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.
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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.
“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.
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
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)?
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.
thats not evolution mate thats something totally different
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.
@Elam
Word.
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.
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.
@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.
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.
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.
Frosty – Counter-strike is simpler than TF2 though.
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.
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 ;-)
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.
“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.
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.
“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.
It’s being sold for $50, and I find it unlikely that the retail markup is 200%. :p
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.
@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!
@ Dinger
Don’t diss serenity it was a good film!
It seems to me, the only people still going on about this “PC gaming is dying” business are the PC gaming writers…
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.
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.
@mjhoward :
Because the console gaming writers already regard it as dead maybe ? :p
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.
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!
@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..
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.
“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.
@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.
A-Scale is closer to right than he’s being given credit for. His point about Starcraft is a very good one.
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.
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.