desk argument. Before I got my new fancy-dancy laptop playing The Sims was something I did during holidays or during longish breaks from work. Now that I am free to play on the couch while watching TV and generally chilling my Sims playing has undergone something of a renaissance, complete with a Shaun sim (currently triumphing in the gamer career)
The fact that you have a Sim of me is both awesome and a little frightening at the same time, especially since you plan on having an alien knock me up.
My Sim of Shaun has been locked in a doorless room (without a toilet) for the last 6 yrs or so…
That’s it. I’m going to get the Sims just so I can make one of you, Adam, and shove his head in a toilet.
Hi all. Stumbled on this great article and I thought I would add my two cents. This is coming from the voice of a long time PC gamer, that is, 15+ years.
What I don’t get it that nobody sees the connection. The connections I’m speaking of (Part A) PC game development started to really stagnate at the exact same time “next-gen” consoles began their life cycle onto the market place. (Part B) PC game development started to really stagnate at the exact same time we are seeing small cutting edge companies being merged or aquired by large corporate entities. In the last 3 years we’ve also seen exclusive licensing of the most successful titles be taken on by these very same large corporations.
(Part A expanded on) When all sorts of articles were being published just a couple short years ago about “next-gen” consoles, there were common themes, the hardware itself was costing more to make (console hardware in it’s traditional business model are sold at a loss) and the licensing fees for game titles were going up, dramatically in fact. We have a new generation of console technology that requires new skills for current employees and/or hiring of newly skilled employees.
Then factor in the macro business environment, we’re in a period of time where large corporations who do not meet their earnings expectations get taken to the wood shed on the stock markets and recently we’ve entered into a period of the credit crunch. It’s just harder for even large corporations to get the up front cash they need to invest in projects that don’t pay back immediately.
(Part B) The merger and aquisition has been a blessing and a curse. We now have large corporations who make video games and earn billions doing it. How cool is that? These large corporations have the finacial muscle to secure exclusive licensing deals with real world entities (EA and the NFL for example). The mandate of any business is to continue to grow and the way that large corporations grow is through mergers and aquisitions. Unforatunately this has the down side that these once cutting edge innovators move into a restrictive corporate environment. There is also simply less players on the field pushing the envolope, nevermind developing for one platform or another.
But the big head scratcher for me is, who the heck doesn’t have a computer these days? I see similiar bemoanings that you need a $5k computer to play game XYZ. Says who? I built the rig that I am typing this message out on last year for roughly $2300 CDN dollars. The same rig today would cost around $1800 and is still a very good system that can run the best of games out right now at full detail. I’m sorry that folks have bought into the marketing ploys of the hardware manufacturers but you really don’t need to spend multiple thousands of dollars every year or half year, that’s simply not true and hasn’t been true of PC gaming for the past 10 years. Well invested money on a PC will net you at a minimum 3 years of ‘…don’t need to muss with the puter…’.
The monster selling point of PC gaming has been almost totally overlooked all of a sudden…that is…replayability of a game on PC is vastly (VASTLY) superior to the console gaming environment because of a simple 4 letter word…mods.
Now don’t get me wrong, the current state of the PC game market is alarming. But I think we’re in a down cycle right now for PC game development. It’s part of a larger and interconnected market place. That’s actually really cool because 5 years ago, gaming on any platform was almost fringe and frowned upon. Now it’s “the” thing to do, it just so happens that the new consoles are stealing a lot of thunder. Imagine that, stealing a lot of the market place’s money after the multi-multi-million dollar marketing campaigns to get you to go out and buy that new X-whater or P-whatever the latest Non-mindo.
I think 2009 is the year watch.
Thanks for reading and hopefully see ya out there.
Thanks for the comment Mike.
Some good points there, although when you put it like that, I’m not exactly sure how hopeful *I* am, heh. Games are costing more to develop, which require bigger companies to fund, that are increasingly risk averse. Which means they want bigger returns on their investment.
All of that points to developing for the “larger” market. I’ll never argue that the PC games market is bigger then the console one. While yes, more people do have PC’s, they certainly aren’t buying games for them. Have they not been educated that there PC can play games? Yes, thats part of it.
However I run into people all the time who “Bought a game for the computer, that won’t run” and they are frustrated “I have a Nintendo, and Nintendo games work. So why won’t computer games work on my computer?” The lack of standardized hardware means more confusion and so it’s more work on the end consumers part.
You don’t even need to spend $2000 on a solid gaming rig. $1000 is enough to get one with all the bells and whistles. Infact they sell new dual core machines for around $300 now. Put an extra $200-300 in it, and you have a very respectable gaming PC.
As I wrote in a previous article, PC gaming just isn’t for everyone. It’s more work, Period. (Just updated to new drivers that make Crysis run even better, but cause issues with my old game Oblivion. It’s a PITA to deal with). Which automatically restricts the size of the market, it just isn’t going to have that mass appeal.
But like you said, there is just more freedom. Mods are great, you can get almost totally new games! Not to mention general freedom (Oblivion has the command console. Great for when you get stuck/glitched on a quest etc. Can’t do that on the console)
As PC’s ever evolving hardware surpass the fixed generation of consoles (my 8800GT is pretty much on par, if not better, then a Xbox360) the gap will widen between the two, making the PC look more attractive. However there is a concern, that developers will focus a lot more on console (to chase the $$$) which could mean that their multi-plattform titles will not take full advantage of the PC hardware, as they have the constraints of the consoles at the forefront. (Unreal Engine 3 is a good example, PC titles can’t turn off texture streaming. Which is a feature most useful on the consoles and not necessary for modern PC hardware). Which could be a problem.
It’s not so much that the PC market is shrinking, because I don’t think it is. It’s more so that the market is being eclipsed by the size (and $$$) of the console one. But as long as there remains enough people to make PC gaming profitable, then it should hopefully survive.