11th February 2005, 1:01 PM
Quote:Of course there have always been great-selling casual titles. I never contested that. What I've said from the beginning of this debate is that FPSs are the best-selling games amongst the more hardcore PC gaming crowd. I said that two pages ago and I'm saying it again. I've been completely consistent with my opinion on this. The reason why I brought that up was to illustrate my point that PC gamers do not care about new and innovative gaming experiences like hardcore console gamers do. You will never see games like Katamari Damashii sell as well on the PC as it did on a console. And as someone who can only make games for the PC in the foreseeable future, that worries me. I want there to be a market out there for different kinds of games. That fact is made even more difficult by the fact that most PC gamers don't want to get gamepads, and making different kinds of games for the kb&m severely limits what you can do.
The gamepads thing is because most people who want to play console-style games simply buy consoles. Most games are designed for the type of system they are on and PC games are on PC so most of them are made for keyboard and mouse, just as they should be. If most PC games used gamepads what would be the point of playing them on PC? And anyway, I absolutely reject the idea that the keyboard/mouse combo is a bad one for playing games on. There are a lot of genres that are ideal for keyboard/mouse play, and the PC has plenty of games in those genres and does them well. Complaining because it doesn't do some other types of games, which are more peripheral to the PC gaming experience, well is kind of silly when there is such a massive breadth and depth of PC games as it is...
Originality? I don't think that the PC market is any worse than the console one, overall... there are a lot of niche titles out there. The main problem is selling them at retail. Going that route does often seem to lead to games that follow in the footsteps of past successful titles (same as it often is on consoles)... but where the PC is different is online sales and freeware. That allows people to make anything, including all those kinds of games that simply would never get retail distribution. It won't show up on top 10 lists, probably, but staying away from the big publishers allows for more originality and uniqueness (or simply a game designed in a classic manner in a genre which the big companies are convinced doesn't sell anymore,such as the use of online sales for genres like wargames that no one wants to publish in stores).
Anyway. Is the hardcore PC market dominated by one genre, FPSes? No, it is not. You were wrong to say that. Is it dominated by a few genres? Yes. FPS, RTS, and sim games dominate. Myst-ish adventure games, TBSes, RPGs, MMORPGs, third-person action games, console ports, etc. are often successful. Many fewer titles are released in other genres like classic-style graphic adventures, flight/tank/boat sims, wargames, etc (wargames have mostly survived through online sales). Sure, not many PC titles fall outside the big categories, except for the occasional console port. But it's not a one genre dominated market, OB1. Never has been, still isn't.
Back to originality. It really depends on what you mean by the term. On the one hand yes, probably most PC games are derivitive. But most console games are too! Yes, there are exceptions. But don't pretend to think that the console market is bursting with original titles... it simply is not... yes, there are some. But Nintendo has been saying for years that a big part of the Japanese videogame downturn is because of a lack of originality and when you look at most of the titles produced they probably have a point. America? We have the same lack of originality, but not as many people trying radical things because here that formula is still working fine. No downturn yet. (Which is, of course, why Nintendo's constant statements about having to save gaming from its doom of unoriginality fall flat here... people haven't tired with games as they are as much as they have in Japan.) Anyway... true, PC gaming doesn't have Katamari Damacii and it probably wouldn't sell too well. Hardcore PC gamers are a very different market from console gamers and a lot of them react very badly to any title that feels too "console-ish" (see, for instance, the reaction to Deus Ex 2...). Hardcore PC gamers expect more complexity from their games on average than console gamers do, and when games are designed for consoles too they often see the titles as dumbed down and not as good as a result. True? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but there's definitely truths behind why people feel that way. It is definitely true that console games are on the whole simpler and PC games more complex.
PC gaming innovation is less about innovative new control schemes or add-on controllers or stuff as it is about just using what already exists in different ways... console games do this too of course, but with their additional complexity perhaps PC games have more room to do this in. Of course sometimes a game comes along that changes everything game mechanics-wise (Wolfenstein 3D, Homeworld, Dune 2, etc), but those aren't too common (and even then such games are often at their core a game of a familiar genre, just done in a new way). So perhaps PC games do have fewer totally unique games than consoles do. However, I would probably say that within genres that already exist PC games do at least as well at innovation as console games do and probably do better. Look at RPGs... console ones have some changes, certainly, and a few that try to be different, but there are so many more varieties and complexities in PC ones...
So in short, what I'd say is that when games are relased in established genres PCs and consoles are pretty close as far as innovation goes. Perhaps I'd say PCs are ahead of consoles, by virtue of greater variety among PC games in the same genres as seems to be the case much of the time on consoles. But in the category of 'totally original games' yes, consoles probably win. People thought of most of the genres that PCs can do well quite a while back and given how many of those there are and how many possible gameplay experiences (and how many innovative ideas you can include in titles in existing genres) most new games fall into one of those. Just like it is on consoles, except for a few titles (mostly Japanese) that are unique and perhaps don't have a great PC analog... PC games are often unique or innovative in story, setting, theme, the details of gameplay, etc, but not in the base type of game the title is. If I had to say something, though, I'd probably say that the closest analog to such things would be freeware. From Japan. :D