“The State of PC Gaming.”

It’s one of the more recent debates that’s polarized both consumers and game developers. There’s been a sharp decline in the variety of titles on store shelves, which themselves have yielded floor space to console games. At the same time, subscriptions to popular titles like World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online are quite high. Whether it’s dying, growing, stagnating, or recovering, there’s only one thing that most people can seem to agree upon; it’s changing. Scratch that… it’s changed. In fact, I can’t think of anything significant about PC gaming that’s remained the same in the last 3-5 years. But that’s actually a good thing, for those differences have allowed PC games to survive for as long as they have.

The past:

Walk into a retail outlet, buy a game off the shelf. Return home, begin the install process. Check the manufacturer website for the latest game patches. Check your PC component specs to ensure that they’re also up to date. Once you’re in the game, the usual single player vs multiplayer options present themselves, and then off you go. After an average 30-40 hours of play (single player), the title is essentially expired, and it’s off to the retail outlet once again. The only exception to this would have happened if you were involved with the still rather niche FPS genre (Counterstrike, Battlefield 1942, Unreal Tournament), or with MMORPGs which were in their adolescence at the time.

The present:

Download a full game from the manufacturer’s website, or though distribution channels like Steam and Stardock. Launch the game and wait for it to automatically update itself, verify compatibility with your system, and connect to a group of servers. Then decide if you want to pay for it. … That’s right. Lots of games are offered virtually free of charge, supported by in-game advertising, graduated subscriptions or other forms of user segmentation. Further, these same channels also allow you to centralize game/community settings, character configurations, and even hook into already established social networks in order to enrich the entire gaming experience.

The future… is anyone’s guess, and here’s mine:

As game platforms evolve, so will their content and their methods of distribution (regardless of genre), and the popularity of the MMO format will continue to inform this transformation. While this is happening, there will be a convergence between the offline and online identities of gamers themselves. The notion of a gamers “Profile” will carry more and more weight. You’ll no longer purchase “a game”. You’ll adopt a another brand which you can then apply to your profile. “John Doe the FPS player” becomes “John Doe the adventurer” with consistency in the way their online identity looks and [perhaps] performs in the new game environment. That environment will continue to integrate different (and hopefully engaging) forms of in-game advertising, in order to sustain the financial growth for the different franchises that choose to be a part of it. Imagine a scenario where you actually order a pizza from within a game environment like Grand Theft Auto, or the Sims, and it shows up to your front door. The advantages to this multiplicity favour both the gamer and the manufacturer (not to mention the marketer). If this model does indeed develop, the information associated with a player’s profile becomes that much more valuable. Granted, the requisite privacy issues will have to be ironed out, but those issues are omnipresent in any case.

To say that “PC gaming is dying/ has died” is to fail to recognize that a PC is merely a manifestation of technology, which continues to change. Arcades have all but disappeared from the planet, but you can still find just about every single game they provided a home for with a quick search online.

“No,.. it’s the children who are wrong.”

Going over a recent post at Engadget, I was surprised by the recent results of the latest Nielsen report on “The State of the Video Gamer.”  David Hinkle however, seemed to take this in stride (see his review at Joystiq). This caused me to take pause and reflect a little bit about what I thought I knew about the gaming industry. I used to be a very avid gamer, and as one of many hobbyists who still build my own machines, I still like to keep a close eye on the general state of the industry.

After reading the report, a couple of points stuck with me. Firstly, especially after the last 2 years, I’d always thought of the Wii as the undisputed king of the console market. Gauging press, reaction, and the general clamor for Nintendo’s darling, it’s easy to see why. But according to Nielsen, the Wii is trailing behind in terms of popularity and sales. While I’ve always been a fan of the PC as a gaming platform, everything I’ve experienced with the Wii speaks to its superior ability to cater to a market that was crying out for attention; groups of players (in the same space) looking for socially-oriented gaming experiences. No other console is as party/gathering/birthday-friendly. No other console features game franchises that have dominated the lucrative “family-friendly” market forever. And quite frankly, no other console can get away with releasing games that just do not compare to the PS3 or Xbox360 when it comes to pure graphics capabilities. Now these stats were mostly relevant to December 2008, a time when the Wii was particularly hard to find on store shelves, but is that the only reason for this discrepancy in market share?

Second, and this is straight from the report: “Females 25 years of age and older make up the largest block of PC game players…in December 2008.” Now before you fire up your email client, let me clarify that this surprises me for a number of different reasons. Even given my previous assumptions about the popularity of the Wii, it would not have surprised me as much to see a sharp increase in the numbers of female console gamers. The number of titles that appeal to both genders are incredibly vast. Conversely, the number of new PC games has been on the decline in the last 5 years or so. There just isn’t as much money to be made producing new PC titles anymore. Is it possible that MMO titles like WoW and their kin are responsible for holding onto the increased gamerGirl demographic?

These are questions I don’t really have answers for, but I think are still worth discussing. In a climate where everyone’s had to rethink their business models, it would be interesting to get some insight into the marketing plans of companies in industries where we once thought we were comfortable in. Assumptions that were once valid are now worthless. Strategies to capture the right audience are most likely outdated.

Oh, and one final note from the report. The most popular PC game played by both men and women (25-49)? … Solitaire.