Columns The sky is falling

I've regged to post a comment. Well, more of an open letter really. I thank you in advance for taking the time to get through it.
I've worked in the games industry for a very long time and you're commenting on an area that’s basically my job. Let me first start by saying that it's of relatively little use talking about how flawed a particular study is. In fact the study in question isn't really flawed at all - NPD state exactly what they're counting and how. You, and your readers, go to spectacular lengths to say how it’s all wrong... but it isn’t. It doesn’t claim to be anything other than what it is.
No amount of wishing that PC gaming is a bigger market than it is by any of the readers of this site will actually change that. Yes we all tend to wish our hobby is really big and great and thriving so there's a natural inclination to want to attack anyone that says it's not doing so well but I find this article and subsequent forum posts remarkably devoid of clear thinking on the issue.
You talk about why people like Valve don't release details of digital distribution. There's a simple reason for that, the numbers aren't that impressive. If you're trying to entice developers and publishers to your platform it doesn't pay to point out that you're a little over 4% of the PC games sale by volume. They will tell you, and you can find out exactly what EA’s DD revenue if you simply looked. But they don’t crow it from the rooftops until it impressive. That’s called marketing.
You also drift around the point by saying that non-retail, non-core games are in fact PC games. And that these are bought via the Internet. So that's part of the PC games scene too. Er well sure, right, but now you're just shifting your definition of PC gaming and NPD never claimed to cover that stuff. And you know what, we don't care anyway. That's because the ramifications, and this is a key issue which you don't seem to be keen to address, of the decline of the PC gaming platform in core games is that the sales don’t necessarily justify the big budgets to develop on that platform.
Perhaps the greatest flaw in this article is the claim that the industry has no data for digital distribution but has loads of data regarding levels of piracy, with the bizarre conclusion that the industry cares more about what's pirated than what's sold. Your glaring critical error is that there’s an impetus to talk about how much piracy there is. There is no impetus to talk about the numbers on digital distribution for reasons that I've pointed out.
You confuse there not being a big unit-sales chart for digital distribution with the fact the industry doesn't know. It does know. I've seen countless projections of the exactly this kind of data. Because they didn't tell YOU, then they clearly don't know? Come on now. Most publishers are looking very heavily at DD. Some are already doing it including EA. If a game was selling via their own download service and they were making a ton of money they’d go great and keep making PC games no?
In fact digital distribution is pretty bad right now. EA has its own abysmal thing. You have some half supported DD only republishers such as Direct2Drive in the US and Metaboli (on a strange rental basis) and really it’s only Valve doing it in a way that is of high quality. But it’s still vanishingly small and it’s fractured. Where as you look at Xbox Live Arcade and there’s a common, superb platform which is looking very attractive to those same guys that used to make little games on the PC and tried to flog them via digital distribution.
The industry does NOT want PC gaming to fail. The industry wants to make money from PC games. In many regards the PC is a pleasant platform to deal with because one can handle your own route to market, QA and not have to hand over big wedges to the platform holder. The industry is a business. It makes games on the PC because they sell. When they don't sell, the industry goes elsewhere. It does not inherently want PC gaming to fail. For Christ's sake the combined might of Intel, Microsoft and the entire body of advertisers on this web site - do you think they want PC gaming to fail? Or are they not part of the industry?
Finally we have some completely incoherent rant about how 'giant conglomerates' have stomped the indy devs into the ground, eaten your babies and created some 'wasteland' which of course is resulting in no good PC games. Err yeah except 2007 was the best PC year for PC gaming ever. And the consolidation, which is what you're actually talking about, has nothing to do with evil conglomerates out to **** over users, and everything to do with the massively increasingly cost and complexity of game development. Development costs vast sums of money now. Porting games across multiple platforms using hideously expensive in-house developed technology etc is just plain more efficient. There are still Indys but they find it quite hard to get to fund a game and to get to market.
Maybe if PC gamers bought more games they could afford to hang around and not sell their family business out to a publically listed publisher. But they don’t.
You even use Call of Duty '76' as some insult to the current status quo. Right, you mean Call of Duty 4 then - an absolutely amazing game developed by a shining light of PC Game Developers, Infinity Ward. The company having being originally formed by a splinter group of developers from an evil conglomerate who wanted to make a really great WW2 game. Later on they were acquired by Activision which set up the developers nicely financially and meant they didn't have to worry about paying the bills, while they continued to make great games. And this is typical of the consolidation, splinter, reaquire nature of the games industry. It happens a LOT in the UK, take a look around Leamington Spa for starters.
If that's your big example of evil conglomerates then I have to call FAIL on all levels. Great game. Great developer. Also arrived on multiple platforms with each being bloody great and catering for a wide range of game players. Looks like a success story to me.
The real consequence of the failure of the PC as a gaming platform means that PC-specific features are less likely to get in games. Like the hideous console-like menu on UT4 for example. But it's still pretty easy to do a PC game given they tend to be developed side by side with the 360 version. Certain genres of game will be deemed to not even be worth doing on the PC since they'll sell near zero. Otherwise just expect more console features and controls and fewer PC specific multiplayer features and all that.
That’s happening because while you write articles about how the industry has it all wrong, how the industry will ‘chuckle’, get bigger and generally be Evil, the reality is that the problem with the PC gaming platform is that PC gamers don't BUY games. Amazingly they think nothing of lashing out stupid sums of money on outrageous PC hardware but actually buying the handful of amazing games that came out in 2007? Nah!
Be honest. How many did you buy? I know what this is like because I’ve been part of the problem. My friends, myself, virtually everyone I know into hard-core PC gaming. All pirating games. All spending stupid sums on high-end graphics cards. It’s at the very centre of the culture of PC gaming and as with any close-knit community of people no matter what evils they engage in they always find a way to lend a sympathetic ear to one another and justify what they’re doing with vague arguments and evil big corporate out to **** you over.
Dude, you’re in your mid 30s right? It’s time to let go of the self delusion and apply some genuine critical thinking here. You'd be doing everyone a much bigger favour if you examined this culture and thought about what you could do to actually help hard working PC game developers than writing ranting incoherent, inaccurate and counter-productive articles about how it's somehow everyone else's fault.

 

As usual a great article Brett!

As almost all is sad by other people i want to pick up something that interrestlly (sp?) nobody else has picked up.

So "only" 14% of game sales are PC games? Sounds good to me as the PC is "only" 12.5% of the market anyway. The big player are XBOX, XBOX360, PS2, PS3, WII, DS, PSP and PC, which would mean that the PC stands for 12.5% of all gaming platforms on the market. 12.5% standing for 14% seems pretty good to me!
I know that my calculation is not the most accurate but it does the job.

So where is the problem?

 

ctrl+c, ctrl+v.

 

I think that's kind of the point, there isn't really one, it's just FPS developers are spouting doom and gloom because they're killing their own genre by requiring obscene hardware requirements and producing cookie cutter crap the majority of the time.

 

Are you actually saying NDP sales figures, and reports of PC gaming dying are ture, despite obvious evidence against it? Your post is so long, I don't think I have read a longer pile of crap in my life. No one is saying it is someone elses fault, it is no ones fault, there is no problem, PC gaming is doing fine.

 

If prices in making games are so high then how do indie devs make such amazing games as "infinity" in their free time? game cost is overrated IMHO, if indie game makers can do it for cheap and have such amazing titles then why cant the "giants" do the same?

slow selling of a game in the first months is also overrated, a game, if it is good enough, will sell for a long time, the community will make mods for it and it will sell, look at Crysis and UT3, some say they sold like crap, other say they sold very well, i have to say that they will sell a lot more in the next year or so, there are mod teams taking the games to new levels, transforming FPS into RTS/FPS/RPG hybrids...... the biggest problem i see is the blatant difference in price around the world in games, Games in the US cost almost half what they cost here, their prices lower sooner, they get the games sooner and they get bundles sooner... no wonder piracy is so "rampant" around these parts......

Lurks says that "Amazingly they think nothing of lashing out stupid sums of money on outrageous PC hardware but actually buying the handful of amazing games that came out in 2007? Nah!"..... so lets see, i will not lash "out stupid sums of money on outrageous PC hardware", get a middle range computer in the US (or for the same price a low range computer around here) and try to play the "handful of amazing games that came out in 2007" with the money i saved..... that logic is amazing, lets play Crysis on a bottom of the range cpu, asrock board, geforce 7300 and 1 gig ram, all in the crappiest computer case and power supply and the cheapest screen and keyboard/mouse combo i can get, the gaming experience is amazing.[/sarcasm].

Instead of publishers crying that "game sales are low, piracy is killing us" why don't they lower the prices of the games and uniformize the price and launch date around the world, and when the game hits a certain level of profit put the game as "special edition", or something, and sell it at half the price.... or less, they should also take control of new and very open internet data transmission technologies (like bit-torrent)...... what would you rather have, sell 100 at 50$ or sell 300 at 25$?

on a final note

it seams that you don't "lurk" the forums enough....

edit:

please don't be rude and maintain a good environment in the forums . although you are right on some parts...

 

@ Lurks...

Welcome aboard, but I have to disagree. I do buy games, but if I'm going to spend $50, it's got to be somthing worthwhile. For me that means an innvotive story, and somthing different in gameplay. The only games i expect to buy this year are the orange box, bioshock, and Stalker (yeah, i'm a little behind). The rest of the offerings seems lik the same old crap and so the developers aren't getting any of my money.

As I said in another thread, I think the piracy arguement is bogus. Sure, lots and lots of people pirate games. Guess what, if they couldn't pirate the games they would do somthing else with their time, but i think it is highly unlikley that they would ever pay for them. The fundamental flaw in that arguement is that it sees pirates as potential customers otherwise. They are not. If anything, I think piracy works to the advantage of the industry because a lot of people pdownload games and then go on to buy them. If they couldn't try them first they wouldn't take the risk with thewir money that the game may suck and they can't get a refund.

I think the biggest threat to gaming is the lack of innovation. People are willing to pay for good quality, but there seems to be relatively little of that to be had.

 

and gets people addicted to the games.......

 

He's or she's saying NPD is true... but the conclusion is false. PC sales may be low but PCs are also not dying.

 

Multiple reasons - indie developers may very well be holding second jobs to help pay for development, for instance, or do more than just develop games. StraDock for instance doesn't just make games... they make home office utilities. Alternatively, they may very well be happy making money from a niche audience and so their talent and costs are already very low. As well, the money goes to different things. An indie will probably be building their own engine or using one of the cheaper ones such as Torque. Indies may self publish nd self market. The scope also tends to be different - indies usually are not so much trying to be ambitious so much as focus on a single thing and do it very very well. Large companies tend to focus on grand epics.where everything is good; but those that work more like indies and focus on something very specific tend to come across much like a smaller developer. CoD4 for instance. So while there is true, some of it is just this different perception we have of indie and big developer.

 

That may be true but it's also one of many reasons, all of which have an effect. Some download it because they lack money. Some may download it out of curiosity, play for five minutes, and forget about it. Some may go through games so quickly, buying it may not be a good investment. Some may get it because they want it and don't feel like they should pay. And many other reasons that are some shades of the above. Piracy is good, bad, and neither - the real question is encouraging people to buy the game while ignoring the people that would have never brought the game.

 

Firstly apologies for the crap text formatting, when I realised I was going to write an opus I did it in Word and of course there's no edit functionality here...

Lepermessiah, you're kind of under my worth-replying to threshold sorry.

To develop games that actually sell in actual quantity, you need to make a game of the same kind of things as you see on the shelves in game retailers. Not kooky little MMO games which you're quite keen on. This requires teams of dozens of staff working for 18 month months beyond two years even. No one makes up the costs of game development, there's a heck of a lot of work, frightening amounts of work - a whole mini industry if you like - involved in basically cutting the costs of game development through middleware. But the fact is people want to play games like Burnout, Call of Duty 4, Assassin's Creed etc.

Sure you can make less sophisticated games with lots less content but as a rule that's not the PC gaming market. The PC gaming market wants highly sophisticated games to use the expensive hardware they enjoy tinkering with.

Well, this is a finance issue I don't think you understand. A game needs to pay back the development costs and return a profit in a short order. If it doesn't sell pretty darn well when it first comes out then no amount of trickle sales will eventually lead it into profitability. The publisher simply wont do that again.

Those games emphatically sold disasterously. They were a real eye opener to the industry at large. People will keep buying them in dribs and drabs sure but when you needed to sell 500,000 to make back a three year development cycle that is of no use whatsoever. Interesting how the games you cite like this are exactly the highly sophisticated very expensive games which are the polar opposite of what you were talking about above.

If that was the 'biggest' problem then piracy would be lower in the US, would it not? That's what you're saying. But that's not true. In fact Germany is the world's best market for PC gaming.

That logic would be 'amazing' if that's what I was saying, but I wasn't. I never said you shouldn't buy high-end PCs. I'd be pretty shagged if you didn't because it's my job to do just that. I just find it a paradox that the PC gaming crowd complains about price (as you just did) when in fact they buy a £300 graphics card every year more or less at the same cost as buying EVERY AAA title on the platform in the same year.

The reason they don't drop the prices is because it doesn't help. There's mountains of evidence on this front. Pricing analysis is one of the very core tennents of the business. Game shops are rammed to the gills with bargain basement software. Much of it only just came out. I think Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is the finest RTS game to have graced the planet. It's now £17 quid bundled with the original. It was released in November. It sold bugger all, it's still selling bugger all.

Thanks for the welcome. I'm sorry you disagree but I think I it can be clearly demonstrated that this simply isn't the case. There were some really truly great games released last year. Many of which sold depressingly low quantities.

Sure I agree, there's a lot of rubbish around. The thing is the rubbish isn't really aimed at us (the collective audience) it's aimed at the folks who go into Game/HMV etc and buy something off the shelf because they like the look of it. Movie licenses, endless sports sequels etc. The casual crowd.

That crowd essentially vanished because they were first to push off to consoles and retailers devoted a much more space to non-PC titles because they were/are being paid better for that placement than PC game publishers are paying. That's why I have to take issue with this whole line that the issue with people buying games on PC is because the games aren't good enough. The games are great. They sell by the truckload on consoles when they're on console as well.

So what are we saying exactly? That it's just the really savvy people with high standards in the PC gaming crowd that's the issue here because they recognise all PC games as being the crap that they are and therefore are too smart to spend their money? I don't think so. Because I know my friends are playing all the good games from last year, many just don't buy them. This can't be some revelation surely?

Perhaps I should add something positive anyway. I've got a gaming clan of pals and we're celebrating our 10th anniversary this year. \o/ Anyway, we have a few lan parties a year. One around my place next weekend. We've taken to basically picking a current good PC game with multiplayer (but not always) and putting in a bulk order for a game for everyone. In fact several games for everyone late last year, with the glut of fantastic games.

Alright we're older and we can afford it but this is pretty concious decision that if we aren't actually going to help the PC gaming industry at least we wont be the cause of further harm. I feel pretty good about putting in that big order of games and I think it's bloody great value for money. Sure I haven't (yet) got around to playing them all but this is a platform I'd desperately rather did not go belly up. But it takes more than just ragging on publishers about it at the end of the day.

 

Quick question...the PC games are being compared to all consoles...how about comparing the PC games to the games of each individual console? Let's look at the facts, there are not multiple PC platforms, but there are multiple console platforms; therefore it makes sense that the consoles AS A WHOLE would generate more gaming attention. Instead, if you examine each INDIVIDUAL platform (PC included) you will find some interesting information. I'm not putting down PC gaming in any way, it's my gaming platform of choice, but the "facts" in this article are misleading and need to be re-examined.

 

Sebbo, just because you like a writer doesn't mean that his/her stories don't have holes in them. Try doing some thinking and research for yourself...you might learn something.

 

Hey everyone,

First of all, thanks for all the great comments. I am glad to see that I've provoked some discussion on the issue, especially enough to generate someone who states that s/he is from the industry at large.

Speaking of...Welcome, Lurks! I hope you'll find our community to be a bit more open-minded and less offensive than the angle you've taken towards me personally. Deciding that I should 'let go of the self-delusion' or even bringing my age into this at all really does not help bolster your point, nor does it earn my respect. In fact, it turns things personal and erodes your presence - so I hope that from now on, we can speak like qualified individuals who are properly affiliated with this industry.

So, let's talk about those qualifications on my end. You pose points that simply because they 'won't tell [me], that assume' that these figures are not released (pronouns changed for reference). In fact, your general tone reads as if you feel I put very little effort into the determination of these figures that I seem to so carelessly bandy about.

However, that's pretty far from the truth. The truth is that I've been a respected journalist with a respected professional publication for a few years now. The truth is that I (and Bit-tech proper) have a very good working relationship with Valve Software, and have even written an article on digital distribution specifically before with the help of Valve. The truth is, there is a wall - and nobody except a potential publisher on Steam gets the figures of Steam's sales. Period. Not me, not Wired (who also wrote on the issue), not anyone.

You pose that this is because of weak sales, and I cannot argue for or against that point - which I specifically state. You can't account for figures you don't have, you just know that they're not there. You say 4%, I would appreciate it if you could please walk me through where you deduced those figures. If you have information on this, I'd love to talk to you either here or on another medium (drop me a PM!), because if I can get some proper figures it would make me a happy man.

However, my take on that study being incomplete is exactly that - my take. I feel that things defined properly per-unit on console do not translate to per-unit on PC. I feel that digital distribution not being included whatsoever needs to be clearly stated on the tin that the figures are incomplete. Not a footnote on the back page that nobody really reads - this includes the reporting on the issue, and does not absolve our own. I feel that what defines the inclusions should be clearly listed - are they all retail sales of everything, or just the biggest companies? What about all the indie designers that sell via the net? If we're talking about only the top 10 or so publishers, are we limiting the console sales to them only as well? Are they releasing equal numbers of games on each of the platforms in question? Are we looking at games only released across more than 2 platforms to remove statistical variables of choice not being an option? Shouldn't we?

There's SO much more I can write here - I haven't even touched on so many aspects of what you wrote and I want to get to the piracy section of it in another post. But there's only so much time at the moment, so we'll pause here to let more discussion ensue.

But along with it, you mention that you're a games designer - I would ask that you identify yourself and the company you work for. By all means, please drop me a PM or an email for this one. I think it's only fair - you know who I am, and you now know my credentials. I would appreciate knowing likewise, so that I can understand who it is that I'm talking to. That information will be kept confidential, I just think that when one speaks with authority, it's helpful to know what that authority is. Trust me, you'd be surprised how many people I've had tell me they're everything from games designers to marketers to electrical engineers working for AMD - and found out they're in high school or uni and were just trying to sound smart.

Anyhow, thanks for joining and talking with us - I hope the conversation continues. I ALWAYS welcome challenges to my view, I know it's not the only one there is and that it may even be wrong. But it is researched and I levy my professional opinion very, very carefully.

 

well there is multiple pc architectures, but only x86 and x86_64 are used for gaming

 

You guys are still saying that Crysis is a sales failure, citing NPD?

Newsflash - NPD and it's 88,000 figure for Crysis is meaningless, just as NPD is meaningless for mostly all PC games.



Why? Because Crysis sold more than a million copies worldwide. That's why.

http://www.incrysis.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=612

 

firstly i want to welcome you, i was thinking you were yet another quick flash, 1 post, no conversation, double posting, "i am right and you are all wrong" individual, thank God you are not the previous,

with that out of the way, "Bem-vindo".

there is an edit button on your post, if you can't see it then you are in the front page, go to the forums and on "bit-tech.net" chose the forum thread you wish, then you can edit your post or do other more advanced stuff,

i don't really like MMOs...... i linked to infinity because what they are doing is beyond anything i have ever seen.... i could link to reborn, APB or a lot of other indie game makers that make games that rival big house games in about every area.... except the distribution part.... unless they are assimilated by a giant.
i really think there are ways to streamline the process, there are people that can be cut out (i call them parasites), there are steps that can be cut out, etc....

i think i would prefer to sell a game at a constant rate of about 4000 copies during each month (when i need to sell 20000) rather than i would like to sell 15000 in the first month (the game is selling like mad because it is a great franchise), 5000 on the second (people see it is crap but the fans still buy it), and then 1000 on the next months (some fans that were late are buying it).......

"Crysis has sold 1m copies in less than 3 months"

and also one of the European countries with higher life standards, higher access to technology and a nice high minimum wage.....
what about the other countries? what about the country were i live? do you have any statistics on that? if you have you will notice that piracy is higher here than in the US, that i am almost sure, there is no one i know that did not download at least one music from the internet or that does not have a copied cd/dvd, even old people pirate here. when your wage only permits you to eat and buy some clothes and almost nothing else it is a little hard to buy a 75$ game for your 3 year old computer that was mid range at the time...... "work harder!" you say, and i say that here almost everyone earns the minimum wage and it is hard to get another job when you work 40 hours a week and also have to go to the university and study.... "games are not a right" you say, i agree, so i buy them with money i save while not eating and wearing things i like, but i am sure as hell not going to spend my hard saved cash on malformed abortions like the ones EA is always giving birth..... if you think i am exaggerating ask the people from here..... "change your government" you say, i am 1 in 10 000 000 and have tried......

i think you will find that i am not one of the people that buy a £300 graphic card every year.... i am the type of person that buys a second hand 150€ graphic card every 3 years..... so yes... i think i have the right to say that the price of games is a little steep around here....

here the same expansion costs £26 and comes alone (the expansion it self is a standalone game).... the pricing analysts are very smart to price this game higher in a place were people earn less[/sarcasm].... you want to compare prices?

Crysis: UK = £27.85 ; here = 37£
UT3: UK = £22.93 ; here = 33£
Supreme commander: UK = £9.95 - £24.90 ; here = 37£
those price analysts are really smart [/sarcasm]

you want to see for yourself?
throw a game into the search function and compare to the ones in bit-tech shopping
http://www.fnac.pt/pt/Default.aspx

here the bargain bin is mostly covered with orange EA boxes full of crap, barbie games and other malformations inside non original boxes, if i want a game that came out last year i have to order it from the shop, it takes forever to get here and then i pay from the nose.... thank God i know ways around this or else i would be f***ed, but almost no one knows how to avoid this and end up paying about 40£ for a game that costs 10£ in the UK....

wow that is a big post, sorry for that, at the end i don't want this to look like a rant, it is not a rant, i am simply saying that Europe is not a country (as some people think) and that there are people in countries with very different situations that make piracy bloom and transform into other interesting and powerful markets.... look at China, because of the piracy there are other kinds of markets blooming, if you cut piracy there there would be lots of discontent people and a lot of unemployment...... and the government would not approve.....

edit: i have to add the next, because i feel the same way:

 

Nice article there.

BTW, I think I may be the only one who had Xenon as a visited link.

 

Fantastic Article. Couldn't agree more