By Kieron Gillen on January 29th, 2009 at 1:40 pm.
Or so say the RPS readers anyway. I wanted to do a follow up on the polls Jim ran a few weeks ago, highlighting the results and what they say about the state of the PC nation (in short: People buy stuff on direct download! Man!). Some of them didn’t require much other interpretation. Others – like the one in the header – required a little maths to arrive at. And more beneath the cut…
Before we’re going further, worth stressing the weaknesses of our numbers. Firstly, they’re from a poll of RPS readers. Are RPS readers characteristic of PC gamers generally? Maybe, but I’d argue they’re not exactly far from self-identified core PC gamers. Secondly, there’s traditionally a bias in polls like this, as people who aren’t involved in the practice don’t necessarily click. Thirdly, the 47% figure is extrapolated from other questions, as shown here, and the question was based on percentage of expenditure including things like subscriptions.
But on the other hand, almost two thousand PC gamers contributed to the poll. This isn’t a bad sample size at all. And the picture which it presents seems to confirm many’s gut feeling about the direction of PC gaming. Let’s take that 47% seriously for a second. If it’s a general rule, it basically means that you have to double the NPD figures to get a truer picture of where PC gaming is.
93% of RPS readers bought a PC game digitally in the last year, dwarfing the 7% who only purchase via traditional retail. 71% of them bought more than four digitally. In terms of the percentages of purchases via a digital channel, there’s 25% who say that fewer than 20% of their purchases are digital – but there’s also 17% who purchase more than 80% of theirs online. In fact, the spread across the four 20% groupings (25%, 19%, 21%, 18%, 19%) lacks an obvious peak.
We’re left with an undeniable portrait of PC gamers increasingly at home with the digital present.
29/01/2009 at 13:48 Heliocentric says:
Yunno, if you asked outside a “Game” store i suspect you’d collect “digital distribution is dead” statistics.
Still, interesting stuff.
29/01/2009 at 13:53 Pags says:
I am glad we’re not stuffy bumpkins. Or buffy stumpkins.
29/01/2009 at 13:54 Ginger Yellow says:
I’ve got to say, I doubt this survey has much use as an indicator of overall market trends. RPS readers are extraordinarily unlikely to be representative of the overall market (only a tiny fraction of games players read mainstream games magazines, let alone blogs by freelancers that specialise in esoteric games). I hope it helps you sell ads, but I wouldn’t read too much into it.
29/01/2009 at 13:58 Mr Pink says:
I agree with Ginger. I don’t honestly think that RPS readership is representative of the wider PC Games buying public.
Personally, I refuse to buy music online (because I want uncompressed DRM free music, and I like having the artwork etc), but I am entirely comfortable with online games distribution. In fact, I think have now reached a point whereby I much prefer it- disk hunting is so 2008.
29/01/2009 at 14:00 Downloads_Plz says:
Just throwing this out there, but http://www.gamefaqs.com runs a “Poll of the Day” every day that typically has over 100,000 participants. I suspect if you would contact them and suggest running a simliar poll on their site, they would agree to it. That way your sample size and obsession with PC gaming (for lack of a better way of putting it) may be more accurate.
Either way though, interesting results, I think.
29/01/2009 at 14:03 FunkyB says:
Kieron commented on the failings of the poll so I’m sure he’s aware it is inconclusive. The number is almost certainly too high due to the self-selective nature of the survey, but results like this are important to balance those that downplay the contribution digital sales make. They also are simply interesting!
29/01/2009 at 14:04 Catastrophe says:
I also agree with Ginger.
We are a hardcore(?) gaming group who specifically read an ONLINE gaming blog.
So naturally us online hardcore gamers are gonna buy games online more often than regular gamers.
29/01/2009 at 14:05 FunkyB says:
@Mr Pink:
ROFL, interesting that we both claim to be ‘incredibly busy’ but are both still commenting on the same story minutes after it is posted ;)
29/01/2009 at 14:05 Colthor says:
I imagine the Steam sale helped boost those numbers quite a bit. It was rather good, more like that please!
Which brings to mind: something it doesn’t take into account is what was spent on digital downloads vs. boxed copies. But that would be harder to estimate without inside information, I suppose (or a readership who keep exceptionally diligent records of game purchases). Either way, ignoring DD will lead to under-estimating game sales by quite a chunk.
29/01/2009 at 14:11 Kieron Gillen says:
Download_Plz: I’d be interested to read that too – problem being doing it on a non-PC site is that you get people who don’t buy PC Games voting “No”. That’s not what relevant question is, y’know? Or, at least, not the same question.
I agree with everyone’s reservations, of course. But I also don’t think RPS is anywhere near as unusual as people may think. It’s the traditional core-PC gamer demographic.
KG
29/01/2009 at 14:11 BooleanBob says:
Agree with the general tone of comments so far. For starters, the concession must be made that you guys heavily evangelise digital distribution (not that there’s any reason you shouldn’t, that being your wont) so the majority of RPS readers have probably been swayed at least once by some purple prose comparing Impulse (or whatever) to a summer’s day.
As question 3 on your poll pretty much confirms, actually. Neat.
29/01/2009 at 14:12 Catastrophe says:
Errrrr the edit feature broke ma comment!
Edit: Or not? Wow that was confusing.
29/01/2009 at 14:15 dhex says:
i would tend to lean in with what mr. gillen said – i don’t think the rps readership is *that* much different from the buying population at large; i know plenty of people who are not avid gamers who have bought pc games online. (peggle or bejeweled and whatnot)
29/01/2009 at 14:15 toni says:
2008 was the year of
- world of goo, crayon physics, bionic commando rearmed (all digital)
- GOOD OLD GAMES (my new passion, i even buy it just to support them)
- STEAM being an absolute asshole to the EU and continuing to serve products at the MOST ridiculous prices I have EVER seen (even for US the prices are a joke), sometimes DOUBLING the retail prices….
so actually I would say until steam doesn’t get its act together 2009 won’t be a golden year for digital downloads
29/01/2009 at 14:25 Cormac says:
KG – can’t one put in a trigger to filter out all the gamers that are not PC gamers and just NOT include those results in the total? Say only half of the participants actually buy PC games at all, you’d still have 50 000 votes…
29/01/2009 at 14:26 phuzz says:
The only two boxed PC games I bought (as opposed to wii stuff mainly) were FC2 and L4D, both because they were cheaper at retail and I was a bit skint, I’m sure that had they not been I’d have bought all my PC games via intarwub.
Mainly because I’m a lazy sociopath who can’t be bothered to walk tot he shops or wait for his games.
29/01/2009 at 14:28 Zero says:
Kieron, I agree with that, and you’re bound to get some modicum of shenanigans from a non-scientific poll. But perhaps we could word it this way:
Q) Did you buy PC games last year? And if so, did you buy at least one digitally?
A) Yes, bought at least one digitally
B) Yes, bought boxed copies only
C) No, did not buy a PC game
Clean up the wording obviously, but use something to that effect.
29/01/2009 at 14:31 Francisco says:
there is that thing about distribution. Before steam, the only way for me to get a game was to pirate it here in brazil. Now I pay for my games because that option appeared.
Between not playing and only having to pirate to play, what would you do?
29/01/2009 at 14:43 Ginger Yellow says:
“It’s the traditional core-PC gamer demographic.”
Well, yeah, but the point is that gaming has expanded way beyond the core. Now it’s entirely possible that the figure for the overall market is even higher than 47% – casual games like Peggle or Bejeweled or Scrabulous are usually sold or played online. I’m just saying that the poll doesn’t tell us anything about people who only play those games, or even the large chunk of people who mainly play Football Manager. It’s interesting in its own right, though.
29/01/2009 at 15:03 Hypocee says:
I bought lots of JoCo a couple of years ago. Fair music exists.
29/01/2009 at 15:20 Hermit says:
The RPS audience may well be “the traditional core-PC gamer demographic”, but there’s one thing we do especially well, and that is complain about any and all statistics ever posted on the site. Ever.
29/01/2009 at 15:23 Gap Gen says:
Possibly with the rise of DRM in retail games, people aren’t so bothered with buying on Steam, which has fewer restrictions for a single user than some DRMed boxed games.
29/01/2009 at 15:28 DrGonzo says:
Well I like to think RPS is very unusual thank you very much! If you saw any of us in the street you wouldn’t even want to spit on us.
29/01/2009 at 15:37 rupert says:
how come RPS still havnt done an artical on why you cant buy EA games off steam in the UK :(
29/01/2009 at 15:43 Dan Harris says:
I have pre-ordered Dawn of War 2. From where? Amazon. Why? One, because it’s a tenner cheaper than Steam, and two, because you get it in a shiny, shiny steelbook case with bonus content.
My conclusion: DD needs to be as cheap as the big online retailers, and they need to sell special editions.
Also, ‘steelbook’ is my second favouritest word after ‘chainsword’.
29/01/2009 at 15:45 dsmart says:
Its weird, but even though my games are distributed via ESD, I have yet to buy a single non-casual PC game via this method.
My problem is that having a rather extensive game library which I can stare at, I’m rather hesitant to buy an ESD game because then it won’t be nicely parked on my shelf.
Even the Valve games I have are all boxed versions as I don’t have a single Steam game and don’t plan on buying any.
In fact, the only games that I have ever bought online are casual games such as Peggle, Bejeweled etc – and they’re for my daughter’s laptop. I do have one or two games (e.g. Bejeweled, Chess, Scrabble etc) on my Tilt WiMo phone.
As for XBLA, I don’t have a single game from there and don’t plan on buying any. I did try Braid and am planning on buying it next time I login, just to support Jon. No other reason.
Of course for me it is all about old school, rather than the delivery medium, DRM or any such nonsense.
Contary to popular belief, sales of PC games sold via ESD (Direct2Drive, Steam, Gamers Gate etc) have not taken off as some would think. Retail still rules. Even games like the excellent SiNs would never – ever – have sold anywhere near 500K units had Brad not distributed to retail via Take 2′s distribution. If they had relied on Stardock’s own Impluse service, they’d be singing a whole other tune.
My guess is that ESD game sales can’t account for more than 15% (and thats being generous) of total game sales.
And before everyone starts yelling about Steam and its bazillion registered users, remember that those numbers – apart from being woefully inflated as they do not represent customers who buy games from Steam – are indicative mostly of Valve’s own games, which have a very large install base. Just because Steam has that many users doesn’t mean that even 1% of them are buying any non-Valve games.
There is a very good reason why ESD services are not willing to – and probably never will – divulge their sales numbers. That reason is that they’re dismal across the board. Ergo, while Valve is eager to tout things like Steam registraition numbers, marketing expenditure for L4D etc, go trying asking them about their sales figures and see how far you get.
Services like NPD, ESA etc all obtain their numbers via accessible retail figures. They do not have that same accessibility when it comes to ESD.
Its no big thing to send IGN/FOX a query saying “Yo, how many ESD sales did you push this month/quarter” since it is just a dB query. They won’t reveal it for the aforementioned reasons. Its like it is one big trade secret or something; despite the fact that they provide sales reports to everyone (such us who have games on most sites) whose games they sell. Weird that.
29/01/2009 at 15:50 Markoff Chaney says:
What could a businessman ever want more
than to have us sucking in his store?
We owe you nothing
You have no control
You are not what you own
Fugazi quote #2 (and they are both applicable!) for the day.
I stand by my belief that moving away from a brick and mortar physical product delivery method will do nothing except provide for cheaper costs, increased innovation, and a better all around consumer experience.
It’ll also help curb piracy to some degree. Especially if more and more content is controlled via a subscription or server based content. Patches and content can be delivered more seamlessly (unless you sign up with Microsoft for GfWL) and you can cut down on distribution and manufacturing costs (assuming the cost of bandwidth is built into the price point).
Also, if it’s between pirating and not playing, I think you know the answer to that question. :)
29/01/2009 at 15:59 itsallcrap says:
Surely some games industry group of other could pretty easily do this survey too. I bet they’d get pretty much the same result as RPS.
Then they’d be forced to stop bitching about how no one buys PC games any more. They fscking do. Loads of ‘em.
29/01/2009 at 16:02 jalf says:
I don’t really get people’s obsession with digital distribution.
I mean yes, Steam isn’t too bad, but for the same price, I’d rather get the physical media, with box art, manual, and a game I control myself, which isn’t subject to “as long as we want to provide the service/haven’t banned your account”.
I buy from Steam or other digital distribution platforms when one of two conditions are met:
1: It is noticeably cheaper (Steam holiday sales)
2: The boxed version is either unavailable (most of the GOG games), or badly crippled (EA’s DRM’ed games which Steam doesn’t have)
But by default, I prefer boxed games.
29/01/2009 at 16:13 Dan Harris says:
@jalf:
Exactly. Ditto.
29/01/2009 at 16:15 Rook says:
The vast majority of people who play PC games don’t even own a steam account. These numbers are meaningless if you try and use them as generalisations.
29/01/2009 at 16:18 Hoernchen says:
There was a time of the “Euro Boxes” when you actually got a 50+ page manual, a nice cd case, and sometimes extra stuff for your money. Now the whole package is a dvd case, it includes no printed manual, and it’s just 2 dvd’s stacked on top of each other, so why bother to walk to the store – or even buy it at all ? A notable exception is bioshock with its metal case, but otherwise it’s just a fugly dvd case with a windows live crap logo plastered all over it.
29/01/2009 at 16:21 Y3k-Bug says:
jalf says: I don’t really get people’s obsession with digital distribution.
I mean yes, Steam isn’t too bad, but for the same price, I’d rather get the physical media, with box art, manual, and a game I control myself, which isn’t subject to “as long as we want to provide the service/haven’t banned your account”.
But that’s the point. It comes down to preference. Personally I don’t care about box art or manuals, or physically having the media. I left that behind with owning physical copies of music. Is my way better? Not really, no. But I simply don’t care about owning it physically.
As to the point about the status of the games were Valve to close up shop, they’ve stated before that they would remove the online checks so the games would work without Steam. Even if they fell through on that promise there are any number of warez sites that can make hacked executables.
29/01/2009 at 16:37 Heliocentric says:
That steam/digital games cost more than retail is a sign of how whipped publishers are.
As soon as the new games are cheaper on digital the retail shops will throw a tantrum. And stop stocking that publisher. And only platforms on the pc can even host those kinds of titles as the consoles cant piss off retail. Because they need to get boxes in stores. So, to be cheaper on digi you need to be pc only as a publisher. When pc gaming is “dying” i can see why that doesn’t seem to happen much.
29/01/2009 at 16:49 The Sombrero Kid says:
if you’re in the UK and buy PC Games over Xbox games i’d wager you read this blog.
29/01/2009 at 16:53 Tei says:
How exactly cost to sell a game digitally? you have the bandwith cost, but the user could download the game more than once.
On a box, the cost is fixed, but on digital downloads, you have to mantain a team that make so the servers are always online and on good state. That has to be expensive.
Also, a box is easy to ship. Theres already devides to transport and sell boxes. But to sell digitally, you have to built a website, and a download service good enough (if only, with the ability to continue a broken download where it left). That has to be a fixed cost.
And why exist “bargain bin”? because space cost money, so is a way to “clean” the wharehouse. Maybe you don’t need to change the price of a game ….like never, If you don’t want to. I have to guest “digital download storage” also cost money, but is somewhat more cheap than fisical storage of boxs on a mortar shop.
Another problem is “concentration”, the dynamics may evolve to have only one shop. One “Amazon” of digital download games. If theres only one shop, theres no reason to compete with prices, because theres no other shop!. Now It seems there are a few digital download services ( D2D, Steam, Impulse, GoG…) but maybe in the future only one will exist..
I have my doubts DD will be really much more cheaper on the future.
29/01/2009 at 16:59 Gnarl says:
All of this analysis is almost making me feel guilty about my habitual lying in any kind of survey.
29/01/2009 at 17:15 Ginger Yellow says:
@jalf: The walls of my not very large flat are lined with hundreds of books, games, DVDs and CDs. The fewer boxes I accumulate the better. And that’s before we get to the inconvenience of switching discs all the time.
29/01/2009 at 17:16 Thomas Lawrence says:
I’d say that the RPS readership in this poll is probably reasonably representative of PC “gamers” – that is, self-identified “hobbyist” types, who buy a fair number of games and keep up to date with gaming press. However, I doubt we’re representative of the games buying public as a whole – there’s a large market who game only occasionally, play only a few games a year, or just one type of game, or even just one specific game (not just MMOs, either: the Sims, Football Manager etc.) I would imagine such a group does significantly less purchasing of games digitally.
29/01/2009 at 17:19 Alaric says:
I don’t like to buy games digitally, because that way I don’t get a box and a CD for my collection.
29/01/2009 at 17:30 Markoff Chaney says:
re: Owning Physical Media
I used to be in the same boat. I remember just how angry I was that the 100$ I gave to Valve for the super awesome HL2 + Every game we ever made up to this point deal (And a Hat. I still have my hat) netted me a code I could plug into steam. What a rip off! I like my boxes and art and manual and sometimes cool stuff (But at least I have a hat) and don’t want to not have that. Then Steam kinda sucked during that HL2 launch period, so I was against it even more.
Then a funny thing happened. I stopped getting boxes around my games. That’s cool, they’re like saving trees or whatever. Huh. This game doesn’t have a manual? Well, at least the PDF is still in the installed directory, even if I can’t read it on the john any more (without my laptop).
As what I physically got from giving the store my money kept dwindling more and more, eventually falling to where it usually is now, an anti theft device and a DVD or two with maybe a CDKey on a post card, I realized it really didn’t matter as much, to me, if I just got the 0s and 1s sent to me over the the tube.
I really only feel comfortable with Steam and Executables. I can back up (or redownload) both of those methods, and my game is relatively safe. There is no intrinsic difference between the game that’s pressed on a DVD at the factory and the one that I bought directly from the developer or publisher and then burn myself. Even moreso, now that I don’t get anything with my purchase.
Now, this being said, the OCD collector in me wants to hit backspace and say I’d rather have my nice stuff back (I do still buy retail for special editions (Witcher:EE, Bioshock Big Daddy, Fallout 3, etc) that actually HAVE content in them) but I know that’s not going to happen. As consumers, we’ve accepted the 50 dollar for a disk price point and, with notable exceptions, I fear that’s what we are going to get from now on.
Would I have thought Ultima IV was as cool if my 2400 baud modem had delivered it without my cloth map? Probably not… Could I have played Kings Quest 3 without a printed manual where all the spells were? I don’t think so… I do pine for these days, but I also recognize the further march of progress and inevitable pull of economics at work.
29/01/2009 at 17:33 MrMud says:
Unfortunately this means nothing.
Any survey conducted voluntarily from any non general source is bound to have selection bias. I suspect that this bias is so large in this case that the numbers become meaningless other than to say that 47% of PC purchases by hardcore PC players are digital. Something that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
29/01/2009 at 17:44 Man Raised By Puffins says:
I first read steelbook as steelbok and imagined them as some form of power-armoured mecha-antelope. Which makes the fact that they’re an awkward marriage of steel plate and DVD case all the more disappointing.
Well, clearly they’ve been able to trot some sort of numbers out behind the scenes. I find it hard to believe EA, Ubisoft, 2K, Sega and Actiblizzion would get into bed with Valve if they hadn’t seen some sort evidence proving that Steam was a money-spinner.
29/01/2009 at 17:52 dsmart says:
@ Heliocentric
Absolutely. Which is why GameStop makes more money on used games than they do on new ones. Much to the chagrin of the publishers.
In fact, since PC games have a near zero resale value, GameStop is quite happy that thus far, ESD hasn’t taken off for the console enough to impact its bottomline.
When Sony released Warhawk first as a PSN download, it caused a rukus. Shortly after, there was a boxed version – complete with Bluetooth headset as a bonus.
lmao!!
29/01/2009 at 18:01 egg says:
God, that looked awful.
29/01/2009 at 18:16 James G says:
Quick! Someone contact flashbang!
29/01/2009 at 18:26 Jahkaivah says:
@dsmart
I wonder then, why have publishers not attempted to restrict second hand sales of console game the same way they have done with pc games?
29/01/2009 at 18:40 dsmart says:
@ Jahkaivah
They can’t because then the retailers – who control the sales – will hit back and the whole thing will collapse.
Plus, they didn’t restrict the resales of PC games. Piracy did that. There is a reason why you are more likely to find a used console game than you would a used PC game. The same reason that buying a PC game become You open it you own it overnight.
Do you think EA is happy that they’re losing money while GameSpot is making a mint with used game sales? Of course they’re pissed, but their hands are tied.
I personally have nothing against used game sales because regardless of medium, First Sale doctrine should always trump capitalism. There is a reason why some people buy new cars, while others buy used cars. The sales of used cars hasn’t affect new car sales to the extent that the dealerships and manufacturers are up in arms about it.
My guess is that ESD is going to take off in a few years once the publishers come up with a viable delivery medium that is enough to compete with retail sales. Once that happens, its game over. But as long as you have console games, the retailers will always have the upper hand.
ESD was supposed to be the outlet for guys like me so we don’t have to worry about retail. But the truth of the matter is that unless you have a game that is less than $50K in budget, you don’t stand a prayer of getting your money back via ESD alone.
Which is exactly why – for the first time in my career and despite having been an approved XBox developer since the very first console, and was approved again when XB360 came around – I considered doing an XB360 version of my upcoming All Aspect Warfare game. If it wasn’t for the risks involved with betting all or nothing on ESD, I’d never have considered it. Couple with the fact that this is – hands down – the most expensive game I’ve ever developed. Even when you consider that my first game was almost ten years in the making, compared to the eighteen month dev footprint of AAW.
29/01/2009 at 18:55 cyrenic says:
@Jahkaivah
They are starting to, actually: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55828
29/01/2009 at 18:59 Tei says:
“ESD was supposed to be the outlet for guys like me so we don’t have to worry about retail. But the truth of the matter is that unless you have a game that is less than $50K in budget, you don’t stand a prayer of getting your money back via ESD alone.”
Why? could add clarifications here?
29/01/2009 at 19:05 Markoff Chaney says:
I just want to reiterate my prior statement made earlier this week.
“I love the communication we have going on here. Developers, Publishers, Critics and Consumers all sharing together.”
The best part is that we can pretend to be adult-like while doing so. Thank You commenters, one and all, for the civil discourse.
29/01/2009 at 19:17 drewski says:
I’m guessing it’s because the vast majorit of D2D games – regardless of platformg was a – don’t sell enough to make that sort of cash purely from ESD.
When I can get a D2D game that I can burn onto a CD and keep, as my possession, which I can resell as I choose to whomever I want for whatever price they are willing to pay, without restriction or activation or worrying about the service provider going broke, I’ll start buying ESD titles. Whilst I have to sign up for invasive bloatware like Steam, it can go take a hike.
GoG, thus far, is the only service I’d even consider a game from.
Retail’s crap, but at least as long as I avoid EA titles I can, by and large, be assured it’ll work if the publisher goes bust.
29/01/2009 at 19:39 Heliocentric says:
@ds lite
L4D would have made its money back if it had forgone its advertising and been digital only. But it wouldn’t have made *as much* money. Truth is, you can’t put an amount on the digital distribution scale. Not only is it a moving target but its an unknown quantity.
You said you don’t use the digi services much. Maybe you should. I shared your views on its inviability 2 years ago. But since then it has come on strides. And heres the thing. Its growing and it has wonders the stores don’t. Sir? Do tell me you have played world of goo? If not i fear your arguement loses some strength.
29/01/2009 at 19:43 clovus says:
Speaking of DRM… if King’s Quest 3 were made today they just would have SecureROM’d it and required you to activate it over the internet. DRM techniques like making the player give a word from the manual or “spellbook” are kinda’ funny now. Did you really think that was a feature?
Several people have mentioned boxart. I used to like boxart a lot when it represented what the game was supposed to be. I remember a game called Dragon Wars. The cover had this Conan the Barbarian look alike waving a sword at this huge dragon. It was a cool drawing, like a fantasy novel cover. The game presented the same hero in giants pixels using 4, count ‘em, 4 colors. While playing games back then I’d really pour over the boxart. Now the boxart doesn’t matter. I want the 3D game to look better than the 2D boxart.
29/01/2009 at 19:49 Heliocentric says:
In the future box art will be 3d. And the games will be 4d.
29/01/2009 at 19:58 Kua says:
Lots more DRM in the fourth dimension.
29/01/2009 at 20:02 unclelou says:
I don’t really get people’s obsession with digital distribution.
I’ve got a few hundred original games on my shelf. I’ve moved house 6 times in the last 15 years. I’ve been binning lots of old games recently because they take up too much space. And I regularly use two different PCs that are far apart. And with the state of manuals these days… :)
29/01/2009 at 20:06 Markoff Chaney says:
I do find the comparison between activation DRM and physical based humanity checks disingenuous. Is it DRM? Absolutely. It’s a method by which you ensure that a person who just gets floppies from a friend has a nearly impossible time completing the game. DRM in a nutshell. The difference is that, for example, in 1 year Sierra may be gone as a developer and publisher, but as long as I can find my 3.5″ drive, my floppies and my manual, I can play King’s Quest III (with DOSBox or one of my OLD boxes I have lying around). I can’t do that if it chooses to protect the software by making me activate the software. Having access to the internet trivializes the need of the manual (or feelies) and, thusly, the effectiveness of said physical check. I think as we got more connected, the realization crept in we couldn’t use that model any more.
I didn’t mind copy protection that was built into the game, honestly. I worried about losing my manuals, but if that happens, and I lose full access to my game, it would be my own fault, not because some company went out of business. You know that dark maroon card with the odd symbols that came with Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders? Don’t lose the card or, do what I did, make a copy by hand (since photocopiers couldn’t distinguish between the maroon and the black). My signed copy of Uplink uses the same concept and, quite honestly, I love it (probably more as a throwback, however).
I guess I can see where you are coming from. It obviously is a form of DRM, but, even then, it helped bring me into the game more and immerse me with lore. I was vested in poring over every inch of that comic book that came with Leather Goddesses of Phobos (still, I maintain, one of the greatest names for any game, ever) in order to make sure I could solve that esoteric puzzle that wasn’t going to make any sense whatsoever unless I knew its context. Have fun getting through the maze without the map. Is that DRM? I’d argue yes, but nowhere as invasive as the current rent-and-never-own model.
29/01/2009 at 20:06 Tei says:
Other than the box of M.U.L.E. and the manual of Laser Squad, I think most box, manuals, etc.. are better on the trash bin.
Nostalgia is overrated.
29/01/2009 at 20:14 Heliocentric says:
K240 i spent more time reading that manual than playing the game. It was beautiful.
29/01/2009 at 20:21 M.P. says:
Most people here don’t seem to realise how TINY a fraction of the market hardcore gamers like us people who read this website are! The vast bulk of sales, both on PCs and consoles, are from people who buy 1-2 games a year max and play maybe a couple of evenings a week.
The thing you have to ‘get’ in order to understand why surveys conducted on sites like this are meaningless is that most people who buy games wouldn’t list “gaming” as one of their hobbies. There’s people who like sports and therefore buy sports games as part of their fascination with sports (whether it’s football or boxing or golf or even bowles). There’s people who like strategy games, and wouldn’t ever buy anything else (my dad’s a good example – last game he ever bought is Dune 2 AND HE STILL PLAYS IT!). There’s people who like flight simulators, or people who like cars and therefore buy driving games, or people with other interests who might buy a game that appeals to that interest. But “gamers”, even though they buy 4 or 12 or 20 games a year, account for a small fraction of sales compared to the millions of copies games with mass-market appeal manage to flog.
I suspect that this is PARTICULARLY the case on PC over consoles. OK, most sports titles are multiplatform, but most strategy titles and simulators are on PC, and those games rely on “non-gamers” for the majority of their sales.
29/01/2009 at 20:27 Heliocentric says:
The ds got my lady who is a sims player. Into turn based strategy games (the new advance wars) so, i think it bares mentioning that player classification is bull. Always was, always will be.
29/01/2009 at 20:33 dsmart says:
@Markoff Chaney
Don’t worry, it won’t last very long. Just you wait.
@Heliocentric
Thats just not good enough for me. I have different standards. If its ok for you, by all means, keep buying ESD games.
Until ESD becomes seamless, ubiquitous (sp?) and no braindead DRM (Byteshield is the future of DRM) in sight, I’m not interested.
If I were in Europe or some third world country where ESD was my only option, then yah. But for now, I’m going to restrict my ESD game buying to casual titles- which I have littlle or no interest in – only.
I don’t buy games just because someone says they’re good. Which is one of the primary reasons why, like most sensible gamers, I don’t put ANY stock in game reviews – which are based on one lone wanker’s opinion. A wanker who is either more likely to be on the take or even more likely to have an agenda.
I buy games that I would like to play – and own. World of Goo is not my kind of game, so I have no interest in buying it. The same reason I still don’t own Braid.
@ unclelou
Join the club. I’ve got so many games, I lost count at 12,000 or so. I’m paying almost $250 a month on air conditioned storage to store most of them. Each time I’ve moved, it costs me more to move them, put up shelves to store them etc – than it does to more the blasted furniture. Go figure.
One of these days, I’m going to put the whole shebang up on eBay and see which sucker out there wants to own a piece of history for a cool $250K starting bid.
29/01/2009 at 20:53 Smurfy says:
@dsmart: I can see why you’d think that. There’s no way that ESD – providing government services through the Internet or other electronic means, could ever compete with retail game sales.
Why are you calling it ESD.
29/01/2009 at 21:05 Rich_P says:
I’d rather get the physical media, with box art, manual, and a game I control myself
Last time I went to Best Buy, new PC games were being sold in flimsy DVD cases. You either buy the collector’s edition or get stuck with a worthless piece of plastic. Packaging size has decreased over time and continues to do so.
The absurdity of shipping physical media hundreds of miles by diesel truck will become readily apparent when fuel prices rise again.
Digital distribution is the future, even if it takes 20 years to get there. It eliminates the second-hand market, which the publishers hate, and is a more efficient way of transmitting information.
29/01/2009 at 21:32 Ginger Yellow says:
“The difference is that, for example, in 1 year Sierra may be gone as a developer and publisher, but as long as I can find my 3.5″ drive, my floppies and my manual, I can play King’s Quest III (with DOSBox or one of my OLD boxes I have lying around).”
I’m willing to bet lots of money (and effectively I have) that Valve will be around longer than my manuals. I know this because I’ve already lost a ton of them.
29/01/2009 at 21:34 Erlam says:
“I’ve got to say, I doubt this survey has much use as an indicator of overall market trends. RPS readers are extraordinarily unlikely to be representative of the overall market (only a tiny fraction of games players read mainstream games magazines, let alone blogs by freelancers that specialise in esoteric games). I hope it helps you sell ads, but I wouldn’t read too much into it.”
Name a single method that would work, though. Hell, polls for elections use what, 3,000 people randomly called? Who’s likely to actually respond to these calls? A) Elderly, B) Non working, C) Only people with listed phone service (obviously), etc. Any way you get stats they’ll be biased or problematic in some way. I’m not saying these are perfect, I’m saying that you shouldnt discount it.
29/01/2009 at 21:38 Ravenger says:
I can see myself buying more games over digital distribution in the future, provided the DRM schemes used (such as Steam’s) are less onerous than the limited activation schemes that are becoming more and more common on retail releases, and that the prices are less than or at least comparable to retail.
Also it’s becoming harder and harder to find PC games at retail at all, and systems like Steam and GOG make it easy to get hold of the games you want.
29/01/2009 at 22:08 AdrianWerner says:
Well, NPD numbers are useless when determining PC market status. Of course one can make argument than DD isn’t there yet on the levels to compete with retail and that’s true. However data shows online revenue (ie DD+online fees) count for over a half of all pcgaming revenues. I mean you can look at NPD numbers and say PCgaming declined in last couple years, but WoW US subcriptions alone are more than the loss in retail sales.
What’s worse NPD tracks only US sales and while in console market that’s the main market, it’s far from such on PC. Most PC devs will tell you europe makes up 60-70% of their revenues. And it’s not just smaller european games. CnC3 sold less than 250K in US in 9 months, while it passed 1mln worldwide in two months.
So NPD is useless, all it gives you is report about specific segment of the market, a segment that’s not representative of the market as a whole.
With DD vs retail numbers, I doubt DD is close to beating retail yet, but at the same time we have to remember two things:
-DD is growing at extremely fast rate, while retail remains stagnant
-it’s profits vs revenues. Even Stardock sold more Sins copies in retail than through Impulse, AFAIR 5 times more, but at the same time they made half of their profits with DD sales.
29/01/2009 at 22:16 eyemessiah says:
I suspect that that the kind of people that buy multiple sims expansion packs and bejewelled didn’t vote in the original survey, and I fear that they ARE pc gaming.
29/01/2009 at 22:23 dsmart says:
@ Smurfy
Why not?
If you don’t know what ESD means, why not just ask?
29/01/2009 at 22:32 dsmart says:
@AdrianWerner
Yep. And the reason for that is the COGs, marketing, cut to Take 2 distribution etc are not applicable with Impulse sales. And since they priced the retail game the same, it makes sense that they would make more money on the Impulse sales. That is the beauty of ESD. But again, there are many PC gamers who would rather get their games from retail. Hence the reason there is still a push to get PC games onto shelves.
Incidentally, since the retailers are more focused on console games, and given that only a few publishers have distribution and relationships with the buyers are the retailers (who make extortion look like a hobby if you know exactly what those bastards are doing these days), you won’t see many PC games at retail, apart from those “Triple A” offerings from the usual suspects who already have console versions.
The whole thing is one big racket that is going to come crashing down very soon. And when it does – given the amount of money involved – it will be spectacular and there won’t be any comparison to the videogame company crash of the nineteen eighties.
29/01/2009 at 22:56 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
Selling games through Electro Static Discharge! That would be cool, getting zapped every time you buy something.
29/01/2009 at 23:02 roBurky says:
.
29/01/2009 at 23:12 Jesucristo says:
NPD sucks. does not account digital download neither online subscriptions to MMORPG.
Anyway, any statistic has to show numbers. And NPD Group NEVER shows numbers.
29/01/2009 at 23:24 Nimic says:
Maybe not completely related, but I notice how many people are fond of making up statistics on how big a percentage gamers “like us” are of the PC gaming market. Most people seem to think it’s a vanishingly small percentage, but is it really? That depends on what you mean by a gamer, of course, but from what I’ve seen most people who buy any games at all usually play quite a lot of PC games. I just don’t see where this “casual” crowd is, and what they are doing.
Unless we’re talking games like World of Goo or Popcap games, I don’t see there being a great load of people who have a computer and have enough interest in games to buy some, but only stick to one or two a year (as someone mentioned).
Now, I’m a fairly huge PC geek, and I know that most people aren’t like me. But even my friends in school who were only mildly interested in games bought quite a few of them, or played a couple a lot. I got the impression that either people weren’t really into gaming at all, in which case they definitely won’t be a big part of the software market, or they were into it enough to buy several games a year.
Am I wrong? I might be; I’ve got no real statistics to prove me right, but it’s just the way it seemed to me.
29/01/2009 at 23:26 Rich_P says:
So NPD is useless
NPD is useful for retailers, but is useless for drawing conclusions about the health of PC gaming as a whole.
The data isn’t problematic. The analysis of said data by gaming sites is the problem.
29/01/2009 at 23:38 Gap Gen says:
“I don’t buy games just because someone says they’re good. Which is one of the primary reasons why, like most sensible gamers, I don’t put ANY stock in game reviews – which are based on one lone wanker’s opinion. A wanker who is either more likely to be on the take or even more likely to have an agenda.”
This is the most effective way to insult the authors of this blog, by the way.
30/01/2009 at 00:40 Wurzel says:
Soooo… what does ESD mean in this context then?
30/01/2009 at 01:08 dsmart says:
@ Gap Gen
….and your point was what exactly?
Did you see me naming names?
Which part of on lone wanker seemingly applied to anyone (named or otherwise)?
And do you think I’m posting here because of reviews or because I want to be part of the collective group hug?
If you must know, I’ve known Kieron for as long as he’s been writing about games. In fact, his (like Tom Chick, Jeff Green and few old school handful) includes some of the only opinions I pay attention to.
In fact, for as long as I’ve been reading RPS (during my daily and periodic Google iG / Google Alerts pass), if the original thread here about my game hadn’t started by him, I’d never have paid any attention to it, let alone bothered to post.
There are literally dozens (don’t take my word for it, go Google) of sites on the web talking about either Derek Smart or one of my games. I don’t post at any of them. In fact, the only places I bother to post are Gamasutra, Blues, Avault, a blog (mostly industry related) or two and now here.
Get a grip and settle down.
@ Wurzel
ESD = Electronic Service Distribution, which invariably got somehow mangled (and lost in translation) once the media kiddies started coining “Digital Distribution”.
30/01/2009 at 01:09 dsmart says:
oh, the actual mean in fact is Electronic Software Distribution when talking about the delivery of media (games, music etc) online.
30/01/2009 at 04:34 Mo says:
What exactly is the issue with the term “Digital Distribution”?
30/01/2009 at 07:03 teo says:
Well, Relic said that their Steam numbers were quite close to their retail numbers so I guess… you’re wrong!
30/01/2009 at 07:14 unclelou says:
“What exactly is the issue with the term “Digital Distribution”?”
That games in brick and mortar stores usually don’t come on vinyl, either. ;-)
30/01/2009 at 07:20 Tei says:
Maybe sould be called Redownload Services, because is the confidence you can download again, that make you trust the service.
I mean, in the good old times, it used to be normal for males, to have a secret folder on the computer with porn. Now, more and more people just browser to sites like redtube, that is more porn that what you can store on your harddisk, and updates daily with new videos.
Withouth the confidence of infinite ammounts of free porn whenever you need it, people would manually collect the porn on his secret folder, like a personal Fort Knox…
30/01/2009 at 08:02 Tei says:
Guys Guys!.. I got news, EPIC fail awesome news
“It seems that the DRM on the PC version of Gears of War came with a built-in shut-off date; the digital certificate for the game was only good until January 28, 2009. Now, the game fails to work unless you adjust your system’s clock. What is Epic’s response? ‘We’re working on it.’”
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/01/pc-gears-of-war-drm-causes-title-to-shut-down-starting-today.ars
Children eaten by DRM today: 6818 + 1!!!ONEONE
30/01/2009 at 08:09 Mo says:
@unclelou: lol, fair enough. :)
30/01/2009 at 08:26 Tei says:
@roBurky: You have a point here.
30/01/2009 at 08:41 Rob says:
The closest Steam gets to offering uptake statistics is at this page under “View Steam players per game”, which provides information that is tantalisingly close to being useful. Still can be interesting reading; Football Manager 2009′s peak simultaneous users suggests quite a healthy install base while poor, poor Age of Conan …
30/01/2009 at 10:16 Fitzmogwai says:
One thing to remember is that it’s still very early days with sales through downloads. Reliable services have only been in place for a couple of years, and most people have only recently got fast enough broadband access to make downloading a couple of gigs of files reasonable as opposed to hideous.
Certainly I know that if I’d wanted to download L4D a couple of years ago it would have been “leave the PC on overnight and hope that the connection doesn’t crap out” hell.
As long as there are benefits to downloading (reasonable prices, buy-once-available-in-perpetuity-backups, non-intrusive DRM (if any) and secure trusted providers, then online sales will only continue to grow in popularity.
I can easily see that in a few years, publishers will be taking the application providers’ model with their games, where downloads are the first route to availability, and you can pay a few pounds more for a DVD to be posted to you if you want one.
30/01/2009 at 10:28 Paul Moloney says:
Most epic DRM fail ever:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F30%2F0556251&from=rss
Gears of War on the PC no longer works after Jan 29.
30/01/2009 at 10:30 Paul Moloney says:
(Oops sorry for the dupe. And yes, funny how we both used “epic fail” (geddit?))
P.
30/01/2009 at 10:46 Tei says:
( I think is hardly news. DRM don’t work for most people. It will be news if DRM work for some random guy, in the sense Man byte Dog. )
30/01/2009 at 10:57 gulag says:
Re: Is this poll skewed?
Well of course, but in a very interesting way, and one that might mean it reflects the current state of play more accurately than it first appear to. I took the survey and would admit to being a typical hardcore PC diehard. The shelf holds copies of The Witcher EE, Fallout 3, Civ4, etc. The hard-drive is stuffed with DLC from Valve and EA. So far, so typical.
Let me tell you about somebody who didn’t take the survey, has never even looked at a gaming magazine (Online or printed), and gets a rash every time we go into a GameStop. My girlfriend.
So, a typical non-gamer? Far from it. There is a good chance she has spent more in the last year on games than I have. She has started to hide the credit card receipts, alway a bad sign. Popcap and Bigfish and all the others supply her with all the games she needs.
I looked over here shoulder the other night to see what sort of shoe-matching game she was playing, and was suprised to find her plowing through a point and click adventure that owes more to LucasArts than any Bejeweled clone. Proper game, proper gaming.
My point is this. She is as invisible to us, the Angry Internet Men, as she is to NDP or any of the other stat gathering, market researching outfits. She, and the uncounted thousands like her, are the dark matter that contorts and ridicules all of the statistics we see proclaimed as evidence of this or that death or ressurection.
All of her purchases are digital, none of her games of choice would even get a look-in on one of the mainstream gaming sites, and she doesn’t want to know about any of the other stuff anyway. But there she is, hammering away at a type of game most pundits would tell you died a commercial death a decade ago.
There are more people like her out there, and I suspect they are females between 20-35, computer literate, who think Marcus Phoenix is a shoe designer. They don’t buy from the shops because they never have and they never will. They are 100% digital, and I suspect they push that 47% figure much, much higher.
30/01/2009 at 10:58 Fitzmogwai says:
I know that CliffyB insists that PC gaming is dead, but I wasn’t quite expecting Epic to be pulling the trigger in quite this manner…
30/01/2009 at 11:55 Paul Moloney says:
Gears of Wars: The gaming equivalent of a sweaty jockstrap.
I just cannot understand the love for that game.
P.
30/01/2009 at 16:45 drewski says:
As long as game designers and publishers think forcing users to allow the programs to communicate with central servers before allowing play – regardless of how uninvasive that check is – is an acceptable invasion of their privacy and ability to use and resell the software they’ve paid for, I’ll have nothing to do with it.
31/01/2009 at 05:53 Nahual says:
I actually think this is pretty accurate, because you have to be a pretty hard core PC gamer to buy the PC version of any big AAA title in the first place. I mean, who buys Witcher or Fallout 3 for PC other than the tech savvy people who are likely to read this forums?
For anything other than the Sims and WoW this is actually a very good source for poll information.
31/01/2009 at 08:40 Jim Rossignol says:
That’s my feeling too.
09/02/2009 at 18:18 PHeMoX says:
Digital distribution is the future… fck the middle men, we want our games cheaper.
Of course, Steam miserably failed at this where they were off to a great start at first. Raising prices as if dollars are euros isn’t making you look nice Valve!!!
09/02/2009 at 18:20 PHeMoX says:
“It’ll also help curb piracy to some degree.”
It won’t really. If people do not want to pay, it stops selling right there.
People can pirate everything, hence why there are pirate servers for World of Warcraft and cracked copies of Steam version games out there.
08/07/2009 at 20:26 John Smith says:
I on the other hand have over 30 games on Steam. And now 2 on impulse.
18/12/2009 at 06:38 kellenjose88 says:
More and more people choose online payment, and many of my friends this weekend to play FFXI online game
18/12/2009 at 06:40 kellenjose says:
More and more people choose online payment, and many of my friends this weekend to play FFXIonline game
31/01/2010 at 14:49 Lilo says:
If people do not want to pay, it stops selling right there
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