Last week, Yahoo!'s Plugged In site ran an interview with Epic Games' president Mike Capps detailing why his company has decided to leave the PC platform and switch focus to console games. Inevitably, his claim of rampant piracy has been picked up on a number of news sites and thrown up as validation that PC gaming is somehow "dying." Ignoring the fact that this is one developer's opinion, it's still an irresponsible comment to make considering a number of AAA-publishers manage to produce multiplatform games year after year (to say nothing of the success that Valve has enjoyed through their Steam digital distribution system).
Nevertheless, this is such a commonly-repeated refrain that I suppose I shouldn't find it shocking anymore. Yahoo!'s article rounds off pointing to Facebook as the future of PC games:
But as Capps notes, there is hope for the PC gaming industry. He believes the micro-transaction model made popular by social networking games could lure developers back to the derelict platform.
"Maybe Facebook will save PC gaming," he said, "but it's not going to look like Gears Of War."
Instead, it will probably look a lot like Farmville. So the next time your Facebook news feed is bombarded by invitations to plant apple trees or visit your friend's tiny ranch, don't blame Facebook, your friend, or the game. Blame pirates.
I don't even know where to start on this.
Derelict platform? In 2009, video game sales of all console games combined totalled $9.91 billion according to the NPD Group; in the same year, according to the PC Gaming Alliance, sales of just PC games alone was $13.1 billion. That's hardly "derelict" in any definition of the word. Tellingly, sales of PC games actually rose 3% over 2008.
Secondly, anyone who thinks that developers and publishers have turned to micro-transactions to combat piracy on the PC is being incredibly naive or incredibly disingenuous. Game developers are turning to micro-transactions (which incidentally have been around long before Facebook existed) because it makes them a ridiculous amount of money. It's basic human psychology that when confronted with two monetary values, we're going to be drawn to the smaller amount. If that smaller amount is low enough, it easily becomes an impulse purchase. Companies who have a business model based on micro-transactions are hoping that we're suckered into enough of those impulse purchases that we don't realise we've spent more on "small" amounts than we would have spent if we'd just bought the higher priced item.
Games like Farmville have become so financially successful by taking advantage of this very basic reaction. Any deterrent it has to piracy is a negligible after-the-fact benefit, but certainly not why the model is so attractive to developers. Micro-transactions were a salvation to MMOG Dungeons and Dragons Online, saving the game from being closed down and breaking sales expectations for its developer, Turbine. Many other MMOGs, primarily ones targeted towards the Asian market where customers cannot necessarily afford a monthly subscription, have been extremely lucrative by counting on players to pick up the game for free but spend real money in the game's item shop for cosmetic alterations or boosters. Developers watch these successes and aren't stupid– there hasn't been an AAA title released in the last year that didn't include some way for customers to buy DLC packages, whether Mass Effect 2 or Modern Warfare 2. And people buy it, much like they paid $3.5 million for a virtual horse in World of Warcraft.
I do agree that this business model will likely become more prevalent in the future, but it's not because of piracy; it's because it works. It's been the basis of the economy within Second Life for years, and other game developers are taking notice of it.
It's also naive to assume that piracy is rampant on PCs because of some failure of the platform itself. ngmoco recently switched to a "freemium" model on their iPhone games because of how much success they saw in sales from titles like Eliminate Pro compared to Rolando. Even still, on the closed platform that Apple created running on a locked-down device that they control, they cited rampant piracy as a huge detriment to sales of their games.
The reason for this is simple: pirates go to whatever has the largest market share. On mobile devices, it's the iPhone. On more traditional systems, it's the PC. Windows is a hot target for malware and hackers because so many people use it; OS X isn't as innately defensive against attacks as Apple would lead you to believe, it's mostly left alone because of its low market share. If there were ever a polar shift and a mass exodus of gamers deserting the PC as a platform, hackers would inevitably follow quickly after. It's already possible to modify consoles to run games that have been downloaded illegally– if consoles constituted the highest concentration of gamers and game developers, these methods would easily be refined and reproduced.
I empathise with game developers who feel like their hard work is being ripped off, especially indie developers who work out of pocket in their own time to bring a game to market. This stuff is understandably frustrating, but if developers continue to scapegoat the PC platform as the "reason" instead of honestly talking about this issue on a rational level, they're going to find the problem doesn't go away but simply shifts focus. There's no simple solution and certainly no holy grail of security that developers can hide behind and expect safety from copyright infringement.
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Lisha
23 May 2010 · 10:04 PM Lisha[quote this]
I think Epic's failure is worse as well. Anyone that played unreal tournament 3 knows it was not unreal tournament. Blame piracy for poor development. I could find no aspect of the single player that even closely related to the original unreal tournament. Where is the tournament?
This is much like relic's failure to deliver any war in dawn of war. In my opinion companies like epic have forgotten that the PC gamers include older people. Many started on doom 2 and still play pc games to this day. Its harder to please a group that wants story and character development. I bet UT3 did well on consoles because most of them never played the original UT. I laugh when I see poor management blaming things like piracy for their failures and people take it as truth.