By Alec Meer on September 26th, 2008 at 6:54 pm.
Spore has only sold 1 million copies. Warhammer Online has a piffling 500,000 subscribers. Ah well. Might as well call it a day for the old IBM Compatible, eh?
Pffffffft. It’s been a grand Autumn for PC so far, and with Left 4 Dead, Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 (shut up) also incoming our beloved maths-box’s star isn’t going to dim any time soon. Two things worth noting about the Spore/WAR (hey, that rhymes!) success though.
In the case of the former, it seems the controversy/outrage about the DRM didn’t put too much of a dent in its sales – though of course there’s a chance it could have been much bigger if it didn’t come with that stupid limited reinstall crap. Did the anti-DRM message not reach the general populace, despite being picked up by mainstream news, or did it not make sense/matter to them? I’d imagine this tale isn’t finished yet, as EA’s semi-rectification suggests some real damage was done by the bad rep Spore’s Securom picked up after all. It’s also worth wondering whether Spore can grab the ongoing success The Sims managed, or if this one large initial gasp is it. Despite the creativity element, it’s in many ways more of a gamer’s game than the Sims ever was – its inherent science fictioniness may deter a truly huge audience.
Coming back to WAR, 500,000 in its first week is a mighty number – EA reckon it’ll shape up to be the fastest-selling MMO of all time. However, Age of Conan managed 400,000 despite a far less rapturous beta response, but as of few weeks months ago it was still idling at around 415,000 – despite shipping 1.2m copies since launch. So while WAR has been incredibly well-received and is widely agreed to be a far better game than Conan, it’s probably too early to call it a yer actual smash hit just yet. Hard to see it all going wrong, though.
26/09/2008 at 19:02 A-Scale says:
I think spore would have sold far more copies if they just put in an actual evolution mechanic and geared the RTS portions of the game towards hardcore gamers (you know, the ones who owned a computer before 2005). It would have also been stupendous if the game was truly multiplayer. That would have taken it from being a 6.5/10 game to a 10/10 game.
26/09/2008 at 19:12 Thomas Lawrence says:
I think A-Scale is hilariously wrong on every level.
26/09/2008 at 19:12 danarchist says:
Humerously I think the AoC debacle hurt warhammers sales numbers allot. I have more than one friend who is currently “giving it some self destruction time” before they buy it.
Allot of my friends that aren’t jaded by the aoc thing are still pissed at mythic for ruining one of the best pvp games ever made with the trials of Atlantis expansion. So they either refuse outright to buy it, or are waiting to see if mythic goes friggin insane with the balance (nerf) bat again.
26/09/2008 at 19:15 kuddles says:
I think when publishers are making statements about the end times, it’s less about “PC gaming” being dead, more PC gaming as they know it. Casual games like The Sims flood the charts, and MMOs still do pretty good, it’s the more traditional games that have either become niches or moved to consoles. For instance, FPS titles like Call of Duty, Doom 3, F.E.A.R., Half-Life 2, etc. would sell millions being PC-focused or exclusive just a few years ago, even having overnight line-ups. Now most FPS titles are made with the console as the lead platform, and sell far fewer copies.
Not to say they won’t still be around, and certainly there are still interesting games coming out from Europe where PC gaming is still strong. But the days of big budget titles in the genres we’re used to being PC-focused, like Crysis and Far Cry 2, are coming to an end. The future is in low requirement stuff like Stardock titles, casual games, subscription-based or browser based games with ads or microtransactions like Runscape or Quake Live, especially since these things eliminate piracy quite easily. I guess it’ll be interesting to see how well it sells, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Dragon Age is the last big budget RPG from America as well.
So A-Scale, you are incredibly wrong I’m afraid. Spore would have sold either the same amount or fewer if it was hardcore. Most RTS nowadays don’t sell very well. C&C3 barely sold more than a million, and that was over a much longer stretch of time, and it made it the best selling RTS of the year by a long shot. I mean, if The Sims was made for a “hardcore” audience, it sure as hell wouldn’t be as huge as it is right now. Same as WOW.
26/09/2008 at 19:19 A-Scale says:
You’re welcome to disagree, but your point is worthless if you don’t give some reasons why.
Perhaps you just like childrens’ games.
I didn’t purchase the game because it is far too simplistic. That’s one sale lost. Most reviewers criticized the game for being too simplistic, and we can be certain that spurned plenty of sales. C&C3 sold few copies because it was a rubbish game, not because hardcore RTS games are dead. Starcraft 2 will outsell spore several times over, and it has been entirely formulated to appeal to the hardcore (using Korean SC champs as playtesters, including a greater necessity for micro, etc).
26/09/2008 at 19:20 Thomas Lawrence says:
People realise the first four sentences of Alec’s posts are sarcastic, right?
And A-Scale, I thought your wrongness was so obvious as to scarcely require rebuttal, but if I must: you really think Spore would sell better if it had skewed it’s appeal to more of a niche audience, namely hardcore RTS gamers? Why?
26/09/2008 at 19:21 DSX says:
3 words will save PC gaming well into our next hardware upgrade. Grand. Theft. Auto.
26/09/2008 at 19:23 Jim Rossignol says:
Are games made for the young ‘uns necessarily bad?
26/09/2008 at 19:27 Thomas Lawrence says:
And as for “actual evolution mechanics”, well. I can sympathise a little with those dispappointed that Spore isn’t more scientific and simulation-y, but let’s be clear – the appeal in this game is in creativity and the sharing of said creativity. Actual evolution mechanics, whatever their simulational merits, would have restricted this creativity. It is intentional that one be able to say, utterly reshape the design of the creature at any point.
An analogy: One can extensively remodel one’s house in The Sims without having to watch simulated builders spend eighteen months erecting scaffolding, overcharging you for the work and spamming the “Request Cup of Tea” context action.
It’s not realistic that the new home furnishings arrive instantly, but is it better for creativity that it does? Yes.
26/09/2008 at 19:29 A-Scale says:
Because the jack of all trades is the master of none. Spore hasn’t appealed to people who aren’t interested in PC games because they, well, aren’t interested. It hasn’t appealed to hardcore gamers because it is overly simplistic and doesn’t offer a compelling challenge. It might appeal to softcore PC gamers (if that group even exists), but mostly I think its sales can be attributed to people who got wrapped up in the hype.
Yes, when they are dumbed down to appeal to a younger/less in tune audience at the cost of gameplay.
26/09/2008 at 19:31 Acosta says:
Didn’t Mark or Paul said already that ToA was a mistake and that Mythic learnt from it? In any case, WAR is excellent and hopefully it will get more interest because it does some things that work really well.
And yes, not a surprise. There is good business in PC for the proper product, companies just need to be clever and make stuff that cater to the audience and the strengths of the platform. I really think it’s time to kill the “PC is dying argument” and not even discuss it anymore.
26/09/2008 at 19:32 kuddles says:
A-Scale, I think you’re slightly deluded. People like us, reading a video game blog in the middle of the day and who know what Metacritic scores are, are the minority when it comes to sales charts. The “softcore” exists and makes up the vast majority of the market. There’s a reason why the top ten PC titles usually is Warcraft or Sims Related. Even the Nancy Drew titles or Deer Hunter tend to outsell RTS titles by a wide margin.
Also, if you paid attention to my point, it was that C&C3 sold much better then most RTS titles nowadays. And Blizzard is the exception that proves the rule, especially since they rely on decade long development sessions and sequels to highly established brands. I’m sure Diablo III will sell insanely well too, that doesn’t discount that as a whole, action RPGs on the PC aren’t the sellers that they used to be.
26/09/2008 at 19:32 Jochen Scheisse says:
A-Scale, what’s really strange about most people is that they expect to be entertained by a game. Not challenged. That’s just us people who can talk about the necessary changes to IG build orders from DC to SS. And people don’t like us because we win and proceed to call them names.
26/09/2008 at 19:36 Thomas Lawrence says:
A-Scale: so softcore PC gamers don’t exist? I guess Popcap and their ilk are making hats out of Monopoly money, then, yes?
Spore has been out for just over three weeks, and has sold 1 million copies. You do understand that that’s actually a good number, yes?
It was ten years ago, but Starcraft took nine months in 1998 to sell 1.5 million copies, as the #1 selling game of that year. The market for videogames is much bigger these days, of course, but still…
26/09/2008 at 19:37 Heliocentric says:
My 4 year old ROCKS trackmania. This is because it is a truly perfect game, not because of simplisity, but because of a lack of flaws.
And because i replaced the vehicles with forklift trucks and a little lego quad bike with a little lego man on it etc.
Flawless games are kids games, by definition.
GTA will save pc? i dont follow.
Its more a threat with its console-firstness than anything else i can think of, hell, i nearly got a ps2 for san andreas, then i realised how hideous playing games on a crt tv was, but when gta 4 came out, again i was eyeing the xbox 360s seeing the hyptastic 10 out of 10 reviews.
Thank god it takes me 6 months to actualy make purchases as a result of over considering or my house would be filled with all manner of crap.
I like the idea of war (i’m an ex games workshopper), for example when i saw dawn of war, i got it becase of its background, not because of relic or reviews. But really, the best parts of warhammer are the extreme things the moments of insane intensity. Warhammer would make a much better combat-action game than an mmo. MMO’s are inherently (it seems) grind driven and monthly fee’d. Those 2 things are all i need to hear to know i’ll never play the game.
26/09/2008 at 19:45 BrokenSymmetry says:
In my opinion, these sales numbers (for some of the top PC games of the year) are in fact pretty low (and probably less than expected by their publishers). Compare this to the sales of the top console games released this year: GTA4 8 million, Super Smash Bro. Brawl 8 million, MGS4 3.5 million.
26/09/2008 at 19:47 Thomas Lawrence says:
Um, what? Spore has been out for THREE WEEKS.
And it will sell well in the Xmas trade, too.
GTA4 on console is hardly a fair comparison, either.
26/09/2008 at 19:49 kuddles says:
Anyways, I don’t want that to be the last comment. Instead I just want to say, yes, it’s time to be happy. As much as I fret and fuss over the sign of the times with my preferred platform of gaming being given short shrift, I still find myself playing more games on my PC then the consoles again this year, and buying more and more of them as digital downloads. Crysis Warhead, Sins of a Solar Empire, Warhammer, Witcher:EE, STALKER: Clear Sky, and the likes of Far Cry 2, Fallout, Red Alert 3, Sacred 2 and many more on the horizon has me looking forward to another holiday season of being fully entertained with my mouse in hand.
26/09/2008 at 19:55 Funky Badger says:
Jochen: same with films, same with books, same with tv, same with music…
Saving Private Ryan was more succesful than The Thin Red Line
Harry Potter is more successful than His Dark Materials
Baywatch was more successful than The Wire
Boyzone were more successful than the Stone Roses
26/09/2008 at 19:57 tecro says:
PC gaming is doing really well considering that Microsoft has subsidised its Xbox projects to the tune of several billion and deliberately pushes PC gamers towards the Xbox, and that technology on the console side has eliminated a lot of the old key disadvantages like low-res displays and lack of storage or networking.
26/09/2008 at 19:58 Shadowmancer says:
Isn’t the pc dead yet?
26/09/2008 at 19:58 A-Scale says:
A google search for Spore Evolution turns up over 5 million hits. The promise of Spore was most certainly (stated or presumed) that it simulated evolution. The game is pure creationism, in its most basic form. I was hugely disappointed when I found that the design of a creature doesn’t really matter, just which parts you include. Spore is a god simulator, and you are the god.
Are you quite sure that you aren’t trapped in 2003? World of Warcraft can hardly be defined as softcore, and Spore is the exception to the rule given its hype.
You’ve proven that there weren’t many RTS games which sold well last year. That doesn’t prove that RTS games don’t sell well, just that people didn’t like that batch. I didn’t either.
Unless by game you mean film, I think the two are inherently tied. A game without a challenge isn’t a game at all, and a challenge without a game is more akin to homework.
I loved peggle and I am most certainly in the “hardcore gamer” sect.
It’s a shame I have to fend off so many attacks on this particular work PC. Firefox just crashed because I had four tabs open. The joys of 128mb of ram.
26/09/2008 at 20:06 Jochen Scheisse says:
Unless by game you mean film, I think the two are inherently tied. A game without a challenge isn’t a game at all, and a challenge without a game is more akin to homework.
What I mean is, most people play their games on easy difficulty – and most people are totally happy with what Spore has to offer. People don’t want to be challenged, they want to win. Just don’t make it too obvious and they are happy.
26/09/2008 at 20:10 A-Scale says:
I really don’t think you should be speaking for most people without some numbers to back your point up. I have always played my games on normal/hard difficulty, but I’m not going to purport to represent most people.
Additionally, if most people were happy with what Spore had to offer I would have expected to see more copies sold. I somehow doubt that it is just reviewers who are unsatisfied with the simplicity of the game.
26/09/2008 at 20:12 Thomas Lawrence says:
Spore uses some of the language and thematic trappings trappings of evolution, yes, but an evolution simulator it definitely is not. But with player design always at the forefront since the very first presentation years ago, was anyone seriously thinking it would actually simulate evolution in any real sense?
But I’m happy to agree that it is indeed not an evolution simulator. However, all this is irrelevant, as your contention in the first post was that it would sell better were it an evolution simulator, which is just silly.
Yes, well done, but you surely aren’t contending that only the hardcore are buying Peggle. The game has broad appeal. But Peggle wouldn’t be a success if it were selling only to hardcore gamers like yourself. Popcap’s game Bejewelled has apparently sold over 10 million.
Popcap’s genius, and Spore’s genius too, is to be simultaneously charming and accessible. Both the hardcore and softcore alike can appreciate these virtues.
Increase the size of your paging file. And no-one’s attacking you, just your arguments.
26/09/2008 at 20:16 Thomas Lawrence says:
Since you’re now asking for actual numbers from people, I’ll ask for some from you: after three weeks, what level of sales do you feel Spore ought to have reached?
26/09/2008 at 20:21 A-Scale says:
Silly? How? Because you dislike the idea? That’s quite narrow minded.
Were Spore an actual evolution simulator, or an evolution sim which forced you to make certain adaptations or face the extinction of your species, it would be of educational value to children learning about evolution, which Spore in its current incarnation is not. It would also be a phenomenon in gaming, and present a method of gameplay never before seen. As it stands, it is a cutesy, glorified character creation game (as seen in every recent RPG) with some very basic gameplay elements slapped on.
It is entirely possible that most of Peggle’s sales are to the broader hardcore audience. I don’t see why it is unreasonable to believe that 70% or more of Peggle’s sales are to people who are hardcore gamers, but can’t agree on what kind of hardcore they enjoy (Crysis players, Company of Heroes Gamers, WoW gamers, etc). I haven’t seen any numbers presented yet, so I’m not going to presume that one or the other is true.
That’s all opinion. I find Spore to be charming, but entirely boring and simplistic. As a hardcore gamer, I appreciate what they were shooting for, but I believe they fell short of the mark.
One can only imagine, but if Spore had succeeded in being cute enough to appeal to the young and uninitiated, complex enough to bring in the hardcore gamers (particularly in the RTS stages), and offered truly revolutionary gaming, its sales could be much much higher.
Wouldn’t that be nice. One can only suffer so many sarcastic “well done”s and “I think you’re slightly deluded” comments before they feel assailed.
26/09/2008 at 20:23 Jochen Scheisse says:
Ok, let’s replace ‘most people’ with ‘all casual gamers I know’. Of course these people often have one or two favourite games where they play through multiple times, on harder and harder difficulties. But most games they play, they just play easy.
26/09/2008 at 20:24 Larington says:
Spore hasn’t sold multiple millions in a short timeframe because the hype machine tended to only reach the hardcore market imho many of which may not have ‘word-of-mouthed’ the game to mainstream audiences.
I’m probably a core gamer, but I certainly haven’t given it a shot, can’t be bothered. I think its mostly because games that try to do everything tend to be average at all these things, whereas a game that focuses on a subset of gameplay such as sneaking or fighting a war (from above or within a soldier) tend to be easier to abstract into gameplay. So I guess I pushed myself away with my own assumptions about how the game would be.
26/09/2008 at 20:27 Saflo says:
Casual games like The Sims flood the charts,
Is The Sims really casual, though? Yes, it’s popular with people who don’t usually play games, but I’ve always found it to be pleasingly deep, as well as murderously difficult and addictive.
26/09/2008 at 20:27 A-Scale says:
I saw Spore hype on MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, the NY Times, etc. I can’t possibly imagine how the hype could have reached more casual gamers/non gamers!
How does this support your point?
26/09/2008 at 20:32 Larington says:
Hardcore gamers tend to be much better at enthusing about why a game is worth buying to his mates than a news channel reporting on what is purported to be the next big hit, thats kinda of what I’m trying to get at.
For instance someone in work asked me about spore and well, my response was meh, and, watch out for the DRM… Which I understand the media also gave mention when that issue became apparent to them.
26/09/2008 at 20:34 A-Scale says:
Right, but your point was that the hype only touched the hardcore gamers, who played gatekeeper to the masses, and thanks to the DRM issues they didn’t push the game to the uninitiated gamers. But as I said, Spore hype was everywhere. I dare say that there was nary a US cable news station of any sort which didn’t mention Spore on or before launch day. Perhaps it was different in the UK (which is where I presume you hail from).
26/09/2008 at 20:43 Larington says:
Yeah, that is a point. I think it’d be interesting to compare the reach of Spore to traditional media (print and televised) between the UK and US, and then compare sales for the two regions (adjusting for differences in population size/density).
But yeah, post release, I get the sense spore didn’t generate as much excitement and enthusiasm as it could have with core gamers, the result is that when mainstream folks ask their ‘in the know’ friends about it, if they aren’t enthused and excited about the game as much as they had been about say, CoD4 (which generated huge OMG wordage) then that settles a seed of doubt in the mainstream folks which potentially (I can’t be certain) starts to counter-act the hype in traditional media.
Yikes, I’m finding the idea of researching this very interesting, thats a turn up for the books.
26/09/2008 at 20:53 A-Scale says:
I think the post release hype of COD4 goes to show what a good game it was, and the pre-game hype (and lack of post game hype) for Spore goes to show that it was a grand idea with less than great execution.
26/09/2008 at 20:57 TheDeadlyShoe says:
415,000 (Age of Conan) subscribers is still six million a year… that’s pretty respectable. Plus the initial bump of sixty million. If even a ‘failure’ like age of conan can get those numbers I don’t see PC gaming dying anytime soon.. :)
26/09/2008 at 21:02 Larington says:
Absolutely. As always, the mark of an idea isn’t the idea itself if experience is any judge – Its the implementation. So I’m told, ideas are a dime a dozen in the games industry, convincing someone to put the cash down to get your game made is the nigh on impossible task (Though turning up early for the pitching session and having everything ready before the execs walk through the door does help).
26/09/2008 at 21:16 Jochen Scheisse says:
I know a lot more casual gamers than hardcore gamers. That’s why I guess they make up a majority of the buyers. These people will like SPORE as it is. Is that so hard to follow?
26/09/2008 at 21:17 MetalCircus says:
One million copies. Jesus that’s bad.
26/09/2008 at 21:25 yutt says:
There is also an expansion I heard about for some game called “World of Warcraft”. Not sure what that’s about, but it might sell a few copies.
26/09/2008 at 21:28 A-Scale says:
Not in the least, but your limited anecdotal experience tells us nothing about the broader market.
26/09/2008 at 21:51 Jochen Scheisse says:
Sorry, must have left the “statistics to use for your arguments with freaks over the internet” book in my other pants. So I guess this ends here.
26/09/2008 at 21:54 A-Scale says:
No need to be rude. You shouldn’t try to make broad based statements about how “most people” act if you can’t back it up.
26/09/2008 at 21:55 Larington says:
“These people will like SPORE as it is. Is that so hard to follow?”
Well yes, they probably will, but they’ll listen to what people (particularly knowledgeable core gamers that they know in work/pub/social group or network) are saying about the game first, because £35/$50 is a lot of money to put down for a newly released game and they’ll want to know if their money might be wasted or not (Thats why people were so upset about the DRM issue prior to EA backing down and stating they’ll address the issues of de-activation and hardware changing wasting a license, because it was akin to renting a game – £35 pound for a game I feel as though I’m renting? screw that).
Basically, the argument is, if the core audience were enthusing more about the game now its on shelves, the game would have sold quite a bit more than 1 million copies, though that certainly is a respectable number for any game it could have been more… And probably will be especially as it reaches budget/discounted prices and people decide the cost is now worth the impulse purchase.
It is after all a common assumption that the mainstream audience is as willing as core gamers are to spend £35 on a game that could only last 6 hours in single player, in fact, the thing most likely to break open a market is affordable games, and yeah, maybe its even what you might call shovel ware, but the price is low enough you find yourself thinking, ahh what the heck, lets give it a go – I didn’t buy Mass Effect until it had reached £20 for that exact reason.
26/09/2008 at 22:06 Jochen Scheisse says:
Look, it’s not as if you had backed up anything you said up to now. And I’m not even interested in you or me doing that, because we’re talking about video games here and I’m not trying to mind rape anyone with statistics for stuff like that.
I just wanted to say that I noticed most casual gamers don’t seem to play for the challenge. Maybe I’m wrong and people who figure out perfect builds for games like GalCiv 2 and stuff like that make up the majority of customers, but I really don’t care enough to argue on a credit depression level about that.
26/09/2008 at 22:14 A-Scale says:
Nor do I intend to speak for what “most people” like to do, or enjoy in their games. I’m simply pointing out that if Spore had covered a few more bases it could have presumably expanded its audience into several different constituencies among whom it was poorly received.
Claiming that most people like their games to play out something akin to defeating a scarecrow with a flamethrower isn’t supportable without some numbers, and in my anecdotal experience it isn’t the case.
26/09/2008 at 22:29 gbarules2999 says:
Let’s make up psychology and then make up market trends for that! Yay, everybody!
Spore obviously could not have pleased everyone. It’s one game. No matter how many people work on it, it eventually has to stop somewhere.
26/09/2008 at 22:35 A-Scale says:
I don’t think you have to fabricate an audience that enjoys a RTS with more depth than a brute force “the guy with the most units wins” experience.
How long was this game in development? A decade? For that much work, I expected much more.
26/09/2008 at 22:35 Iain says:
I’d be intrigued to know what the sales figures were like for Sims 2 in its first three weeks to make a real comparison, but my take on Spore is this: it’s not going to be as successful as Sims 2 because it’s more of a game and less of a toy.
I’m a little disappointed with Spore because it’s not as organic as I expected (or wanted) it to be. It’s too regimented and the flow of the game is too restrictive. I’m a great lover of The Sims because you can basically do whatever you like within the constraints of the game design – you’re given so much freedom to play according to your own whims. With Spore there are set objectives and goals, you can’t really just sit down and play with it, and see where the journey takes you. You may be God, but the amount of control you have over the game world is limited by comparison to something like Sims 2. This is why I’ve stuck literally hundreds of hours into Sims 2, but not completed a full run through Spore yet. Maybe the Space stage is more akin to the freedom you have in Sims 2, but by the Tribal stage I was pretty much losing my will to play the game. I mean, if Spore is anything to go by, it turns out that playing God is pretty insipid. Who would have thought it?
26/09/2008 at 22:40 Larington says:
“Let’s make up psychology and then make up market trneds for that! Yay, everybody!”
Its my understanding of whats happened based partly on what I’ve observed lately. And as far as the marketing trends are concerned, what I’ve learned from sessions on this topic at game development conferences where the results of extensive research and comparison to non-games marketting models to see how well they match up (quite well it would seem). I wouldn’t be saying it if I hadn’t observed it.
26/09/2008 at 22:50 kuddles says:
A-Scale, first of all, Spore was in development for 5 years, tops, probably closer to 4.
Second, you’re being fallacious by automatically equating “casual” with “not difficult enough for me”.
Third, the statistics anywhere are pretty obvious.
http://www.vgchartz.com/weekly.php
Take any week and look at what’s selling, and it’s really hard to claim that making a game that’s more “hardcore” would actually open up your audience. I can’t even fathom how you can even consider that Spore would be selling better if only they limited their audience more. If anything, as others have argued, they should have removed the “gamey” sections altogether if they wanted success closer to The Sims.
26/09/2008 at 23:00 A-Scale says:
“planning began on Spore seven years ago, and was in physical development for five years.”
http://www.macworld.co.uk/digitallifestyle/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=22677
What fallacy have I committed? I’m not just calling it “not difficult enough for me”, I’m calling it a simplistic game. Casual and facile are not one in the same.
Chess is perhaps one of the most difficult games in the world, and also one of the most popular. Why did those idiots who designed chess have to limit their audience so much? There should only be three units, they should all move the same way, and whoever has the most should win.
Really though, chess is a game that scales well. Children can play chess, and geniuses can play chess, and they can both have a great time doing it because the difficulty scales with the opponent. It is accessible, and yet as challenging as you want it to be. This was a possibility for Spore, but instead they opted to make it as simplistic as possible. What a shame.
26/09/2008 at 23:07 rabbitsoup says:
A Scale you there? dont think anyones still reading this but actual evolution mechanics would not be fun.
imagine you have layed an egg, it has a randomly changed attribute, most likely for the worse and i mean 99% chance its shit if its not fatal. you just have to hold that for ages or just try again, sod that. the intelligent design creator is much more fun
26/09/2008 at 23:08 Calabi says:
Well I predict within a month spore will be dead as a duck, unless they do come out with some kind of mind boggling expansion, there is some evidence, although perhaps not conclusive yet.
http://www.xfire.com/games/spore/SPORE/ the amount played has decreased drastically.
The amount of creations jumped to 24mil at start and then increased at a slow rate after that. The number of new sign ups was 25 thousand and has dropped to 12 thousand.
The thing about the design is even a so called casual person after time can see through the shallow gameplay.
Also they may have dumbed it down but they havent really made it accessible, how would someone who hasnt played an mmo understand the combat in the creature phase?
Why would someone who doesnt normally play those sort of games play the ones in spore when they are rigid, confining, and shallow(and others are full of major annoyances and hassle)?
26/09/2008 at 23:24 A-Scale says:
So many closed minds here! Who is to say it couldn’t be MADE fun? Holding a schalacked wooden, rusted piece of crap at your hip, being shot every ten seconds and nearly dying for four hours straight is by no means fun, yet WW2 shooters had their heyday and did extremely well. Why can’t evolution be made fun?
How about this: You create your crazy ass creature, and based on limb placement and size your creature’s speed is determined. The power of its weaponry is decided by its ability to use them, so horns made for charging would be placed on the front, and those for protection on top/sides. If your creature gets eaten because you’ve placed its legs on its head, or because its spiked bottom serves no purpose, the game will give you some tips on what works and what probably won’t. You learn by making mistakes, and in the process your creature gets more feasible. That sounds like reasonably re-created and fun evolution to me.
And for the record, Calabi is right on.
26/09/2008 at 23:30 rabbitsoup says:
thats not evolution mate thats something totally different
26/09/2008 at 23:46 Erlam says:
I wish people would stop measuring how successful a game is by it’s total sales.
If a game costs 30 million to make, and makes 100 million, it’s considered better than one that cost 1 million to make, but made 20 million. It’s ludicrous.
I want more niche games. I don’t care if that means I’ll ‘lose out’ on big companies making them. I love Stalker, and Clear Skies, and couldn’t give a fuck it’s not made by EA or whatever, and isn’t selling a billion copies.
27/09/2008 at 00:23 Subject 706 says:
@Elam
Word.
27/09/2008 at 00:59 Bhazor says:
Sod the success of WAR/Spore how about the success of Euro Truck Simulator? Which is at number 19 in Chart Track’s PC list and is number 330 in Amazons all format chart. The Dickens?
What does this say about PC Gamers?
Edit: It also seems Witcher is selling better than Mass Effect.
27/09/2008 at 01:51 Frosty840 says:
Eeh. My enthusiasm for PC-style gaming has died, if nothing else.
I’d never have described myself as a “real” hardcore gamer. Not with any level of honesty, anyway.
I’m certainly a fair way above “casual”, I’ll grant you, but whever I’ve been presented with the Starcrafts and the Counterstrikes of this world, I’ve been thoroughly turned off. Micromangement and minutae really aren’t my thing.
The level of avatar-management a game requires of its player is a completely arbitrary thing, decided not by any constraint of reality, but by a game designer with limitless scope.
Rather than the wide range of low-autonomy, micromanagement-heavy units of *craft, I prefer something like Company of Heroes, which has a much simpler game mechanic, but manages to maintain the appearance of complexity. Rock-Paper-Scissors over Rock-Paper-Scissors-AssaultRifle-BioOrganicChitin-PlasmaShields-Swords-Claws-Backstab-Teeth-Nukes, if you will.
I was talking to a chap the other day, who said that Team Fortress 2 was a “betrayal” of TFC because it wasn’t anywhere near complicated enough. Apparently he enjoyed grenade-hell, and instant death. I don’t.
But even my less-weighty demands for a level of complexity aren’t really being met by today’s market and so in a sense, my gaming is dying, and the thing that is dying, and that was mine, is the old-style PC game.
Too tired to complete the thought.
27/09/2008 at 02:12 Shadowmancer says:
@Erlam
so if no one brought half life it would still be a success?
Pc gaming is dying with developers now migrating to the consoles in the dozens after each game they produce is pirated to hell and back, it doesnt help with the fact that consoles atm deliever the same content and power as the pc. The true saviors of pc gaming arent going to be steam but rather Russian developers and developers from other countries we only have to look at stalker and see why also cryostasis looks awesome when compared to likes of gta4.
27/09/2008 at 02:32 The Hammer says:
Perhaps in gameplay terms, yes, it’s a hardcore game, but it appeals to a softcore demograph as well, and its accessibility and polish complement that.
Let me put it this way. We can take RPS as being read, and commented on, by hardcore PC gamers – hardcore enough to read a daily blog about PC games anyway. Now, when a WoW story comes up, what percentage of the commenters are actually WoW players? Very, very few.
As RPS is one of the only PC gaming sites on the web, we can also assume that the usual PC gaming crowd do not usually play WoW. And 11 million people do not come out of nowhere, and from the amount of casual gamers who play WOW, and only play WOW, I am willing to say that yes, it’s a game played by a softcore audience. Or, softcore in terms of the rest of PC gaming, at least (myself not included. I play everything I can get my hands on, but it’s true that WOW’s subscription model and timesink stops me from playing a lot of other games).
@Shadowmancer: I believe Erlam is making the correlation of cheaply produced games turning the same amount of profit as high-budget games because you need less people to buy your game to break even. For a movie example, look at The Blair Witch Project, which was so, so much more profitable because it was made on a budget that was way, way under £1,000,000.
Or Runescape. I’d wager that the biggest drain on the Runescape bank balance would be server space, but they get a lot of (optional) subscriptions, and the game itself is one of the most popular MMOs in the world.
27/09/2008 at 02:48 antonymous says:
The PC is having hard times because the industry has called off the performance race because of the state of the economy. The Crytech CEO said it at the GC, until 2011/12 the current consoles will be the measure of all things.
And A-Scale is right, it’s not only about pushing the technical boundaries that defined PC gaming but the games themselves have to provide some kind of new challenge or twist that goes beyond the failsafe, formulaic development for consoles and casual stuff.
27/09/2008 at 03:32 chron says:
Frosty – Counter-strike is simpler than TF2 though.
27/09/2008 at 09:10 BadLuckJoe says:
Good lord why did I bother to read that pointless argument with A-Scale Vs. The World? Let’s all discuss hypothetical situations and assert most vehemently that we are right!
By the way my dad could beat up your dad.
27/09/2008 at 09:19 Larington says:
I think the problem with TFCs grenades was that you could carry too many of them, so the less skilled players wouldn’t even bother to cook the grenade and try and time the throw. They’d just throw every grenade they could then run back to spawns for the grenade back, the problem was the player as much as the design. Still, taking grenades out was a pretty daring move and its always nice to see game designers trying to examine all aspects of a design for improvements rather than just assuming thats worked before and it’ll work again. That said, I don’t necessarily agree with the idea of taking grenades out altogether, but thats not my choice, its Valves.
The one thing I do miss from TFC and why I couldn’t get into TF2, is that TF2 is a lot more frenetic than TFC – The environments are smaller and I always found that the size of levels was perfect in a way that meant the players weren’t always too far or too close to eachother, whereas I feel with TF2 I’m always too close to the enemy and I get rapid play fatigue as a result – haven’t played it since around the time it was released sadly.
I prefer to look at the ‘tech locked to current next gen consoles’ issue as a blessing in disguise – its going to give mainstream gamers a chance to catch up on hardware. I partly base this belief on the fact I ended up having to get a new computer early because the consoles pushed up the tech curve faster than I was expecting (For multiple developed platform games), but now I have something way ahead of the 360 and PS3 and so will more and more PC owners as the next few years roll on… Until the 720 and PS4 come out anyway.
I also agree there shouldn’t be so much focus on big budget titles like the publishers do, but rather a wide range of different types of games being developed and released regularly which aren’t necessarily so high budget but keep the variety of gameplay high. For instance, there should be more Deus Ex’, Anachronox’, Dungeon Keepers, heck, stuff thats been completely forgotten like Descent and so on, stuff that originated on 386s and deserve modern takes on earlier designs.
For instance, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the mix of adventure game and strategy game that I saw in the original Dune PC Game since it came out many many years ago – Why is that?
I guess it goes back to the same old issue, the publisher/developer production model is still killing off some of the things that made PC gaming so wonderful in its heydey, particularly the love of trying new things out. Granted its come back some, but it seems often to be the old guard that are doing it, folks like molyneux who have the clout to turn around to a publisher and say “lets actually try something a bit different” and get away with that.
I’m not entirely sure that the indies are the solution to the problem – Introversion aside – they can often get caught in the publisher/developer relationship trap as well, or produce products which just don’t have an adequate shine to make them genuinely appealing to a wide audience. Take Dwarf Fortress’ interface as an example of that, I haven’t been able to get into the game despite really wanting to be able to.
Sorry, started ranting here, I’ll cut it off here so people can rip me to shreds in the subsequent comments ;-)
27/09/2008 at 09:49 Dinger says:
The budget estimates for Spore that I’ve seen are in the $50M range. They’ll need to move around 2 million copies to break even.
The “release week surge” in playing is perfectly normal. The same thing happens with movies: the box-office dropoff from week 1 to week 2 is pretty huge.
Spore has an effective logo: like all those god-awful A.L.Webber musicals, their logo is a single, easily expressed concept reduced into an accessible and simple design.
But when it comes to the game, maybe the problem is that nobody can agree on what it is. I’ve heard so far:
A. The first four levels are in some ways a tutorial for space (this appears to be the RPS thesis, although probably just KG’s)
B. The levels differentiate the players: hardcore ones will dig space, casual ones the cell and creature stage, and someone has to like civilization. Each level involves an increase in complexity that appeals to a slightly different demographic (The Omnibus theory)
C. Each level provides its own marketing hooks for expansions. So: iPhone App — Cell stage, Creature stage — Wii, Tribe — PS3 and XboX360, ‘cos those fans are really tribal, Civilization — PC Multiplayer. Add in the sales of 3D creatures, comic books and the rest, and you have a brand. (We’ll call this the Branded! theory)
D. Play, Share, Create. Just as a professor’s job is to read, preach and determine, so the game divides into creative, social and ludic aspects. (The Maxis theory)
and we can add a fifth, combining much of what’s right in the previous ones:
D. The Evolution is of the game and the player. The player experiences evolution as an increasingly complex set of instructions and experiences.
The problem I have with the game? Even with the patch, you go into space, and there’s plenty of cool stuff you’d like to do, but the game gets in the way. It’s kinda like trying to write in Windows with three IMs and an Email client running, only less creative and more repetitive.
Deus Ex, Dungeon Keeper, Descent — those were all AAA titles in their time.
27/09/2008 at 10:08 Larington says:
“Deus Ex, Dungeon Keeper, Descent — those were all AAA titles in their time.”
But all fundamentally different in the way they play. As opposed to generic shooters 1-50 that can be played in almost exactly the same way.
27/09/2008 at 11:04 Pus Filled Sac says:
I’ve wondered whether games are simply getting easier or that since 1993 I’ve become too good and can complete them all easily now. After Episode 3 I’ll be leaving gaming behind until something at Descent’s Insane difficulty level is released.
Someone told you must advance in Spore, and can’t remain in the microbe or tribal ages. Evolution doesn’t mean becoming a space faring race, so I threw that game into the bin. WAR is an MMO, which I’ll forego. I don’t know what Fallout 3 is. Empire Total War will manage to remove even more control from the player than Rome Total War. All the consoles look the same and a hassle. That’s right: I’m suffering from gamer apathy.
As for TFC and TF2, whenever a new version of TF is released some die hard appears, on almost any forum, and spews forth bile about betrayal. First it was TFC that betrayed QWTF, then all those rubbish mods betrayed something else, and now TF2 has betrayed TFC. Try it: post on a forum about Team Fortress games and the “I was there in the 1990s playing early TF games” zealot will crawl out of the woodwork.
27/09/2008 at 11:05 Kadayi says:
“The budget estimates for Spore that I’ve seen are in the $50M range. They’ll need to move around 2 million copies to break even.”
They will easily sell more than that. Spore will be in the game charts for a few months yet.
27/09/2008 at 11:16 Theory says:
It’s being sold for $50, and I find it unlikely that the retail markup is 200%. :p
27/09/2008 at 11:36 Dinger says:
Half the list price is usually retail markup (aka 100%). Distribution, advertising and overhead then come in. Sure, Maxis is now EA, but I would be surprised if they saw more than ten bucks per copy. The $50M figure comes from an estimate reported by the Wall Street Journal (You can find a copy of the article online), where the same analyst figures $75M in sales as the break-even point. So he’s in the 1.5-2M ballpark.
Spore will make money – no worries there, but whether it’ll be a “blockbuster” or the video game version of Serenity has yet to be seen.
27/09/2008 at 13:19 Fat Zombie says:
@PusFilledSac:
That’s a fact of all games and, indeed, of all media. Anything which accrues any amount of popularity will, in time, attract and grow colonies of rabid and change-fearing fanatics, who will latch to a particular version/game/franchise and find all others to be foolish betrayals. This can’t be helped, unfortunately.
Anyway. Hardware development halted, you say? I might be able to bring my ancient machine back up to spec. Hurrah!
27/09/2008 at 13:37 Shadowmancer says:
@ Dinger
Don’t diss serenity it was a good film!
27/09/2008 at 14:48 mjhoward says:
It seems to me, the only people still going on about this “PC gaming is dying” business are the PC gaming writers…
27/09/2008 at 15:37 grumpy says:
I thought 1M copies for Spore was rather low. Keep in mind that the game has bee nhyped to hell and back, it draws on both the “traditional gamers” and the Sims demographic, the huge ad campaign (It’s always a sign that they’re serious about advertising the game when ads even show up in small countries like Denmark. And the streets are plastered with Spore posters), and just the amount of resources EA has poured into the game. How many hundred developers over how many years?
I’d expected a lot more than a million by now, to be honest.
About the DRM, a coworker of mine who is, at best, a casual gamer got wind of it. I think the bad publicity has spread further than a lot of us hardcore gamers may have expected.
27/09/2008 at 19:33 Kadayi says:
The problem with the anti-DRM brigade is they tend to paint it that after 3 installs the game is a fancy coaster, when the reality is it isn’t (you phone up and they give you a new code). Sure it’s annoying, but it’s not quite as torturous as it is made out.
28/09/2008 at 00:13 Yhancik says:
@mjhoward :
Because the console gaming writers already regard it as dead maybe ? :p
28/09/2008 at 05:30 DSX says:
I fully retract my comment regarding Grand Theft Auto giving PC gaming a valuable shot in the arm. Instead, Microsoft has shot us in the face.
28/09/2008 at 09:43 jigglybean says:
I think Spore has been the biggest disappointment of 2008. Roll on Dawn of War 2.
I have endless debates at work about the ‘PC in decline’ comments and every time I walk away happy. Sure there has been a huge swing with more hardcore moving to the 360 but Publishers and developers no longer actually develop for the PC – its just a simple/soddy port of an extremely limited console version.
Sins of A Solar Empire has proved that there still is a market for great PC only games and its about time the charts included digital downloads. The music industry cried ‘Pirates’ for so long until i-tunes showed them that people will download and pay for what they want.
Long live the PC!
28/09/2008 at 10:43 Okami says:
@DSX: So how exactly have Microsoft shot us in the face? Because GTA4 is coming out under the “Games for Windows” label? Well, so is almost any other pc game these days.. Because you can buy it on the Live! Markteplace? Yea, I’d prefer to buy it via steam too (that is, if I was going to buy it in the first case – but I allready have it for my 360), but I wouldn’t call that a shot in the face. Or because it uses Live! for it’s multiplayer modes?
Well the last reason kinda sucks, because it’s yet another stupid piece of software you have to install on your pc. But, hey, at least you don’t have to pay for it any more..
29/09/2008 at 00:10 DSX says:
Look at all the other titles the “games for windows”
restrictionimplementation has improved upon. In my opinion, it guarantees that the PC version of GTA will look and feel exactly like the xbox version, which contrary to why I own a gaming PC and not a console.Toss in the joys of Live! for multiplayer and it’s a lose-lose imho.
29/09/2008 at 09:53 Paul Moloney says:
“I think spore would have sold far more copies if they just put in an actual evolution mechanic and geared the RTS portions of the game towards hardcore gamers”
Yes, because being hardcore is exactly how The Sims managed to sell several squiggilion.
What I don’t understand is why they don’t slap a big “From the Creator of The Sims” sticker on each Spore copy. There are loads of people who’ve obviously bought The Sims and no other game, why not target them?
P.
29/09/2008 at 10:31 Tjoms says:
@Shadowmancer:
Watch Firefly and you’ll realize that, while it’s entertaining, that movie(Serenity) should never have existed and the series(the aforementioned Firefly) should have been continued instead.
29/09/2008 at 16:51 Winterborn says:
A-Scale is closer to right than he’s being given credit for. His point about Starcraft is a very good one.
29/09/2008 at 18:21 BugHunter says:
After all that, no one really had any half-way thought out argument against A-Scale. Just face the facts. Spore is a great technology demo. EA forgot to add an actual game while developing it.
29/09/2008 at 19:33 Bazooka Ed says:
I consider myself a hardcore PC gamer, and I think Spore is a fantastic game. It would have had one more sale, though, if it had come out before TF2. In fact, all great PC games after Oct 2007 would have had one more sale from me. If not for TF2. I now consider time to be measured in units of BOB (Before Orange Box) and AOB (After Orange Box). I really can’t get over how awesome that game is.
All this to say that gaming in general is now much bigger with more choices than it was five years ago. And that means less time spread to more games. Even if a quarter of WoW subscribers play WoW exclusively, that’s still 2.5 – 3 million gamers that won’t buy Spore. Or anything else. That could be the issue of “low” sales right there.