Bill Roper Predicts Major PC Shift 44
Bill Roper, at Game Convention in Leipzig, Germany, stated in his keynote address that PC Gaming is on the verge of a major shift. From the GI.biz article: "I'm going to get on my PC soapbox for a few minutes...PC games are on the verge of a major market shift, as PC developers and publishers start to move from selling CDs of single-player games to retail outlets, to selling online games to those with broadband connections. We're already seeing primitive multi-platform games on the PC... Players want to get online and play."
Not all of us... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not all of us... (Score:2)
If you are into fps/rts games then only another player really provides a challenge after a while. If you're into rpg/mmo games the social interaction is alot of the pull.
Shrug, mm games are here to stay, single player is going to go the way of the dodo for the most part imo.
Re:Not all of us... (Score:5, Insightful)
And, believe it or not, some people actually don't like playing against human opponents.
False (Score:4, Informative)
There's a lot more to gaming than fps, rts and mmo, you know. And not everyone plays for a challenge. In fact, your average "casual gamer" just wants to have a relaxing evening, not compete head on with immature 12 year olds and be told that he's "owned" or whatever. And they're an increasingly large part of the market.
Some of us, for example, play for a good (semi)interactive story, which is something that MMOs and online fps/rts are _awful_ at. I won't even try to be diplomatic about it: they do a piss-poor job of telling any kind of story to start with, and adding other players in the mix only makes it worse. It's hard to actually suspend disbelief in a medieval story, when people around you talk about the Spice Girls or whatever other stuff.
The thing about internet play being the future, and SP going the way of the dodo, is being waved around for about a decade now, and still shows no sign of becoming more than wishful thinking.
Which it is. It's the publishers wishing everyone started paying $15 a month, instead of just a one-time $30. (That is, if they don't wait and get it from the bargain bin for $10.) The whole talk isn't because everyone wants to play a MMO, but because publishers want you to pay for a MMO.
When EQ hit 400,000 subscribers paying a total of $4,000,000 a month, everyone started wanting that kind of a money printing license too. It's not that it ever was more than a _minority_ of gamers, it's that it's a very profitable minority. They keep giving you money every month.
MMOs vs the regular game market, is like owning a goose that lays golden eggs vs having 100 regular geese. With the latter you still sell more eggs (game copies), with the former you have higher profits. So everyone and their grandma wants to get a slice of that market. That's all.
Re:Not all of us... (Score:2)
I disagree. If you could participate in epic stories on MMOs the same way you do in SP games, you might have a point. As it is though, in an SP game your character can have a critical impact on the world. Your choices and actions really matter. In a MMO, you are just one of millions of other players, and your individual actions don't count for much. Whatever you do, there are millions of other people do
Re:Not all of us... (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, the only time I really want multiplayer is co-op games I can play with my wife. We certainly don't need a server for that. (Although a better Gamecube selection, and better co-op modes in general would help a lot)
I want to play, not organize play-time (Score:4, Interesting)
I just want to play a game at a reasonable (non-twitch) pace, whenever I want.
If my wife calls me for dinner or the kids, I want to pause the game. Not lose because I just abandon my character/team.
Unfortunatly, the game market is catering to their most vocal buyers (multiplayer) and those with the most time and cash (teen & college).
I have plenty of cash. (That happens when you get older.) What I don't have is plenty of free time. And my friends don't have free time either. If we want to get together it is on the weekends (usually withthe wife & kids). Maybe 5 minutes of IM at night.
None of use have the desire to arrange a 3-4 hour play session across multiple time zones. If I want to play a game I want to play it NOW, and stop NOW. Not at some pre-arranged social time. I also don't have time to deal with mad l00t 3lit3 13 year olds talking trash in some pick-up game.
People like me are being ignored by the market.
It is to be expected. The movie industry stopped caring about anyone over 19 and any weekend after the opening weekend a long time ago. That is just what the game industry is doing now.
My reaction? You know I never finished Planescape: Torment. Maybe I should do that now. Instead of playing Dungeon Siege 2 (which has gone all Diablo on me. Yeah being in that beta cooled my desire for the game.).
Actually... (Score:2)
The thing which you probably realize is that copies sold and ROI are completely different things.
There were genres which had an increasing number of buyers, e.g., Adventures, yet for a while skirted with extinction. For half a decade everyone actually preferred to sell less copies of a FPS instead of making and Adventure.
Why? The ROI was higher fo
Ah, nope (Score:4, Insightful)
Online games are fun, certainly a round of Unreal Tourny or Everquest gets the juices flowing, but a good well written, single player adventure never goes out of style.
I think the biggest problem is that AI is still woefully underwelming for most single player adventure/action games. While games like HL2 offer amazing AI and the enemies are definetly more difficult to pin down, nothing compares to having to fight against online opponents.
When it comes to online RPG's, the problem is that they take too long to build up decent experience, way too much trash talking, and when excitement does happen, you get squeezed out of the battle. They purposely make sure that MMORPG's take long to play so you continue to pay the subscription fees. MMORPG's are based on making the most money for whatever company is offering the product, not necessarily about making the best game possible.
While there certainly is more room in the market for connected and online games, I think the shift has happend and is definetly not as earth shattering as is implied. There isn't really anything to hype about online multiplayer games, they are hear already well established.
Re:Ah, nope (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally, I hate playing online. You have team-killers and the like, but then you have the whole "quality" thing.
For example: I'd rather play Star Craft in skirmish mode against the AI than risk getting Zerg-rushed against some pre-teen jerk. Or better yet, joining a 2 vs 2 game, and have your teammate immediately log so it becomes a 2 vs 1 game.
Complain about the AI as much as you want, but I'll take mediocre AI over stupid people any day.
Re:Ah, nope (Score:5, Interesting)
Hell, I'll take mediocre AI over *smart* people too!
I have played RTS games online I believe twice. The last time was Rise of Nations, which was a brutal experience. There I was, working at what I thought was a pretty fast pace, only to get bum-rushed and knocked out of submission by an opponent who was a full two ages ahead of me already within seven minutes of starting the game. He knocked me out before I could even manage a defense.
Now, this may be "challenging", but I wouldn't call it "fun". In fact, from what I know of it, making AI "challenging" is no problem whatsoever - it's making it a good match to the skills that most average people have that's the issue. I would rather play a well-tuned AI than an expertly-honed real person who knows a game's weaknesses inside and out (which seems to be most of what you run into online) any day of the week. I'm not into games to develop and perfect my mad skillz; I'm into games to have fun.
If I can play against friends, then the experience is better, and in fact I used to play UT, Quake 3 and even Serious Sam against some of my co-workers after hours and I enjoyed it. I didn't even suck so bad compared to some of them.
But against random people, forget it. I'd rather not bother. And the problem is everybody has such different tastes that it's often tough to find friends who like the same games as I do - nobody I know likes RTS games, for example, or flight sims.
I think it probably is possible to design a game such that it's fun for everybody, whether you're a n00b, an experienced but relaxed player, a cheap bum-rusher or just a cheater. BF1942 came pretty close to this ideal, because there were just so many different ways to play - different objectives, different "jobs", etc. If you wanted to, you could just hang out inside a bomber and strafe the players below. You could run around on the ground on your own, you could sit and snipe (a perfectly valid activity given the setting), you could get together with others and plan a real attack, you could be a driver, you could be a fighter pilot. And the game world was large enough that if you really sucked, nobody would even really notice anyway.
But online games like that are rare. Most online games are just not very much fun if you ask me, because most random people are either jerks or they've just learned how to exploit a game's inherent flaws (and every game is flawed in some ways). They play cheap and dirty, which is fine if they want to play that way (it's not their fault a game has flaws to be exploited), but it sure doesn't make me want to play them.
Re:Ah, nope (Score:2)
First, any online game that goes beyond just having players mindlessly blow each other up -- that is, any game in which players actually communicate or work together -- has historically been plagued by immature players who seem to do a good job of limiting, if not ruining, the fun I can have. Anyone who has played online can instantly think of many good examples of this. This is extremely frustrating to me, as I've always imagined how cool it could be to t
Re:Ah, nope (Score:2)
Might be true in strictly PVP mmos, but not really in PVE. I never found this a problem in City of Heroes, and it really isn't much of one on a PVE server in World of Warcraft, with the exception of the super crazy end game dungeons - or the PVP battlegrounds.
The key is
Re:Ah, nope (Score:2)
I think it's a combination of the benefits of teamwork in the game, the way the points system works and the persistent profile.
Uh huh (Score:4, Insightful)
Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
What's he trying to say, that the logical next step on this is games that are distributed exclusively through online channels? I'm sure that's going to happen sometime in the future, but still, saying, "Steam was a good idea, I think more people are going to be doing that in the future," in a roudnabout way hardly seems like much of a prediction.
I would have to disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
I see multiplayer FPS moving towards a soulless future full of maps, rocket launchers, and vehicles. We have all seen what happens to media sources that loose the ability to tell a story - 800 reality show variants and a crappy movies on the big screen.
If any game developers are out there reading this, don't chose the wrong path. Give your games life - write the stories and tell them with the game. *cough* if you need help drop me a line...
Re:Right back atcha. (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, online gaming isn't for me, either. I think that adventure games are where it's at, hands down. But the genre still died, because the industry moved on.
Similarly, I don't think 3D makes a magically great game. Really, I like sprites - they have style. But 2D ga
Re:I would have to disagree (Score:1)
Re:Duh (Score:2)
Half Life 2
Umm, nope. I'm tired of that MYTH (Score:5, Interesting)
False. It's something that keeps getting predicted, but never actually happened. It's been almost a decade of hearing that bullshit about how MMOs and online play are the wave of the future, but in practice it never happened.
"The RPG world has turned into the MMORPG world."
False. Single-player console MMORPGs routinely outsell any MMO, WOW included.
The MMO market is now at 10 million users world-wide. There still are more people playing on the GameCube alone, which never had _any_ kind of internet connection, than that.
Now also add PS2s, GameBoys, PSPs and everything else that _is_ a gaming platform and used offline. Simply put, the number of people playing SP games on those simply _dwarfs_ the MMO and online FPS markets combined.
So nope, sorry to burst your bubble, the vast majority of gaming still happens off-line.
Yes, l33t CS clansmen and the like are an awfully loud (and sometimes obnoxious) minority, and like to pretend that the whole world revolves around them. But the keyword is: minority. Just because someone makes an awful lot of noise, doesn't make them the majority or anything.
So basically just because _you_ don't give a damn about SP games any more, please don't pretend that the rest of the world does the same. The numbers still are on the SP side.
Re:Umm, nope. I'm tired of that MYTH (Score:2)
Re:Umm, nope. I'm tired of that MYTH (Score:2)
Though I suppose there is one game I'd call "Single-player console MMORPG". It's called "Morrowind", and is pretty much just that: a MMO game with the netcode disabled. It's built upon a MMO engine and, not necessarily meaning it in a bad way, the quests are just the kind you'd get in a MMO. At any rate, it's the clo
Another sign of a shift (Score:1)
Re:Another sign of a shift (Score:1)
Online my butt (Score:1, Insightful)
Fsck multiplayer.
Go ahead, mod me down for not conforming.
Actually... (Score:2)
Actually, since most of the world's gaming still happens offline in single-player, I'd say you're very much conforming to the norm.
It's about distribution, not just genre (Score:5, Insightful)
The shareware market has had online distribution for years, of course, largely because the barriers to entry are lower, but also because smaller games are easier to download. Something that's starting to hit a lot now is the online applet/flash game with a downloadable (pay) equivalent, a la PopCap [popcap.com]. I know this example's a bit old, but Bejeweled was quite popular before they put it in a box.
Back to multiplayer games, if they require a connection to play anyway, there are really only two reasons to sell the base game on CD. The first is size: If it takes 12 hours to download the client, people would rather drive down to Best Buy, plunk down the cash, and be back home in 30 minutes. The second is visibility: You expect to find games at GameStop. Both reasons are becoming less important, though. If your connection is fast enough, there's nothing to discourage you from downloading a 500MB installer. And as you get used to finding games online, you're as likely to look there as you are to look at the local mall.
On-Line distribution is not without risk either (Score:2)
Okay, you do have a point. Statements like "people want to get online and play" can be misconstrued. He certainly could mean "they want to get online [to download the program] and play", but this is not the first time that people in the industry have blustered <TED KENNEDY>Hello? People want to play online! They want to play with other h
Well, at least we know that OS/2 is dead (What?) (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, multiplayer will be the death of single player games. God knows that the Thief, Splinter Cell, and Half-Life series were crushed with dismal sales due to their total lack of on-line gameplay. Splinter Cell has been hit particularly hard to the point that it's last gam
Re:Well, at least we know that OS/2 is dead (What? (Score:2)
Of course, as always, the reason why MMO games are being
To play the devil's advocate (Score:2)
Actually, in MMOs, and assuming that you do stick to the non-PvP servers, that's practically a non-existent problem. The vast majority of people I've met online in a MMO was actually friendly, and tended to say "please" and "thanks".
Basically I'm not saying that you should play
Re:Well, at least we know that OS/2 is dead (What? (Score:1)
Personally, I'd be more willing to play on-line if (A) game comp
Re:Well, at least we know that OS/2 is dead (What? (Score:2)
If you post AC, don't expect anyone to put too much weight on your argument.
about time (Score:1)
Re:about time (Score:2)
Unless you shove a new executable down the players through every they want to play it's not going to work. And even in this case "pirates" will be able to create a frozen executable. It has been done before (say every day in the last 20 years).
Even completely closed system have been cracked. Online distribution instead of offline distribution doesn't add any better anti-piracy features.
As a father, (again?) (Score:1)
She likes some games, Hates others. She like multiplayer. She likes single player. She likes Realistic, She likes cartoony. She likes cute. She hates Scary.
Except for that last one, I find her representative of the overall community. It's the GAMEPLAY! Not the Genre, Not Multi-Single Player, Not the Graphics, Not the Medium, Not the Cutscenes. pause.
eg.. LOTR 2 towers on GC. She loves playing co-op hates the