PC Games Need Investment to Succeed, Says RTS Legend

[Legendsmith]

Also, minecraft is a success because the community saw it's potential. That game now has around 4 million in 'investment' money.

In it's current state, it is fun, but I would not have paid 10 dollars for it with no free updates and expansions.

The community saw it's potential because notch actively interacted with /v/, Somethingaweful and facepunch. People like it when devs do that.

 

[Weaver]

Then we can use minecraft as an example of how actually making something fun and original created by just one guy can make a shit load of money.

 

[Master10K]

So making a good game had nothing to do with it. I don't know why Starcraft 2 was used as an example, when most of the money was blown on the CG cinematics and ridiculous ad campaign (SC2 ads on 2 Boeing 747s). If you just get rid of those 2 aspects then I wouldn't be surprised if Starcraft 2 had cost around the same as Supreme Commander 2. The main difference is that Blizzard made a game the fans wanted, with even an open beta used not as a marketing tool but to actually polish the finer points of the popular multiplayer aspect.

That's the lesson that Chris Taylor has to learn. To make a game that people, especially its fans, can enjoy. Heck, I own both Supreme Commander 2 and Starcraft 2. Guess which one I've been playing?

 

[pneuma08]

I suppose all the guy's really trying to say is that there's room in the market for AAA PC titles, although Starcraft 2 does handle a lot of things uniquely (like its approach to DRM), so it's hardly a shining example.

Personally, I see PC games moving away from the AAA model to more low-end OS- and hardware-portable solutions. I feel that this is a good thing because the blockbuster nature of the AAA model makes development a very risky endeavor, among other things. PC gaming, due to its open nature, is also an exceedingly good platform for independent developers and experimental games - a lot (if not nearly all) innovation we've been seeing can be traced back to PC gaming.

 

[Cryo84R]

Humble Indie Bundle?

 

[Last Bullet]

He would have made a much better point if he had used a better example. Plus, you can always counter with APB and Minecraft.

And I find it funny I've never heard of this guy. (Prepares flame shield) Guess it's just because I'm really new to RTSs.

 

[Asehujiko]

"Same idea; our phone was ringing off the hook on the ramp up [to StarCraft 2's release]."

I suspect this has more to do with people demanding their money back from GPG because supcom 2 was a dumbed down console port.

Which makes this a textbook case of "do as I say, not as I do". Or somebody who wants everybody else to spend cash so he can sell his garbage on people's goodwill. I'm leaning to the latter.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

This just in people buying more games = better sales figures!

That wasn't the point of the article. He's basically saying that publishers/developers need to support PC games more if they want higher sales figures. Part of that support is the willingness to invest more money into the production.

To that, I say, "See Minecraft."

It seems to me that lots of independent developers with zero backing have been making popular games on the PC the past several years. Could they all do better with the same financial investment as SC2? Possibly. But the general idea behind this seems to be that a game must have a big budget if it wants to succeed right now, and that just is not the case.

Minecraft is a rare exception, not to mention a completely different market. We aren't talking cheapo indie titles with this article, we're talking about the Triple-A games. The big boys. We're talking about paying a full team of developers to make a game, not some random kid sitting in his basement crafting the once-in-a-blue-moon gem. More than that, we're talking about cutting features from the PC versions of a game because it'll be cheaper to develop them that way; sometimes even not even making a PC version, but just lazily porting-over the console version of the game.

I mean, honestly now, how can publishers expect to push PC copies of a game when they lack any form of PC support? We are NOT the same customers as the console crowd. Not to say that there's anything bad about console gamers, I'm just saying that simply because we're both gamers and both buying the same game (potentially) does NOT mean that we are interested in the same things. So when you gut every feature from the PC version of the game that PC gamers are interested in buying, do you really think that PC gamers are going to flock to the stores on release day? Publishers are basically setting themselves up to fail in the PC market, then they cry at US when we don't want to buy their crappy half-assed title.

Seriously, take that money you spent licensing that worthless DRM and put it towards catering just a little towards PC-specific features. I can guarantee that sales will increase.