Tim Sweeney Hates You and Your Little PC Too– But It’s All Really Intel’s Fault

“PC gaming is going the way of the dinosaur, consoles are the next big thing, and soon everyone will think that playing games on your PC is as weird as playing games on your toaster.” Yeah, yeah. We’ve all heard it before. The truth is that PC game sales are suffering, if they don’t have “Warcraft” or “Sims” in their name. But are we really at the twilight hour of PC gaming, with a long cold winter of console-dominance ahead of us (you can probably tell I’m biased)? The reason I chose to resurrect this particular dead horse and beat it a little more is that Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games and Unreal creator, already did it for me. From his GameDaily interview:

“…it is very important not to leave the masses behind. This is unfortunate, because PCs are more popular than ever. Everyone has a PC. Even those who did not have a PC in the past are now able to afford one and they use it for Facebook, MySpace, pirating music or whatever. Yesterday’s PCs were for people that were working and later playing games. Even if those games were lower-end ones, there will always be a market for casual games and online games like World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft has DirectX 7-class graphics and can run on any computer. But at the end of the day, consoles have definitely left PC games behind,” he said.

And some more:

“PC gaming is in a weird position right now. Now, 60% of PCs on the market don’t have a workable graphics processor at all. All the Intel integrated graphics are still incapable of running any modern games. So you really have to buy a PC knowing that you’re going to play games in order to avoid being stuck with integrated graphics. This is unfortunate, and this is one of main reasons behind the decline of the PC as a gaming platform,” he said. “That really has endangered high-end PC game sales. In the past, if you bought a game, it would at least work. It might not have been a great experience, but it would always work.”

In the end, Sweeney acknowledged, “PCs are good for anything, just not games.”

Now, he makes a few comments in this article that I’d like to discuss. Every story I’ve seen on his comments today takes the “more bad news for PC enthusiasts” angle, but there are a few holes in Tim’s reasoning. The main point that he was trying to make is that modern mass-market PCs can’t keep up with modern games from a hardware standpoint, while modern consoles can, therefore consoles are superior to PCs as a gaming platform. He sticks to this point even after admitting that the vast majority of homes these days have at least one PC (and often more), and that there will always be a market for PC games (he calls them casual games and WoW).

The key here is in the graphics. Why is it that modern PCs can’t play modern PC games as they are meant to be played? Because game developers often design their games for the current generation of mid to high end computers, which most people do not have. The everyman PC that’s in the home of most Americans is not the ultimate or even the mid-line PC. It’s the Best Buy or Wal-Mart purchased bare-bones PC. The graphics in Oblivion at launch, for example, brought the mightiest of PCs crashing to their knees– you could forget even trying to load the game on your system. Tim’s take on this is to blame Intel for shoving subpar graphics processors at everyone.

However, this seems to be much more of a supply-side issue. Developers make games for top of the line computers for any number of reasons– it looks prettier, your game has all the journalists going “wow!”, it pushes hardware sales of next-gen computer parts, et cetera. But there’s a limited number of people who are going to run out and upgrade their computers to play the next big thing every year. Frankly, those people usually end up getting burned (Oblivion– huge disappointment). Instead of complaining that nobody is buying their multi-million dollar games, maybe developers should set the bar for entry a little lower. The answer is not to switch to consoles and continue making super graphic-intensive games. You know why?

Graphics Are Like Frosting– Tasty, But It’s the Cake You Want (The Cake is Not a Lie)

As I said, this is a graphics problem. And here’s the dirty little secret: graphics don’t matter! They don’t. They might help sell your game initially. They might spin some great press pre-launch. They might amaze and dazzle your players for five minutes. But after that, players will forget about the graphics and settle into the gameplay, which is what really matters. How many FPS games release every year with “omigoditsamazingIthinkIjustcrappedmypants” gosh-wow whizbang top-tier graphics engines only to be buried in obscurity? Answer: A lot of them.

Players can get used to anything graphically as long as the game itself is fun. If you disagree with me (and a lot of you do), ask yourself this: Did it bother you growing up when your favorite game wasn’t rendered in beautiful 3D? Does it make your cherished games any less fun to play that they can’t match up to modern graphics? Do your Monopoly games suffer because the little metal dog isn’t quite lifelike enough? Probably not. You can say that graphics do matter, and graphics are important, but as long as you understand what the graphics are supposed to be, they’ve done their job. A tree doesn’t need to look like a real live tree for it to serve its tree purposes.

The casual games market of which grouchy old Sweeney Tim speaks so flippantly is growing like crazy. They don’t need fancy graphics to make and sell great games. How much have you heard about casual and web-based games in the last two years? You know who doesn’t have everyone and their grandma talking about what they’re doing? The traditional gaming market. PC gaming isn’t dying– it’s evolving (console gaming, not so much). Asking consumers to pay $300-$600 for a machine that only plays games is quite a request, when they can take the machine they already have for work or school and go download a bunch of free trials of entertaining games without spending a dime, while chatting with their friends on AIM and checking e-mail. And what makes those games so great? They’re not graphically intensive (although they do have nice graphics), they’re cheap, and most importantly, they focus on the fun instead of the flash.

Lets Play A Game: Compare and Contrast Time!

You might still be thinking that those games are for moms and noobs who don’t understand real gaming, but it doesn’t have to be that way (in fact, you’re wrong– there are lots of companies making casual games for you). But that’s a design qualm. You just need more developers willing to take the plunge and that fixes that. So what about the platform considerations? Graphics aside, lets take a quick look at what console versus PC gaming offers players:

Console (Wii not Included)

• $300-$600 initial entry cost
• $50-$70 per game, no trials allowed (barring rentals and Gamefly)
• Limited ability to interact/communicate with other players (only voice chat, keyboards are a hassle)
• Controllers are foreign to non-gamers
• No modding, player-created content/levels, or homebrew games (a tiny bit on Xbox live, requires special components and advanced knowledge)
• Pop the disc in and start playing (but cumbersome to switch discs all the time)

PC (Casual games, MMOGs)

• No initial cost — everyone has a PC
• $10-$60 per game, almost always have free trials
• Unlimited ways to communicate and interact with other players (voice chat, message board, IM, chat rooms, e-mail)
• Everyone knows how to use a mouse and keyboard
• Unlimited potential for modding, homebrew, and player-created content (just a simple download away)
• Short install times for most games, but no disc switching (once it’s installed, play it whenever)

When you stop looking at PCs from the viewpoint of traditional, graphic-intensive videogames, PC starts looking like a ridiculously awesome platform for gaming that blows consoles right out of the water. If you look at the really popular games and the games that are rapidly gaining popularity, it’s certainly not the complex, hardcore, hardware-devouring monsters. It’s the simple, fun games that are gaining traction.

In Conclusion: Go Buy a PC (Better Yet, Don’t– You Already Have One That Works Fine)

The point I’m trying to make here isn’t really that PC is better or consoles are better. They really do cater to different crowds. It just annoys me to see companies declaring that PC gaming is dead or dying, when what they really mean is that “PC gaming is dead to us because it doesn’t work with our expensive, outdated business model and game creation style.” You don’t need a billion dollars in art assets and 3D world designers to make a fun game. Most of the time, I feel more constrained by 3D environments than I ever did in 2D, honestly. When you let players zoom to every possible angle of the game, you need to fill every possible angle of your game with interesting and well-rendered objects or it looks like crap.

Consoles are nifty, but they’re expensive, cumbersome, and when they break (red ring of death anyone?) there’s no easy fix. You can’t just hop on another Xbox to troubleshoot your first one. They have far less selection than PCs. And you can’t do all the other nifty PC stuff while you play games on them (e-mail, web surf, chat with friends). As far as I’m concerned, Tim Sweeney’s ridiculous claim that “PCs are good for anything, just not games,” is just that– ridiculous, silly, short-sighted, and simply wrong.

In closing, I’ll leave you with this helpful chart so that you can make an informed decision about what platform is best for you when it comes to videogames (courtesy of Brent):