ARTICLE: Sequels Killing PC Gaming

[Munkee]

DOOM was a classic. It created an entire gaming genre and we loved it. We played it until we'd found every secret chamber and plundered every cunningly hidden level. We hunted the last frantically fleeing demons until we stood with stuttering mini gun slowing to smoky silence over their bullet riddled and twitching corpses. Images of the dual horned demons that ended the first DOOM saga can still make my eyes flicker nervously to check on a dwindling rocket cache that was emptied over a decade ago.

Come the hit, come the clones. I faintly remember the end of DOOM II as involving a skull in a wall. If I bumped into the Quake I/II or Unreal or Half Life end of game boss in the street I'd just politely excuse myself and carry on my way, puzzling over a niggling feeling of recognition. The sequels were, almost always, technically superior to the original and, just as frequently, less fun. After Quake II got silly the first person shoot'em'up genre was filling it's tartan thermos and choosing some comfy slippers in preparation for spending it's twilight years with the flight sim and the sideways scrolling beat'em'up throwing bread bytes to the virtual ducks down by the silicon pond. Half Life and Unreal would be it's last, glorious, swan song.

It was saved from the colostomy bag and strained visits from yawn stifling relatives by a last minute addition lurking at the bottom of the DOOM II menus: multiplayer. The Information Superhighway was little more than a dark and lonely back-alley and PC networks were the expensive and exotic preserve of companies that could afford the services of an Ethernet enabled Saruman to keep the packets marching. Undaunted, a heroic band of deathmatch pioneers wrestled squealing 9600 baud modems into temporary compliance, soothed routers ravaged from the packet hungry chatter of the DOOM mini gun and unwittingly sparked off an online gaming big bang, the fading echoes of which still strum our walletstrings today.

They didn't do this from some technological masochism, well not completely, but because hunting down and killing your mates online is about as much fun as you can have without running the risk of incarceration and ending up on the receiving end of the unwelcome attentions of "Bubba Joe" and his startlingly large collection of exotic evening wear.

Golden days for PC gaming. It invented and dominated the huge FPS, RTS and RPG worlds and if you wanted online or multiplayer you came to the PC Godfather and paid your respects. Consoles were amusing toys for children, confined to the arcade nonsense of beat'm'ups and sport sims. Real games appeared on the PC first and consoles later, if at all. Like a podgy Stallone in Rocky III, PC game developers started opening supermarkets, wondering if it wasn't time to trade in Adrian for something sportier and, fatally, writing sequels.

The siren call of the sequel appears to offer a comfortably familiar development environment and an assured customer base. But each new iteration of a game faces an ever more difficult balancing act between attracting beginners and titillating the jaded pallets of the ludicrously skilled, series veterans. A dilemma that is even more acute with online games where beginners are mercilessly tossed into an arena stuffed with grizzled, cigar chomping, death machines. Barely have they stopped cooing at the pretty scenery and waving textual "Hi!"s to their new found online mates than they're staring up at a spinning sky wondering what the hell happened and why the box described this as "multiplayer online fun with your friends".

Whilst PC developers cram ever more features into the corpulent and collapsing bodies of their once lean and mean world champions, quick, simple, family friendly laughs stream out of the consoles. Games like Pikman, Super Monkey Ball, hardware like dance mats and, of course, the Eye Toy attracted a mass market that the PC has always felt is slightly beneath it. The technology for the Eye Toy has existed in PCs for years. All it required was a developer to take a leap of imagination and few risks, but they were all too busy writing the expansion pack for the extension pack to their semi-succesfull sequel to their ground breaking 1990 smash hit.

PC gamers scorn the crudity of the joypad as an input device and comfort themselves that online gaming, at least, still means PC gaming. But the XBox is pottering along the inside lane of the superhighway and the PS2 is accelerating down the slip road. Hardware advances will allow speech to replace typed text for control and in-game communication and the keyboard/mouse tag team champions will dwindle to just the humble mouse, leaving it looking a little outclassed by it's vibrating multi function opponent dripping with buttons and crammed with mini joysticks.

Unless PC developers innovate rather than replicate then the PC as a gaming platform is doomed to dwindle into Mac like irrelevance. PC gamers will become the new HiFi gurus: carefully building and tweaking their state of the art, seperates based systems into gaming perfection whilst the mass market looks on in faintly amused bewilderment and buys their Sony all-in-ones from Dixons. Games like Quake 4, Half Life 2, Max Payne 2 and DOOM III will undoubtedly raise the bar but they haven't noticed that the consoles, and a bunch of giggling mates, have staggered back from the pub, nicked the bar and are now using it to pole vault off over the horizon.

[Paranoid]

Not read all, but the same thing happens in Hollywood. Milk the film for all its worth and get as much money as possible.

Milk a popular game for all its worth, get loaded.

All that actually happens is that we all get very dissappointed while 'they' get rich.

[Razz]

PC gamers will become the new HiFi gurus: carefully building and tweaking their state of the art, seperates based systems into gaming perfection whilst the mass market looks on in faintly amused bewilderment and buys their Sony all-in-ones from Dixons.

It's already like that.

And console gaming has the same problem that you're covering here when it comes to sequels, just look at EA's portfolio of games.

[narly]

Originally Posted by Razz

It's already like that.

And console gaming has the same problem that you're covering here when it comes to sequels, just look at EA's portfolio of games.

The only difference between consoles and pc's (when it comes to sequels) is that console gaming is a lot cheaper/more accessible to get into - hence new customers on consoles all the time - making a sequel a lá FIFA 200X swallowed easily by a larger percentage of console owners because they haven't played previous incarnations. With PC gamers they don't hold any truck with sequels and only die hard fans of the series would by every incarnation of FIFA for the pc. Me? I just laugh in derision and play ISS on my PS2 - that may now change with PES on the pc tho

[phantom]

Indeed, its not just a PC Gaming thing, there is no invovation in the industry and there is good reason for it, its not the fault of the game makers, its the fault of the consumers.

Consumers want a game like the last game because they enjoyed it, because of this repetion sells, game writers/producers/publishers know this so the give the public what they want, more of the same and they get what they want, money.

PC Games are an industry like any other, we demand the games, they supply the games and get the money they need to survive. This is nuffin different to what Paranoid said regarding the film industry, every film is a clone of every other film and there are very few films which stand out from the crowd as something new and different. Films draw on using the same actors/plotlines/characters to sell to peope who like that kind of thing and the game industry does the same.
Example; Half-life sold well because of its fantasic story line and I dare say alot of people went out and got it because they had seen a mate play it and went 'wow!'
Now, Half-Life2 is around somewhere, same characters and probably the same plotline and its already created a storm despite people not knowing what the game is like and Valve are pretty much assured huge sales.

Moving onto the hardware side of things, PCs will ALWAYS be technicaly better than a console. No questions asked, from the graphics hardware right down to the speed of the CPU and the sound system.
However, there is a problem, the problem is that not everyone can afford cutting edge hardware to run the latest games.
Taking online gaming as one example; To online game with an Xbox or PS2 you HAVE to have a broadband connection afaik so the makers of those games can target broadband connections and not have to worry. Now, with the PC people expect to be able to game on a 56K modem still, so game makers have to target that thus cutting out some stuff they could have otherwise done.

As for the rest of the system the consoles have the advantage of standardisation. What runs on one Xbox will run the same on another and another and so on. The PC market, while having a unified set of APIs in DirectX, OpenGL and OpenAL dont have a unified hardware architeture (sp?) to work with, so the game writers have to, one again, work to the lowest common denominator (LCD) and for input this is keyboard and mouse.
Some people, like myself, have a joypad and joystick as well, but every one has a keyboard and mouse and for FPS I'd still say its the most flexible comination around.

Also, I get the feeling that PC owners in general are slightly less likely to go out and buy a vibrating joypad or joystick for one game where as on the consoles you'll have lots of games using it and it becomes worth while, again we are into the LCD area where games arent written to take advantage of hardware people dont have.

While I dont have an answer to the hardware issue the game issue isnt as hard to fix in theory.
If everyone stopped going out and buying the same old type of game all the time we wouldnt be stuck in this rut of our own making.
atm the invovation is more likely to come from the 'bedroom coders' than the industry, the industry wont change because they cant afford to where as the bedroom coders can try and push things forward, but they need the support of the average gamer to get anywhere.

[PiMuRho]

I have to love the samples you cited, Munkee.

Super Monkey Ball has a sequel. Pikmin has a sequel in development. GG.

[Munkee]

As does Eye Toy

Of course there are loads of sequels on consoles but that is also where all the innovative new game types are appearing.

[Photon]

There is no such thing as as 'bedroom coders' anymore - not in the games field anywho. The sheer workload of a modern game makes it well nigh impossible for any one person to do, and the funding requirement makes sure that you will never do it without help.

This is the main point, in fact, and the reason for so many 'games of film' and licences and sequals. Money.

For the game of the film and licences, publishers are sure that if the film is going to do well, then the game will also, even if it is a 'turd-in-a-box' - see enter the matrix. Usually the film is a sequal or the licence already around, so the money men can know the popularity in advance.

Sequals will always be done if the original game did well for the same reason. Publishers want more money, and if this can be done/made with minimal effort (and money) (like FIFA - change the teams strips, heads and names, and bobs yer aunt) then all the better. People will go out and buy it and they will laugh themselves all the way to the bank.

Original IP and new game styles will usually be met with the line 'how the hell are supposed to market this?'. Publishers are risk averse, (and I suppose rightly so with the multi-million budgets they are usually playing with, which means NO innovation. None at all.

The only exceptions to this are companies such as Valve and ID who have already gained such a reputation that they can basically write their own paychecks. Dont be too complacent though, it only takes one mistake to loose that...

The only reason the PC market has remained less affected by this is the the industry in general considers the PC market DEAD (and has done for a long time. The market is generally viewed as a niche at the best, and generally most mainstream publishers wouldnt touch it with a barge-pole except for the occasional conversion (EA being the exception here, but they have more money than most).

Unfortunately the hardcore gamer (and by even being here to read this, you are on of this group) will always be considered as a niche group because a: there arent anough of us to make it worthwhile (and most of us atoo young to have enoug hready money) and b: we wont buy any old shit just because they tell us to. The PC is generally considered the domain of the hardcore gamer (think of how much money you have spent on your pc alone, if you dont believe me) and thus is tarred with the same brush. Piracy issues also make people wary of PC development, never mind the QA requirements of testing for a completely variable platform. Its a nightmare tbh.

The important group as far as the money men are concerned? The after the pub crowd. They'll happily buy every version of FIFA, and they have the ready cash to do it. They'll also buy the latest console (eventually) just to keep up. They're also most succeptable to adverts.

I hate to break it to you, but the biz is no longer about providing the latest greatest games, its about making money for huge corporations (again, see ETM if you dont believe this). The times they are a changing...

[Luggage]

it certainly looks pretty bleak :/

there are still some innovative games out there, but im not sure how well they do - Republic: The Revolution, for example, is imo a very good, interesting and challenging game, and also innovative in its choice and delivery of subject matter. it seems that there are so few games of that type being made tho, and looking on irc when Republic came out could suggest why - lots of ppl were saying "omg its too hard, i dont understand" - which really was a bit lazy, cos it wasnt that hard to understand at all. people dont really want to work for their entertainment tho, which is a shame - i find that the satisfaction at beating a difficult game is much more fun than caning an easy one
singleplayer-focused or -only games tho generally quite a limited life :/

btw i cant help remembering [f]zulg's article on clanbase about this kind of stuff - he mentioned counterstrike as an example, and said that if we werent careful, games would become even more homogenised and bland on the pc, the equivalent to Britney Spears in pop music: nice to look at, but ultimately unchallenging and without substance

another problem i am particularly worried about with regards to new games is the willingness of gamemakers to simply sell an engine to the public - specifically i am refering to ut 2k3 of course....that "game" seems to me just to be a massive advert for the admittedly nice latest incarnation of the unreal engine. the fact that it was shipped half finished GUI and gamewise suggests this strongly, as does the release of ut2k4, which is rumoured to be 6 CDs (!) - 2k3 was only 3. no doubt players of 2k3 will disagree, but for me as a seasoned UT player, 2k3 and Britney Spears have a lot in common

[phantom]

Originally Posted by Photon

There is no such thing as as 'bedroom coders' anymore - not in the games field anywho. The sheer workload of a modern game makes it well nigh impossible for any one person to do, and the funding requirement makes sure that you will never do it without help.

I'll be sure to pass this message along to the people who lurk on gamedev.net
I'll accept however that 'bedroom coders' in the old sense of one guy at a computer hacking away is dead yes, but small independant groups of people could still very well do this, it might take longer but its doable.

I hate to break it to you, but the biz is no longer about providing the latest greatest games, its about making money for huge corporations (again, see ETM if you dont believe this). The times they are a changing...

To start with it was, but back then people were less about the money and more about the inovation, then it became a job and not an oddity, then an industry which are always about making money.
atm i cant put a time on when these things happened, I suspect it was in the 90s however, probably around the middle of it.

If innovation made money then the publishers would go for it, but it doesnt because people buy the same old thing because they like the last version of it.
In theory the solution is easy enuff, stop buying the same old stuff. However making that happen will be imposible i feel because although on your own you might think that the latest FPS is just a repeat of the same old thing the population as an overall whole wont see it that way.

[phantom]

Originally Posted by Luggage

it certainly looks pretty bleak :/
it seems that there are so few games of that type being made tho, and looking on irc when Republic came out could suggest why - lots of ppl were saying "omg its too hard, i dont understand" - which really was a bit lazy, cos it wasnt that hard to understand at all. people dont really want to work for their entertainment tho, which is a shame - i find that the satisfaction at beating a difficult game is much more fun than caning an easy one

This is more of a side note but that kind of thing fits nicely into my general observation about people not bothering to think any more. I like a mindless reflex shooter as much as the next person, I also like my thinking games, which is why recently i started replying Settlers 2

[Luggage]

photon:

damn right re marketing etc. and hardcore gamers as a niche market. similar kind of approach might be applied to the music analogy - people who are seriously into music as music, rather than as an image, generally think most pop music is shite. people who are seriously into games as games rather than as an image (eg supporting a film) often think "turd-in-a-box" to film licensed games.

hardcore gamers are really a bunch of connoisseurs, much like any other group in any other medium - literature, music, film, food etc. you will find a similar discussion in all these areas i suspect; Egon Ronnay doesn't go to McDonald's

[burundi]

[quote="Luggage"]people who are seriously into games as games rather than as an image (eg supporting a film) often think "turd-in-a-box" to film licensed games.[quote]

love it, what a sentence. i totally agree with it as well, I avoid film tie ins like the plaque, more through a fear that they will be crap rather than any actual knowledge of the fact.

[Luggage]

phantom - indeed, i play UT ictf for gods sake, twitch gaming at its peak theres a place for both cerebral and less cerebral games in the refined gamers taste i think [/snob]

having said that, think about ctf and its actually quite a strategic game....

[Luggage]

and on a lighter note, it's comforting to know that there are still studios like Elixir and Frontier (makers of classics such as Elite etc) still coding away

problem is the whole niche market syndrome again - what help is it to these guys if they make a great game that only a minority appreciate, whilst the majority go and buy pap? none really :/ and often the big corps will drain the talent from the smaller guys with their ability to pay larger wages. and these fine firms find themselves as much victims of piracy as the larger guys do.

gah at capitalism and economics, they beat me every time: anything i want to do, they come along and spoil it

[Razz]

If innovation made money then the publishers would go for it, but it doesnt because people buy the same old thing because they like the last version of it.

Yep. If you're a publisher and you're putting up over a million quid to make a game, you don't want to risk your money so you might as well go for another version of FIFA, or whatever, as you're guaranteed to make your money back with a healthy profit.

However, if you can work a way around publishers you don't need to worry about it so much. Currently developers get a very, very small percentage of each unit sold, so if developers in the future can work a way of getting a higher percentage they're more likely to be able to take risks and be more creative/innovative.

[PiMuRho]

Unfortunately, Razz is right.

Publishing is about managing risk. New developers are a risk. New, innovative games are a risk. To get an original game published, it either has to really tickle the collective "fuck me! that's good!" bones of the publishers, or you have to fund it yourself.

I should also point out another reason why more devs are going to the consoles over PCs. Sales, sales, sales.

A good-selling PC game will shift 50,000 copies if you're lucky. A mediocre-selling PS2 game will shift somewhere in the region of 200,000

If you were a developer, where would you aim?

Speaking as a "bedroom developer" myself, I'm more than happy to develop for the PC from the point of view that that's where my peers are. However, I'm also going to develop for the consoles, because that's where the money is.

[Synbios]

Good sequels aren't very common, you're right... One notable example of a series that has managed to keep up and in fact improve on the quality: Panzer Dragoon (Saturn; you can count Orta if you like but I've not played it so I'm not qualified to judge, plus it's a X-Box game).

[ophiuchus]

Originally Posted by Photon

There is no such thing as as 'bedroom coders' anymore - not in the games field anywho. The sheer workload of a modern game makes it well nigh impossible for any one person to do, and the funding requirement makes sure that you will never do it without help.

That isn't really quite true. great games like Uplink will be around so long as there is the Internet. the same will go to Jeff Minter. a man that is signed up to Lionhead studios to produce a game called "unity". Lionhead themselfs are trying to make a stand in the market as a developer who will go against the grain. Ok, Lionhead are making a Black and White 2, but so long as there are companies like them about, we can still look forwards to new titles with a difference.

Things do need to change but "when" is the question?


http://www.lionhead.com/unity/
http://www.lionhead.com/index2.html

[Razz]

Bedroom coders will never really die out. Even in the current climate of multi-million dollar films being made, a small production like The Blair Witch Project can still make quite a healthy sum

There are several different ways I can see the games industry going, but which direction it'll go it anyones guess..

[Photon]

On thing about Lionhead - Black and white was entirely self funded by dear old Peter... and it wasnt a hit. I loved the technology in it, but he spent so much time on the gameplay mechanic that he kinda forgot the gameplay. Lets hope that B&W2 addresses that balance. I think they fit into my previous point about Valve and ID.

Elixir - I wouldnt have said they did anything innovative, except make great advancements in the field of self-advertising* (infinate polygon engine anyone?) Republic was none of the game they promised, and IM(ns)HO looked terrible. I'm not entirely sure how well it played, 'cos I didnt much, so I'm not entirely qualified to speak... Demis 'teen chess champion' Hassibis was funded to set up his own studio by his previous employer and mentor, the aforementioned P. Molyneux.

Btw, I'm a coder in the industry and both Peter M and Demis Hassibis are hated in the biz, for basically declaring themselves gods on any media that will accept them, and then failing to deliver. This doesnt stop the BBC (for example) using him as a quote in their latest 'gaming for girls' article, which the mandatory picture of Lara Croft.

Vis the bedroom coders issue - I know small teams can work over the net (although organising a big team I feel would be impossible) but the problems of distributing over the net is the cost. Yes, its about money for the devs too, and has been even since the days of the bedroom coder. Some did it for love, but something has to pay the bills. The price of high bandwidth hosting and advertising eats into any revenue, and the longer a game takes to make (smaller teams), the more it costs.

Believe me, there are many seasoned pros in the game looking towards this avenue of distribution as it cuts out the money men, and thus allows us to do what we want without it having to have Stuart f***ing Little in it. However, no-one has managed to get a stable company out of it yet. And one other thing, arent we just giving control to the people that now give us hosting? Many people think that publishers will doing online distribution themselves before very long. It must be said that despite what you see in the press, the games industry (especially UK) is flying up the creek right now - a huge amount of companies closed their doors this year, as well as the last, and the one before that. Soon only the big ones will be left, and they are the ones least known for innovation... We need a new solution to carry on with this, if we are going to, and fast.

The question is not so much when as how - if you have the answer to that question, then you could become a very rich man indeed

* Read 'Bullshitting'

[PiMuRho]

That's exactly why I think Steam. flawed though it is in it's current state, is a great step forward. It puts more power in the hands of the developers, which is precisely where it needs to be.

[Razz]

Agreed. The idea of Steam is excellent, even if the implementation of it is somewhat lacking..

[Luggage]

Republic was none of the game they promised, and IM(ns)HO looked terrible

it LOOKED terrible i agree, but its an immense game. they could have done the lot without a 3d graphics engine tbh and it would have been a BETTER game, cos u wouldnt have ridiculous specs and, lets face it, the not particularly amazing graphics engine. i dont really see how you can comment on whether they are innovative or not if you havent played republic enough (ie until you think its a great game )

this is another issue, but tbh i think graphics to some extent are "ruining" games, in that developers/your average punter set so much store in amazing graphics, that they forget that a game is supposed to actually have something to play in it. 2k3 when released was a prime example. this is a similar concept to sequels - a wide audience is awed by graphics alone. Black and White kind of did the opposite.

funny you should mention Demis as a "teen chess champion" - his brother is also a good player, who i've played myself (and drawn with ). Demis is more known for his mind sports stuff iirc(pentamind etc) - and, of course, his good concepts for games.

[R33F3RM4N]

Speaking with my games developers hat on, sequels et al make sense. There is money to be made there and also in the area of license tie-ins, be it to movies, TV series or whatever. That's the nature of the beast.

As a consumer, your money is what the developers are after. Buy the good, innovative games and support the developers.

Now I don't see anyone mentioning the issue of software piracy, which is one of the reasons why developers now have to be (financially) very careful. And that's why they play the odds with franchise titles.

[ophiuchus]

i agree with that statement photon. one thing i do like about habis and co is that they are better figure heads of the UK gaming industry than lara croft of yesteryear.

but i do also agree with that nicely place small print too

[phantom]

Originally Posted by Luggage

[
this is another issue, but tbh i think graphics to some extent are "ruining" games, in that developers/your average punter set so much store in amazing graphics, that they forget that a game is supposed to actually have something to play in it. 2k3 when released was a prime example. this is a similar concept to sequels - a wide audience is awed by graphics alone. Black and White kind of did the opposite.

Agreed, there is too much 'oooo look at our gfx engine... ooo btw, we've tacked this 4h game on for you' around, point and case: Unreal2

[PiMuRho]

Heh

Of course, some people can actually say "oooo look at our gfx engine" :p

[narly]

I'm extremely surprised that no-one has mentioned The Sims in this thread. If there is ever an example of someone "milking it" then surely this has to go to EA Games ("challenge everything" apparently - apart from your mind) - how was it possible for a rather dull and repetitive (imo) game (and yes I have played it - until i decided to let my Sim burn to death in the Kitchen) to have so many iterations of essentially the same fucking game, sell so fricking well. The answer? Because the hardcore games stayed away from it, and families bought it like wildfire for their kids and wives. It was a consumer game. A bit like those music artists who are always guaranteed a top 5 hit (a lá Britney, Christina, etc etc etc) who's music sounds nice for a bit, but ultimately shallow.

And to top it all off, EA are getting ready to drop Sims 2 on us, from a very great height. My hat is taken off in respect for EA, but that doesn't mean I [edit] don't [edit] hate them for what they have done to the industry.

/me gets off me soapbox

[Paranoid]

Originally Posted by R33F3RM4N

Now I don't see anyone mentioning the issue of software piracy, which is one of the reasons why developers now have to be (financially) very careful. And that's why they play the odds with franchise titles.

Didnt link the 2, but makes perfect sense reef. Theres so much money being stolen by many people regarding software piracy, that i suppose they need to get the money from somewhere and if thats sequels, then so be it