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PC Gaming Isn’t Doomed (And graphics don’t matter.)
By Cameron Sorden | March 11, 2008
Tim Sweeney Hates You and Your Little PC Too– But It’s All Really Intel’s Fault
“PC gaming is going the way of the dinosaur, consoles are the next big thing, and soon everyone will think that playing games on your PC is as weird as playing games on your toaster.” Yeah, yeah. We’ve all heard it before. The truth is that PC game sales are suffering, if they don’t have “Warcraft” or “Sims” in their name. But are we really at the twilight hour of PC gaming, with a long cold winter of console-dominance ahead of us (you can probably tell I’m biased)? The reason I chose to resurrect this particular dead horse and beat it a little more is that Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games and Unreal creator, already did it for me. From his GameDaily interview:
“…it is very important not to leave the masses behind. This is unfortunate, because PCs are more popular than ever. Everyone has a PC. Even those who did not have a PC in the past are now able to afford one and they use it for Facebook, MySpace, pirating music or whatever. Yesterday’s PCs were for people that were working and later playing games. Even if those games were lower-end ones, there will always be a market for casual games and online games like World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft has DirectX 7-class graphics and can run on any computer. But at the end of the day, consoles have definitely left PC games behind,” he said.
And some more:
“PC gaming is in a weird position right now. Now, 60% of PCs on the market don’t have a workable graphics processor at all. All the Intel integrated graphics are still incapable of running any modern games. So you really have to buy a PC knowing that you’re going to play games in order to avoid being stuck with integrated graphics. This is unfortunate, and this is one of main reasons behind the decline of the PC as a gaming platform,” he said. “That really has endangered high-end PC game sales. In the past, if you bought a game, it would at least work. It might not have been a great experience, but it would always work.”
In the end, Sweeney acknowledged, “PCs are good for anything, just not games.”
Now, he makes a few comments in this article that I’d like to discuss. Every story I’ve seen on his comments today takes the “more bad news for PC enthusiasts” angle, but there are a few holes in Tim’s reasoning. The main point that he was trying to make is that modern mass-market PCs can’t keep up with modern games from a hardware standpoint, while modern consoles can, therefore consoles are superior to PCs as a gaming platform. He sticks to this point even after admitting that the vast majority of homes these days have at least one PC (and often more), and that there will always be a market for PC games (he calls them casual games and WoW).
The key here is in the graphics. Why is it that modern PCs can’t play modern PC games as they are meant to be played? Because game developers often design their games for the current generation of mid to high end computers, which most people do not have. The everyman PC that’s in the home of most Americans is not the ultimate or even the mid-line PC. It’s the Best Buy or Wal-Mart purchased bare-bones PC. The graphics in Oblivion at launch, for example, brought the mightiest of PCs crashing to their knees– you could forget even trying to load the game on your system. Tim’s take on this is to blame Intel for shoving subpar graphics processors at everyone.
However, this seems to be much more of a supply-side issue. Developers make games for top of the line computers for any number of reasons– it looks prettier, your game has all the journalists going “wow!”, it pushes hardware sales of next-gen computer parts, et cetera. But there’s a limited number of people who are going to run out and upgrade their computers to play the next big thing every year. Frankly, those people usually end up getting burned (Oblivion– huge disappointment). Instead of complaining that nobody is buying their multi-million dollar games, maybe developers should set the bar for entry a little lower. The answer is not to switch to consoles and continue making super graphic-intensive games. You know why?
Graphics Are Like Frosting– Tasty, But It’s the Cake You Want (The Cake is Not a Lie)
As I said, this is a graphics problem. And here’s the dirty little secret: graphics don’t matter! They don’t. They might help sell your game initially. They might spin some great press pre-launch. They might amaze and dazzle your players for five minutes. But after that, players will forget about the graphics and settle into the gameplay, which is what really matters. How many FPS games release every year with “omigoditsamazingIthinkIjustcrappedmypants” gosh-wow whizbang top-tier graphics engines only to be buried in obscurity? Answer: A lot of them.
Players can get used to anything graphically as long as the game itself is fun. If you disagree with me (and a lot of you do), ask yourself this: Did it bother you growing up when your favorite game wasn’t rendered in beautiful 3D? Does it make your cherished games any less fun to play that they can’t match up to modern graphics? Do your Monopoly games suffer because the little metal dog isn’t quite lifelike enough? Probably not. You can say that graphics do matter, and graphics are important, but as long as you understand what the graphics are supposed to be, they’ve done their job. A tree doesn’t need to look like a real live tree for it to serve its tree purposes.
The casual games market of which grouchy old Sweeney Tim speaks so flippantly is growing like crazy. They don’t need fancy graphics to make and sell great games. How much have you heard about casual and web-based games in the last two years? You know who doesn’t have everyone and their grandma talking about what they’re doing? The traditional gaming market. PC gaming isn’t dying– it’s evolving (console gaming, not so much). Asking consumers to pay $300-$600 for a machine that only plays games is quite a request, when they can take the machine they already have for work or school and go download a bunch of free trials of entertaining games without spending a dime, while chatting with their friends on AIM and checking e-mail. And what makes those games so great? They’re not graphically intensive (although they do have nice graphics), they’re cheap, and most importantly, they focus on the fun instead of the flash.
Lets Play A Game: Compare and Contrast Time!
You might still be thinking that those games are for moms and noobs who don’t understand real gaming, but it doesn’t have to be that way (in fact, you’re wrong– there are lots of companies making casual games for you). But that’s a design qualm. You just need more developers willing to take the plunge and that fixes that. So what about the platform considerations? Graphics aside, lets take a quick look at what console versus PC gaming offers players:
Console (Wii not Included)
$300-$600 initial entry cost- $50-$70 per game, no trials allowed (barring rentals and Gamefly)
- Limited ability to interact/communicate with other players (only voice chat, keyboards are a hassle)
- Controllers are foreign to non-gamers
- No modding, player-created content/levels, or homebrew games (a tiny bit on Xbox live, requires special components and advanced knowledge)
- Pop the disc in and start playing (but cumbersome to switch discs all the time)
PC (Casual games, MMOGs)
- No initial cost — everyone has a PC
- $10-$60 per game, almost always have free trials
- Unlimited ways to communicate and interact with other players (voice chat, message board, IM, chat rooms, e-mail)
- Everyone knows how to use a mouse and keyboard
- Unlimited potential for modding, homebrew, and player-created content (just a simple download away)
- Short install times for most games, but no disc switching (once it’s installed, play it whenever)
When you stop looking at PCs from the viewpoint of traditional, graphic-intensive videogames, PC starts looking like a ridiculously awesome platform for gaming that blows consoles right out of the water. If you look at the really popular games and the games that are rapidly gaining popularity, it’s certainly not the complex, hardcore, hardware-devouring monsters. It’s the simple, fun games that are gaining traction.
In Conclusion: Go Buy a PC (Better Yet, Don’t– You Already Have One That Works Fine)
The point I’m trying to make here isn’t really that PC is better or consoles are better. They really do cater to different crowds. It just annoys me to see companies declaring that PC gaming is dead or dying, when what they really mean is that “PC gaming is dead to us because it doesn’t work with our expensive, outdated business model and game creation style.” You don’t need a billion dollars in art assets and 3D world designers to make a fun game. Most of the time, I feel more constrained by 3D environments than I ever did in 2D, honestly. When you let players zoom to every possible angle of the game, you need to fill every possible angle of your game with interesting and well-rendered objects or it looks like crap.
Consoles are nifty, but they’re expensive, cumbersome, and when they break (red ring of death anyone?) there’s no easy fix. You can’t just hop on another Xbox to troubleshoot your first one. They have far less selection than PCs. And you can’t do all the other nifty PC stuff while you play games on them (e-mail, web surf, chat with friends). As far as I’m concerned, Tim Sweeney’s ridiculous claim that “PCs are good for anything, just not games,” is just that– ridiculous, silly, short-sighted, and simply wrong.
In closing, I’ll leave you with this helpful chart so that you can make an informed decision about what platform is best for you when it comes to videogames (courtesy of Brent):
Topics: Random |
March 11th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I was amazed at the brazen idiocy of Sweeney’s words when I read them earlier today.
WoW, LOTRO, 12 Sims games, Diablo, the original Halo, Civilization… all among the best-selling games of last year and none of them tailored for high-end PCs. Quality games with polish and a good publisher still sell well on the PC.
And Sweeney’s perfectly aware of it, so I have to wonder what he was playing at when he gave those comments.
That said, graphics certainly do matter, just not as much as gameplay. Only die-hard enthusiasts go back to old consoles to play the great games. Why so few? The gameplay of Excitebike and SpyHunter is just as good today. So few return to old games because the graphics do matter. We only accepted lesser graphics back then because better wasn’t possible.
Graphics matter, but they’re only part of the picture. And Sweeney knows it. Perhaps he thinks this sort of talk will help Epic sell its Unreal tech?
March 11th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
That’s just my point. I’ll admit that blips of color moving around a black screen probably won’t cut it for most players, but you also don’t need Oblivion-quality graphics to have a good game (in fact, focusing on graphics like that to the exclusion of other game elements can be a deathblow).
Diablo graphics were never anything to write home about (even the second one didn’t look all that amazing compared to what else was out there), and it’s still recognized as a fantastic game.
March 11th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
[...] Read a great mix-up about PC gaming in comparison to console gaming over at Random Battle. [...]
March 11th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
I wouldn’t jump on the “everyone has a pc” bandwagon so quickly. How many adults now had an Atari 2600 back in the day because it was “the cool thing” while any type of home computer was prohibitively expensive and way too technical so never got into pc’s? How many senior citizens currently have always been computer-illiterate yet are enjoying videogames with their Wii and it’s “foreign” Wiimote? Hell, I’d say at least 80% of my co-workers would fall in the computer illiterate category, being only able to click the blue IE icon and check email and a handful of websites. Anything more than that is too technical for them.
People buy consoles because they know they’re buying them for games (possibly for movies on the side) and because they “just work.” Put the DVD in and *poof* the game loads.
Sweeney absolutely has a point by picking on Intel’s chips. Carmack and Sweeney had a lot to do with the proliferation and advancement of 3D hardware to accomodate their high-end 3D graphics engines. Nvidia and ATI provide integrated graphics solutions that will run most games to some degree, if not as well as a mid-range desktop. Intel’s integrated graphics, on the other hand, can’t deal with much more advanced than Warcraft 3. People don’t walk into Best Buy in 2008 and pay $800-ish for a new computer to play a seven-year-old game, they want to play WoW or perhaps Second Life because that’s what they keep hearing about from friends, co-workers and media. Then their $800 system with Intel graphics won’t work. It IS problematic. Sweeney isn’t saying “graphics are everything” despite his company being built on high-end graphics engines. He’s saying integrated (read: inexpensive) graphics *technology* specifically Intel’s, needs to improve so the low-end isn’t so drastically apart from the high-end; so the Best Buy customers who are not educated gamer-consumers are able to play games using Epic’s engines just like the hardcore gamers with systems costing a few thousand dollars.
March 12th, 2008 at 10:39 am
[...] is spawned from Cameron’s latest article regarding issues that Time Sweeny brought up regarding PC gaming sales: In a new [...]
March 14th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
PC Gaming: Dying since 1984.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:05 am
# $300-$600 initial entry cost
–I dropped over a thousand on my first gaming PC.
# $50-$70 per game, no trials allowed (barring rentals and Gamefly)
–actually, having recently connected my PS3 up to their Playstation Network, I found playable demos for a host of games I was interested in, completely free. Much more handy in an environment where you can’t download a pirated copy to see if its worth buying.
# Limited ability to interact/communicate with other players (only voice chat, keyboards are a hassle)
–Allow me to not get into what a hassle getting Ventrillo running for the first time was
Regardless, I think communication problems are fairly game-specific. Having built-in voice chat in many console games feels like a bonus to me.
# Controllers are foreign to non-gamers
–a given, but the GUI of many PC games will be just as much of a learning curve if not more so. Someone unfamiliar enough with gaming to consider a PS3 controller “foreign” is going to stare blankly at the WoW interface.
# No modding, player-created content/levels, or homebrew games (a tiny bit on Xbox live, requires special components and advanced knowledge)
–can’t argue, here’s something I hope integrates with PC platforms soon to fix this problem (user-created content communities accessible by the media-server browsers on current consoles, perhaps?)
# Pop the disc in and start playing (but cumbersome to switch discs all the time)
–I played Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2, and had two CD towers full of PC games growing up. I have to disagree that this isn’t just as much a problem on the PC (in fact, I ended up learning about CD cracks just for this purpose). A long-play game on either platform uses just as much of your time dropping in the initial disc to start it up. (barring MMOs)
At any rate, I don’t see why both platforms’ area of function won’t eventually converge here in our lifetimes anyway. I’m stuck on one console right now since it’s the one I own, but my PS3 acts almost no differently than a windows media center PC, with the major difference being that the PS3 doesn’t crash from random errors so far.
The clincher for me, personally, is that all the latest titles that I’m excited to see are dropping predominantly on consoles anymore. With the pre-built platforms offering guaranteed performance on any title designed to be played on that system, I don’t have to worry that my video card won’t be up to snuff. My Oblivion-capable PC won’t be able to handle Fallout 3, but I have a console that can.
Ultimately, I feel that PCs were in a position to jump-start the video game industry back when the consoles were heavily underpowered compared to the mid-range desktop, but technology is allowing the consoles to easily catch back up and do the reverse: start to mimic the functionality of current PC’s for non-gaming elements. I’d wager PCs as we use them now will probably evolve into multi-function communication devices, possibly mobile/handheld, while consoles will adopt the modularity and depth of use that PC gamers currently love. I wouldn’t be surprised if a firmware update came out in the near future that added in a multi-platform chat tool to the PS3 similar to trillian or pidgin that let you connect to AIM/MSN/ICQ buddy lists, or one that integrated web 2.0 content like myspace into the console OS.
March 18th, 2008 at 11:40 am
That’s an interesting theory… I could certainly see something like that happening, with PCs evolving into more of an exclusively work-related role and consoles taking on the functions you describe to be a multi-faceted entertainment device.
There’s still the entry barrier issue, though. PCs are nearly ubiquitous. You might not be able to play Fallout 3 on your PC, but you can probably play Maple Story, RuneScape, or Diner Dash on your PC (all very popular games). I wouldn’t expect what you’re describing to happen until major consoles become as cheap to shove into homes as other entertainment devices (the Wii is an example of successfully doing just that, but it won’t be playing Fallout 3 any time soon either).
March 18th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
I agree with many of your points but not this one:
“Short install times for most games, but no disc switching (once it’s installed, play it whenever)”
Short install times? Not really. Not short compared to popping in a CD.
No disc switching? Sure if you cracked it. Most games require you to use a disc and a lot of them come with copy protection and some even come with root kits. So not the greatest point towards PCs.
Also while most people have PCs they don’t have great end of the line PCs. If they wanted to play any of the top blockbuster games they’d have to upgrade… and that’s not always simple, sometimes requiring you to just buy a new computer altogether. Most games on sale are the latest releases and older blockbusters. It’s not as simple to find older classic games unless you trawl e-Bay or bargain bins.
Overall though you had good points and I would tend to agree with you that gaming is evolving although I also agree with a lot of Sweeney’s points as well.
March 18th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
I was reading NPD press releases earlier tonight for another project, before I read your blog post, and saw something that seems pertinent.
“From toddlers to tweens to teens, more than one-third of kids in the United States are spending more time playing video games today than they did one year ago. This trend is particularly pronounced for online game play, according to Kids & Gaming, the most recent report from The NPD Group.
According to the report, PCs dominate as the top system used for gaming by kids of all age groups. PCs also dominate in terms of number or years used for gaming, with the average child starting to use a PC for gaming at age 6 and continuing on through age 17, which is longer than any other gaming system measured.”
The quote is from this press release:
http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_071016a.html
Move from age 17 to college, where most kids still have a computer. I don’t see people suddenly getting rid of their computers after college.
There’s plenty of market there. Some people in the game industry are just too tunnel-blind to know how to reach the masses. It’s ok if you want to make games for a smaller segment of the market, just don’t bitch about it, ya know?
“PC Gaming: Dying since 1984.” Lol Julian, exactly.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Everytime a new console comes out people bring up this topic. In one years time, pc’s will stomp the crap out of consoles. In two years time mid-range pc’s will stomp the consoles. It will take a couple years after that before a new console is even released.
That’s just the way it works. It’s a cycle and it’s all about preference. If the game developers make a shift then it could break that cycle. I personally see a lot of crappy games everywhere i look. Too much focus on graphics and not enough on gameplay. I keep trying to find a new FPS but every new one i find i’m let down.