PCGamer, SMAC, and the continuing decline of the PC gaming industry

Cafe Society
1

I got my copy of PCGamer (US) in the mail the other day and got around to reading it last night.

Maxis is gone. Don’t know if y’all know that, but the development house that created A-Train, Sim Earth, Sim City, and, of course, the Sims, has quietly wrapped up the original Walnut Creek office to be enveloped in the ever-growing arms of EA’s corporate HQ in Redwood Shores.

http://www.gamespot.com/all/news/news_6089213.html

Same thing with Origin. They have a longer drive though, being in Texas. At least Maxis was just a county over from EA.

But that’s not what depressed me, sad enough as it is. When long-known franchises and companies have been going under or getting bought out at bargain prices for a period of years, you kind of expect it. Following this industry is like being an old man and reading the Sunday paper to see who died each week.

Then I read the articles, with such titles as “D&D: Prospects Bleak for a PC Revival” (page 98) and “There’s a New Mag in Town and It Kicks Ass!” (page 96, italics mine). The Eyewitness (i.e., news) section on page 24 which gave more wordspace to American Army and a mod for a failed Sierra game, Starsiege, than to the purported “deaths” of the above studios’ last vestige of independence (I can’t find verification of the stories other than Gamespot, btw).

This didn’t depress me either, nor did the realization that the biggest positive news in this section was for a game distributed for free by the US Army and a user mod. Wow. Color me impressed. :snore:

The usual complaints of few games in development with little originality (of a whopping 6 “previews” 2 were for expansion packs, 2 were sequels, 1 was a port (X-Box) and only 1 original build (I think: City of Heroes? Anybody know about that?)) or quality (not a single one of the 17 games/expansion packs reviewed got above an 80% score) were still there.

But not even that depressed me, as used to it as I am.

No, what depressed me was their coverage of their “Tenth Anniversary Issue”, how sh*ttastic it truly was.

Caveat: I’m a sucker for nostalgia pieces and anniversary issues for magazines, especially if they’re wordy and contain lots of lists. If you’re going to go through the effort of doing a nostalgia piece, do it right. That’s all I ask.

First was their treatment of SMAC. While I never got into the game, I realized that beyond it’s too-ugly-to-ignore graphics SMAC was a deep and involving game with a lot of thought behind it. Apparently so did PCGamer upon release, giving it a 98% rating (out of 100), the highest ever for a game. Higher than Doom, Half Life, Star/Warcraft, Diablo, anything. Twice(!) did they (slightly) slam on themselves for giving the top rating to such an unworthy game, once in the letters section and once in their “Ten Years of PC Gamer Magazine” article. To quote the letter:

Then we had the retrospective itself. At one, maybe two pages per year there was far more interest in games that never came to be (Duke Nukem Forever, Middle Earth Online) and “where are they now” snippets of past columnists (like we give a flip) than the Civilization games (0, except for SMAC, once), Starcraft (0), any PC sports game or developer (0), or Curt Schilling (1 (?)).

One would think that the ten-year celebration of surviving as a magazine in an industry that went from mainstream to near-niche in 4 years would command more respect to detail and info, ya know?

CGW had a 200th issue retrospective a few years ago, and they did it right: not only did they have a good selection of articles, they actually went through the trouble and expense to create a retrospective CD, with Windows 98 compatable versions of a number of games including X-Com, Betrayal at Krondor, and Empire.

Anyway, I just wanted to do some useless ranting. If you find the state of the PC game industry to be sucktacular, feel free to join in. And while it is a rant, it is pretty mild and not truly Pit-worthy, imho.

*One of the reasons I like PC Gamer is because they do a lot of these type of issues. :wink: Also, I still have the issue where they voted Alpha Centauri that 98%. If anybody is interested, I’ll go dig it up.

2

I agree about the state of the games industry. There really are no original games anymore, and even the mod community is getting stale. Do we really need any more WWII games?

But this problem is bigger than the games industry: just look at movies. At any given time about half the movies in the theater are either remakes or adaptations of some sort.

Regarding this issue of PC Gamer, I thought it was okay. I have seen plenty of issues where there are no games rated in the 90’s, and other issues where it seems like most of them are. The Duke Nukem Forever stuff made me laugh.

And you can never have too many pictures of Stevie “Killcreek” Case in a tight red shirt…

The only thing that irritated me is that the CDRom only included the first three pages of their first issue, then gave you a secret code and website to go view the rest. I’m a dialup HPB. Would it have killed them to put the whole issue on the CD?

3

So with Dawn of War, Black & White 2, Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft, and god knows what else all coming out in the near future, you say the industry is dead?

Not so my friend, just in a slump. The gaming market’s focused on consoles at present, and all the major devs are in skunkworks right now. Things’ll be looking up.

Sorry to hear about Maxis, but that’s not the most disappointing news lately. A month or two ago, Black Isle studios, the makers of the venerable Fallout 2, were sacked.

If anything can be solidly said from your post, it’s that large publishers suck. Relic is having a far better time advertising Dawn of War with THQ than they did Homeworld 2 with Sierra. The big boys may have the spotlight, but their infamous caution in using it makes the state of the gaming industry look much worse than it is.

4

The timing is hardly the best as well. The after-January poeriod is always a slump. Its not until April that any real releases start to pop out of the woodwork.

5

I couldn’t agree more; the PC gaming industry is in the dumps.

InquisitiveIdiot, I’m just not impressed by that suggested lineup. “World of Warcraft” is The Next EverQuest, “Half Life 2” is Just Another FPS, and I didn’t notice that the FIRST Black & White was any good. “Dawn of War” is just another RTS; I don’t see why, in terms of gameplay, I would expect it to be any better than “Total Annihilation,” so why would I pay money for it when I already have TA? The 3D 'phics are better, but the game looks the same to me. I was looking forward to Harpoon 4, but it’s been cancelled.

To be honest I agree that a 98% rating for SMAC is absurd in retrospect, but there really is something missing in PC gaming today. Perhaps all the same game types and such have been played out, and there’s not much else left to do.

One thing I have noticed about today’s video games is that they’re pushing the envelope of platform technology in GRAPHICS, but not necessarily in DESIGN. When PCs when from 32K computers to, say, 286 and 386 processors, the difference in processor power and memory was such that the games themselves could be made far more complex and interesting. You couldn’t have had a game as deep and complex as SMAC or Civ 3 or even Harpoon on a Vic-20.

But in recent years I don’t notice that much has been done with the GAME. The graphics are getting better, but the GAMES aren’t. In the few cases where they did something different and new, though, those are the recent games I find really good; the GTA series, or Knights of the Old Republic, or… aw, crap, those are ports from consoles, aren’t they?

6

The Maxis thing shouldn’t really matter. My Maxis PR contacts have had EA email addresses for as long as I can remember. Maxis has been part of EA for years; the only difference is they moved their physical address. And Maxis has put out a lot of stinkers over the years. Don’t forget about those non-SimCity/The Sims games that came out years ago.

7

Hell, the fact that LucasArts cancelled the planned sequel to the bestselling adventure game Sam & Max was proof positive for me that the PC gaming industry needs a kick in the nads.

Followed, of course, by gathering the pinheads at Lucasarts responsible for the decision, shaving them bald, and tattooing garish wrestling masks on their exposed, pasty-pale flesh…

8

Actually, the GTA series began on the PC. Only the latest GTA included consoles because, as I said, consoles are peaking at present.

The examples I gave were of well-refined, highly polished games coming from reasonably large developers. Well, maybe not Black & White 2, but I threw that one in because I’m really looking forward to it.

If you want innovation, you’ll have to look elsewhere than the major game publishers. I can pull up dozen of references to wonderful games that were halted in the middle of development, because the publisher was too unsure of success, or worse, so rushed to get on the market that the publisher’s fears were guaranteed to come true.

There’s plently of innovation and originality in PC games, far more so than on consoles. Geneforge 2 is a kickass classic RPG, Savage is a lovely mix of RTS and FPS, and Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is an odd blend of MMORPG and puzzle games, with a dash of swashbuckling.

See the IGF competition winners.

9

Well, smiling bandit I actually think it’s been in a slump for a number of years now, not just since this past Christmas. PC Gamer’s largest US issue was in December '97, weighing in at over 400 pages. This past years Christmas issue barely scraped 120 pages together, and had fewer than 25 reviews.

Inquisitive, please note that “dead” is your word… I said “continual decline.” This decline has been going on for at least 3 years, if not 5, and is in both quality and quantity. There are too many derivations of styles and games first developed during the 1990’s, as your very list indicates. I do not see a resurgence in this industry because graphically sharper variants of games big in 1998 are being released, rather, I see decline and stagnation. The PC game industry isn’t dead, nor will it be dead as long as PC’s are a major medium, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy.

Precisely. All-in-all, electronic gaming is alive and healthy, it’s PC gaming that has lost its vitality. The only game of recent memory that I can recall being even described as a “new experience” is “Rise of Nations”, but as I don’t have I copy I can’t tell you.

But you still have new and interesting movies come out and break through every year, and the problem is in no way as bad in the film industry as it is in the PC gaming industry. 2003 for example had five film sequels in the top 10, whereas the game industry had 9.

However, even in the most derivative and talent-free of times the film industry has had little threat of becoming a “niche” industry other than the TV scare back in the early-1950s. PC gaming is in danger of becoming so, a market served by one or two giants with a lot of really little guys running around trying to get noticed.

10

Naw, you’re right, it’s not as disruptive as the Origin relocation, that’s true. I just brought it up as an example of how this industry is ossifying because developers are at the mercy of the distributors who themselves are at the mercy of the retailers who are offering less and less space for PC games.

11

Then what exactly is your point? You seem to be distressed that there are very few games that a) are graphically stunning, b) have rock-solid gameplay, and c) are truly innovative and original. And two out of three don’t count.

The problem with this is, you won’t have a game that is graphically stunning without a massive budget, and no company is going to risk that much money on a game that might be innovative and revolutionary - or might flop.

Forgive me, but isn’t that asking a bit much? That’s like saying the car industry is in a state of continual decline because average gas mileage hasn’t been improving since the 70s, or that the snack food industry is declining because very few truly innovative and good snacks are made each year.

Of course, I could be wrong. If so, please explain to me the kind of game you feel the industry is sorely lacking.

12

I played the original Geneforge, and I was just blown away by how fun it was. I simply could not stop playing it. I haven’t bought Geneforge 2, but I plan to as soon as possible.

13

I, for one, hope PC gaming goes completely by the wayside. Not because computer games suck, but because consoles are infinitely more stable and have better standards. In my life I’ve maybe had two crashed games, unless you count Morrowind (gee, my disc is really dirty! :rolleyes:)–a PC port, so big surprise there.

With the apparent horizon, hard drives will start to come over to consoles as they did on the XBox, and when internet console gaming really takes off then we’ll see the exact same fucking problem, and if the industry chokes then they fucking deserve it. I buy a game a few weeks after it is released and they already have a patch for it. Well, that’s BS. I expect higher quality. If patches to console games start happening then the handheld world will take off. Rightly so.

While you’d never see a Dune or Civ game that ran very fast on a console, they put them there and they ran well. Fixed hardware is the way games should be played since developers have shown no responsible behavior in the general case on the PC platform. They have only themselves to blame for the console industry taking off in the age of computers.

Also, if you raise your nitpick bar high enough games haven’t been creative for a looooong time. Isn’t everything Pac-Man or Tempest with better graphics and more dialogue? :wink:

14

Hey now! Don’t talk bad about SMAC! SMAC is my favorite game ever. Based upon enjoyable hours spent playing divided by cost it’s a huge value. Still play it and intend to keep on for years to come.

I have to agree with RickJay re: Graphics. Hello, game designers – graphics ain’t everything. Better graphics does not equal more fun.

15

Apparently you don’t follow MMORPGs very much, otherwise you would have known Star Wars: Galaxies is the Next Everquest. World of Warcraft is shaping up to be the best designed MMORPG ever.

Wow, such a statement can be applied to ANY FPS if you disregard story, game engine, playability, etc. Hell, ANY game in first person perspective involving shooting is “just another FPS”…so great job pointing out the obvious.

Frankly, I think some people are simply too damned picky about games. How can you enjoy any kind of computer game if you take the simplistic view that “oh it’s just another RTS…it’s just another FPS…it’s just another RPG…”, as if making games in preexisting genres is a bad thing.

I argue the opposite, that reinventing the wheel for every new game is a bad thing.

16

The true classics are a thing of the past.

No RPG will match the storyline and scope of Betrayal at Krondor (Planescape: Torment came fairly close, but its creators have gone their separate ways a few years back.)

The RTS genre reached its climax with Starcraft.

Since the Heroes of Might and Magic series went downhill, the best thing in Turn Based Strategy is the same as it had been before computer games - chess.

Quasi-shooters are hard pressed to surpass Thief and the original Deus Ex.

MMOGs have some potential. WWIIOL might yet be a fantastic game - if it survives another couple of years to add a different theater of war.

So on and so forth.

17

For me the problem with PC games is that you have to CONSTANLY update your hardware. You buy a brand new, state of the art PC this year, and you can play all of the new releases, untill next year, when everthing requires twice the memory, and a new processor.

 At least with a consol, I know that next year's X-box games will run on the machine I bought last year. 

Well, untill they come out with the X-box 2, but even that will be cheaper than yearly updates for a PC.

Sweetums

18

I think you mean “continually”. :slight_smile:

Anyway, what I have is a bit outdated. Athlon 1800+ with 512Meg & Win XP. Got it a couple of years ago and haven’t had any problems until now. Looks like I need to upgrade from on-board video in order to get correct graphics in Need for Speed: Underground. I can’t even see the menu choices!

19

Professional game designer here. I’ve worked in both the PC and console markets and I agree. I think the PC game market is in a decline. And I think its a long-term trend, not a short term slump.

The reason, I think, is pretty simple. Console games are a larger market. All things being equal, you’ll sell more copies of a console game than a PC game. Higher sales figures means that you can justify higher development budgets. Higher development budgets tend to result in a sleeker, cleaner product. And the cycle reinforces itself, strengthening the console market and weakening the PC market.

Say you’re a game designer and you’re working for a company that does both PC and console development. You have an idea that has potential to turn into a hit title that would play equally well on either PC or console. Which do it you pitch it for? If you want to maximize your sales (and your bonus) you pitch it as a console game with (maybe) a PC port. Not the other way around. As this sort of decision gets made over and over again, you have a gradual migration of big budget AAA titles from the PC to the consoles (GTA, for example).

It’s interesting to note that the only titles that have survived and thrived on the PC are those that need a mouse. FPSs. RTSs. God-games like the Sims or Black & White. Anything where the player’s primary activity is pointing at something. I think the lack of a good pointing mechanism on the consoles is the main factor keeping PC gaming viable as a mainstream platform.

20

And even this formerly dominant section of PC gaming is falling by the wayside.

The Sims has been a great success on consoles and FPSs like GoldenEye and Halo prove that anyone willing to do an FPS on a console right can make it better than most PC FPSs.

And with the upcoming releases of Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 for the Xbox, the PC-exclusive is further shrinking.