Three Things That Can Save PC Gaming
Isn't it a really sad state of affairs that the biggest names in PC gaming have been forced into officially putting their nuts in a sack and
creating an alliance who's main goal is to help promote one of the most popular past-times of slackers, geeks, nerds, and even jocks, for the last fifteen years? PC gaming is in the shitter, let's not beat around the bush. Piracy is at an all-time high, everyone in high ranking positions at companies vested in PC gaming is scared to death of consoles and where those technologies are going with their broad appeal and various revenue streams such as movies and music. And to boot, we as gamers simply can't make up our mind about what advantage a PC has over a console these days.
Well, all is not lost, and PC games, and the gamers who still beat that drum, are still relevant today and will be for yet some days to come. But the question about just how long, is a serious venture to ponder. So here's one gasbag's opinion on the top three things the PC gaming industry can do to save its collective asses.
1. Hey Game Developers, Make Good Games!
Let's start off with the most obvious and apparent fix that the current generation of game developers can do to help keep PC gaming going strong for another decade...make a good flippin' game! It has been proven time and time again, that a quality gaming experience far outweighs any bell and whistle graphic mastery that game developers can come up with. I mean,
WTF people!? There's probably about a thousand times more people enjoying that crap than there are playing
Unreal Tournament III right now...and rightfully so. It's interactive and easy to learn.
We, as PC gamers, don't really care how many directions in which a shadow can be cast on a wall, nor do we give a shit about how many different ways in which water will randomly splash when shot at. We care about pretty much the same thing any person cares about when they sit down to be entertained for a set amount of time. We want to be swept away to another place, so that we forget about our everyday slog of a life and can live vicariously through the experiences put forth by those whom conjure and craft the form of media we are consuming for a given span of time. It's not really that hard to figure out.
What game developers should be doing, is
not pouring money into the R&D of game engine development, rather they
should be pouring money into
NetFlix,
Blockbuster and a comfy new couch. Why? So that they can understand a basic premise of story-telling, which seems to be a lost art form in today's game developer's bag of tricks. The reality is this: good games,
that consistently score high and win awards across various online game review sites and gaming communities, have one thing in common...the tell a story, and they tell it well. They grab the player, rip them out of their seat and throw them into the game, giving them a swift kick in the nuts somewhere between point A and point B. There is a beginning, middle and end (
see here for the best example ever written in the history of planet earth). There is a knock-your-socks-off introduction, a build-up of character and plot, there is a climax, there is a twist, there is possibly an open-ended (yet still conclusive!) ending that could lead to more great storytelling or maybe just a simple let-your-mind-decide ending. There is a fabric of humor and fear, and there is (as in any tactfully narrated story) timing within the delivery of each of these emotions.
Just like a great movie, games can enrapture the player without using a $10 million dollar next-generation engine. You don't need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a movie for it to be a mega-hit. You can use a $500 camera that shakes all over the screen for ninety minutes, has poor visibility in dark shots, has shitty sound equipment being fed into it...and if the story is gripping, you'll get your point across, and in the process, make a few people forget about their awful day at work and shit their pants at the same time.
Now tell me, who wouldn't like to create something that makes people fudge their undies
like these guys did? 2. Make Better Hardware More Accessible
The next thing that needs to happen is that we need more retail outlets stocking the everyday items we gearheads like to buy, such as high end video cards, soundboards, competitively engineered gaming peripherals such as mice and keyboards, and custom cases and case add-ons, made easily accessible to us as builders.
How bad does it suck to realize you're finally ready to buy a nice new gaming tower, only to come to the conclusion that you'll need to buy from five different online stores to get everything you really want. I mean look, I love
Newegg as much as anyone, but the fact of the matter is they don't have all the uber-gaming gear that hardcore users are into. And add to this fact that Newegg still Newegg...they're an online retailer that you need to commit
a few days of sitting around to once you're ready to buy.
I don't know about you, but doesn't it seem insane that I can walk into a brick and mortar store in my hometown and buy the following:
- MacBook Air
- Semi-Automatic Assault Rifle
- A Ferrari Enzo
- Various sizes and shapes of lingerie (edible and non)
- The required components to build an amateur rocketship capable of nearing the earth's atmosphere
- and a telescope capable of window shopping in the next county over
...but I can't buy the latest Nvidia graphics card, or any one of the various Lia-Li cases that I like so much for my PC tower needs, or the best CPU coolers available, or the highest rated gaming keyboards and mice used by professional gamers available today? Yes it should sound insane...because it is.
At what point did high end PC components get left by the wayside? I mean come on
Mr Big Shot Electronics Retailer Store, you stock a piece of shit keyboard and guitar that probably sells about three times a year, but you won't stock the best and most sought after graphics boards out there for PC gamers?
It is incumbent upon companies like Best Buy and Circuit City to not only stock items for the average electronics customer, but for the various sects of customers within those market segments. The PC-enthusiast niche is pretty much a guaranteed home run in just about any town in America with more than two stop lights. And shit, it might be even more popular in smaller towns, I mean WTF else is there to do than to play games?!
Electronics stores must do a better job of stocking high-end PC components or start forming real and lasting relationships with the various boutique builders out there such as
Alienware,
Voodoo, and
Falcon Northwest. Don't view these guys as competition, view them as a way to get more people in your stores that would otherwise not step foot in your place. There is little doubt that these builders wouldn't love to have more of their products out in the marketplace for people to see. Use your huge foot traffic as leverage and get real product with real street-cred into your stores. And don't give me the whole
'but we've tried stocking high-end PCs and it's failed' crap...you have had this stuff in your stores from time to time (and even had some of it in there now), but you never
really tried. If you can sell
an overpriced vacuum made by some English douche bag who's goal in life is to make a perfect sucking device for way too much money, then you can roll a few high-end custom PC's out the door for flip's sakes.
3. Cross-Compatible Play With Consoles
Here's a grand idea for Sony and Microsoft...since gaming consoles are currently kicking the shit out of PC's, why not find a way to harness some of the popularity of consoles back into the PC gaming market by allowing these two once-enemies-of-the-state to play nice like almost all other electronics components do today. I mean hell people, we can load up a Microsoft operating system
on our Apple computers (and on that note, the opposite better also happen soon you Apple developers out there), we can run any number of media file extensions through various once-exclusive players, we can even take advantage of just about any online service from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft on any browser such as Opera, FireFox, Safari, IE. So why are we forced into to being either an XBox, PlayStation, or PC fanboy?! We actually, as gamers, like them all, so think about giving us a way to move our progress and gaming activities within games from PC to console more effectively and you might actually sell
more of your products and services. We're gamers, after all, we spend way too much money on this stuff as is...don't tell me gamers won't buy a PS3 to go along with their PC to play the same damn game. Some days we might like the computer and some days we might like the couch to play GTA IV...we're really
that gullible and loose with our coin, trust me!
The days of locking the gates between PC gamers and console jockeys should be over. We've been hearing about cross-compatibility capabilities for PC's and consoles for years now, yet still we haven't seen squat in the way of real-life use of this concept. It is time for us to start enjoying our online gaming as one, fluid experience from platform to platform, across various different online content delivery systems without concern for what company is making money off of us.
It should be the game that defines the experience, not the hardware we are playing it on. Should there be trade-offs to be had from one platform to the next, let that be our choice to decide...but let us play
The Orange Box on our PC's and our consoles and still have one account for both platforms that will dynamically track our progress across both of them. And don't make us buy the game twice!
If the big hardware and software companies of this world could get together and find a way to bridge the gap between consoles and PC's better, they'd see less people forced into going to the closed-ended solution that consoles represent. Sure, it all sounds good for Microsoft and Sony if more people buy consoles, but for oranizations like AMD, Intel and Nvidia (not to mention the OCZ's, Corsairs, and other high end component companies of the world), it is the kiss of death every time someone decides to put down their mouse and pick up their gamepad to get a little R&R in after a long day at school.
The time is now you big shots in corporate offices, you developers coding away from your living rooms, cubicles or from the front seat of your Italian sports car. The time is now you retailers trying to find the next thing to stock on your shelves to show your investors that you know WTF you're doing. It's time to start showing some love to the very folks that gave you everything you have today, the PC gamers of this world. We were there when consoles didn't sell for shit, we were there buying 4meg sticks of RAM for $299 back in 1993, we were there buying those crazy neon painted mice that your shareholders thought you were idiots for stocking (and ended up making you look like geniuses at the same time).
We are like cockroaches, now matter what this world throws at us, we'll still be out there fighting the good fight, taking it to the other team, talking shit, having fits, fighting on message boards, bickering over VOIP, bitching about lag or
h@x...because that's what we do. So go ahead, tear us down, mistreat us, kick us where it hurts...we don't care, just keep delivering us great content and we'll do our part (read: spend $$ on you!)
We're PC gamers, don't try to figure us out. Just listen to the reasonably coherent among us from time to time. And then, and only then, you'll start to see sound financial returns from those of us that just can't get enough of stupid shit like this...
Need A Dispenser Here!! 
