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[Icewolf]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Lulu_Jane @ Jan 26 2007, 08:27 AM) [snapback]276518[/snapback]</div>

[...]latest Broken Sword [...]
Also, the camera p.o.v movement and character movement is pretty hopeless. Even though they might be the most "up to date" thing they could spew out, it really ruins the experience of the story when something is buggy and illogical all for the sake of Big-Shiny-and-New Syndrome.[/b]

Well, I've already been slightly disappointed by Broken Sword 2: Mirror of Darkness

[humorguy]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Lulu_Jane @ Jan 26 2007, 07:27 AM) [snapback]276518[/snapback]</div>

Exactly!

Although that's also why the latest Broken Sword release just isn't doing it for me. The B.S storyline has been consistently great through each installment, but in Angel Of Death it is so hard to actually "get into" the flow of the story (and hence, the game itself) because the "updated" and "advanced" user interface is so clunky and somewhat illogical.

Also, the camera p.o.v movement and character movement is pretty hopeless. Even though they might be the most "up to date" thing they could spew out, it really ruins the experience of the story when something is buggy and illogical all for the sake of Big-Shiny-and-New Syndrome.
[/b]

Remember what you say is a lot of gaming propaganda. Firstly, is costs about $10 to go to the movies and about $15 for buy a DVD. A computer game is at least $30 full price and quite often over $50! therefore you can sell 1/3 of the games to match the income of the movie industry. That means PC games sales are down 50% over the last 7 years, but because we only get overall figures for sales, we think it's brilliant, but that's because of and the DS and the Gameboy before it as much as anything else, and while that's gaming, it's nothing to do with PC gaming. Last year saw the lowest number of PC game releases in 5 years. How can you have record sales in PC gaming if the games aren't being released?!

You cannot project generic video gaming sales and say every format is doing equally well. DS is doing incredibly well. More than enough growth to cover falling PC game sales.

Remember, even Mark rein, head of Id software has admitted that Doom 3 sold less than half of the original Doom, releases over 12 years ago.

[Lulu_Jane]

Ummm, where in my post am I quoting "gaming propaganda?"

I've no idea why you quoted me before continuing your post, because they're not related. I was referring to the comments that were likening games to "interactive fiction/story-books."

Anyway - in response to your comment, I think that it's slightly skewed to compare the price of a movie ticket to the price of a PC game. You pay $10 for 2 hours of entertainment when you go to the cinema, and $30 for upwards of 25 hours of entertainment when you pay for a game. Admittedly, you get more than 2 hours of entertainment when you buy a DVD, but the type of entertainment is different (just like cinema) it's the equivalent of comparing apples to oranges.

Perhaps that's where it all started to go wrong, when people thought that these different mediums were interchangable and therefore watered it all down for the lowest common denominator.

[Morrin]

The reason why PC game sales have went down is the new trend: consoles. While PC has it's own good sides such as screen (I don't like playing with TV screen, unless very good TV and I don't have money for that) and keyboard+mouse in some genres. But in all other ways, consoles simply make it lot more fun and easier: just put the disk in and play! No techinal issues, no installing, no wondering will the game work and so on.

This has brought PC players AND new players who don't know anything about tweaking and fixing to console playing. It's effortless fun and that is what is IN nowadays. Everything-quickly-to-me. And besides, wich is "sexier": old good yeller or exciting Wii?

And one more thing: piracy.

[velik_m]

Actually in US the PC game market grew by 1 percent last year:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=22329

A lot of PC games are sold online nowdays.

[Borodin]

Yes, sales are actually doing quite well. The Gaming Industry has learned to dumb down titles and cross-platform them to target a much younger market. That's affected titles like Oblivion, the simplest of Bethsoft's games, where you're literally coached by the game with overly obvious hints nearly every step of every quest. But all that PR money spent on Oblivion...? It lined up all those wet-behind-the-ears, eager young arcaders who thought Diablo was an ancient RPG, and had just gotten their first (poorly paying) job at a website or magazine.

The result was that Oblivion sold like mad--and now, the older users who enjoyed Morrowind or Daggerfall are frequently mad. I would expect older gamers in the future to turn to indie titles or seek other means of entertainment. Just my two forints.

[Lulu_Jane]

This thread is a pretty good argument as to why we should be supporting community/amateur made title (whether they are released as freeware or not.)

Just like any cultural movement - when the mainstream fails, those who care enough and are talented enough, create their own niche products. Musical movements have occured this way again and again, for example Punk, Rap etc. We need to find our place in The Long Tail and spread the joy.

(Of course Abandonia and AReloaded are doing this already )

[humorguy]

Borodin and Lulu Jane, could not have said it better myself.

And everyone else take out The Sims and it's expansions, which made up 5 of the top 10 best selling games of 2006 and trust me, you have a decline in PC gaming. It has been declining for at least 3 years. It's been accepted, for example, that on PC the original Doom (1993) sold twice as many units as Doom 3 (2004) and Half Life (1998) has sold almost twice as much as Half Life 2. Peter Molyneux of Lionhead has said in an interview that he doesn't believe any PC only game can make a profit any longer. He has also hinted that Lionhead, owned by Microsoft, will not release another PC game. Also, last year (2006) saw the fewest number of PC game releases in 4 years.

It's not that all gamers are leaving PC for elsewhere, to be honest, it seems it's more the hardcore gamers. While hardcore gamers still exist, they buy many fewer games (in 2005 based on surveys a PC gamer bought 5 PC games. In 1995 an average PC gamer bought 12!) You get little hints that there are fewer hardcore gamers by, for example, Neverwinter Nights 2, one of PC's biggest releases in November of last year, being thrown out of last weeks PC Top 10 by a re-entry of a puzzle game called Bejeweled 2. For a AAA title to be pushed out of the Top 10 12 weeks after release by a re-entry of a casual gamer game shows how much the market is changing!

Lastly, we are living proof. Retro gaming has totally taken off over the last couple of years or so! Last year Ebay opened a specific retro gaming section (a sure sign of major interest!) and sites like HOTU and Abandonia have grown enormously! If you add in the growth in emulation of the Commodore 64 ( A Commodore 64 site called Lemon 64 has forums at least as busy as Abandonia's, if not busier!) and the early consoles like NES, you have a huge number of people now involved in Retro gaming. They have to come from somewhere, and like Borodin said, I think it's the older, more hardcore gamers that have been playing games for more than 10 years realising that the 'fun'has gone out of modern PC gaming, but it's still there in the classics! Let's also not forget that a couple years ago, if you wanted to play a DOS game, you had to prey it would run in win98/XP, you needed to try and slow down your PC and if it didn't run in compatibility mode in XP, you were stuck. If you still had Win98 you had the option of booting into DOS with a DOS boot disk, but it was all so ;hardcore' - now we have DOSBox, which has allowed everybody to play these classic DOS games relatively easily, and with the DOSBox front-ends now being developed, like D-Fend, it's getting easier all the time! In fact, it's these retro games that are the most like console games. They don't take a long time to install, and using a DOSBox front end, you can start them up immediately without need for CD swapping, etc. This all brings people to retro and away from the modern, expensive, shallow PC games we mostly get now. Between hardware demands and quality of PC games, I doubt I will buy more than 2 or 3 AAA PC games this year. I might buy the same amount of independent games, but mostly it will be retro gaming.

There's a change happening, and we're part of it. I'd get used to it, because I think there will be major changes in gaming over the next couple of years. It's going to be quite a roller-coaster ride I think!

[Cosmonaut_Roger]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(humorguy @ Jan 27 2007, 01:27 PM) [snapback]276691[/snapback]</div>

*snip*

[/b]

Well said! I completely agree. I think it has come become the norm for PC gamers to say, "PC gaming is not dying, everyone just says that when a new console comes out." Well this is true, PC gaming is always "dying" when a new console comes out, it happened when the Genesis came out, when the N64 came out, when the PS1 came out, especially when the PS2 came out, and even more especially when the XBox came out. And now again they say it is happening with the Xbox 360, Wii, and PS3. But I truly think that now is different, and as you said PC game is at a revolution, a change that we are all part of. If you think back to those other console releases, they effected the PC gaming community, but not in the magnitude that they do today. There is so much more money in gaming today than there was 10 years ago. When the PS2 came out, a few games were ported from PC to PS2 or vice versa, but each gaming platform had their respective games and gaming community. But now, the line has truly blurred between console games and PC games, and that blurry line has shifted towards the console. There may be just as many PC games made, but more and more of these games resemble consoles games, for the sole reason that they ARE console games or developed to be played on a console. We never had the huge cross marketing that we do now, there was always a good distinction between PC games and console games, with many exceptions of course.

But now we've seen how much money a console can make. We see celebrities playing Xbox and Playstation games. We see hollywood scale marketing and TV advertisements for games like Gears of War. And this has brought developers over to the console side (cue Imperial March music). I think Lionhead studios is a prime example of this. They were the last developer I predicted that would delve gungho into console gaming, simply due to the nature of the games they make. But it sounds like they've given up that style of game, and are instead going to focus on the console market.

So we are seeing more and more developers developing console games and pandering to the Xbox generation, does that really equal the death of PC gaming? I say no way. In fact, I think this isn't necessarily a bad thing. The proliferation of the internet and broadband has facilitated the explosion of retro and independent gaming communities. The void that big developers left is being filled by small people who are like us, who want to see creativity return to PC gaming, or who want to dedicate thier time to forgotten classics. I think it served as a rude awakening for us, but because of that rude awakening we are even more aware of how GOOD PC gaming CAN be, and there are groups out there more than ever dedicated to creating GOOD PC games, even it is on a low budget. So I think this change in PC gaming to the independent developers and retro communities is a good thing, and it will be interesting to see what happens. It will be interesting to see if a total change ever occurrs. If almost all developers will abandon PC gaming, except for ports, and PC gaming is totally taken over by small indpendent houses and retro communities. It will be interesting.

[humorguy]

*snip*

[/quote]




Let's slap each other's backs, as you hit the nail on the head too! The concern is the money side. No money is really made from retro,. at least the publishers and developers don't. Ebay might!

Without income, do we get coverage in magazine websites like Gamespot or IGN? If we don't get coverage on these sites how will we know about these independent games? If PC gaming is seen as 'dead' and no one is previewing or reviewing these smaller publisher's games, how will we know how good they are? We will end up spending times downloading games we don't really know much about and finding out by playing if we like it/if it's any good? It could be a very different way of buying PC games compared to just going down to your local retailer or online retailer!

I don't think anyone can really say what's going to happen, but I am sure there will be much change over the next 2-3 years. The Wii is taking off. The PS3 seems to have a question mark over it. The 360 is really a PC in a console box, Except for the Wii, all consoles are slowly turning into multimedia machines that do many things - just like a PC, and are getting more expensive because of it.

I am just glad I have kept a ton of my old PC games, like SEAL Team and Dragon Wars and Outcast and Fallout and all the LucasArt games like Battlehawks 1942, Sam and Max and Star trek 25th Anniversary!, etc and I have kept my Playstation with all the great RPGs that came out for it like Fear Effect and Syphon Filter and lastly I have kept my Commodore 64 along with games like Red Storm Rising and Elite and Maniac mansion, etc!

If you're a PC gamer and you haven't dug your foxhole yet, I hope you have your helmet on at least!