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Computer gaming tends to get the short shrift from gaming journalism

iansherr

Neo Member
I think it could be useful to have a separate review for the PC version. It's always useful (and interesting too) to hear about the port quality, performance, compatibility with different setups (this may be a bit difficult to test, as it would require having several machines with different specs and OS each, but it would be incredibly informative to the reader), mod compatibility, amount of configuration options, how well it plays with keyboard and mouse (and if it features proper input icons, something that is sometimes overlooked) and probably many other things I'm forgetting about. It may not be the best seller version, but I believe there are enough differences between consoles and PC to give those games at least two reviews.

And yes, these mid-tier games totally deserve to be reviewed.


This is exactly what DocSeuss made the thread about. Journalists not giving PC games proper attention, to the point where they won't even review many of them.

When it comes to reviews (which I don't do), I totally hear ya. But DocSeuss also talked about coverage in general, which is why I decided to chime in. I'll grant, I'm not really able to speak to the review part--which a lot of people are clearly passionate about. But I am able to talk about coverage, at least from my personal vantagepoint.
 

Mrbob

Member
I think many people share that same opinion. However, I don't believe he does. Do you think that changes the way he looks at games?

It allows him to do what he wants. He covers games based solely on what he wants to cover and not worry about anything else. The best part of coverage is these videos aren't final judgements. They are literally just his impressions. His gives coverage to the game, some personal thoughts, but ultimately leaves the conclusion up to the watcher.

The downside is there is truly only one TotalBiscuit right now. Would be better if there were 5 to 10 of them. He can only cover so many games.
 

KJRS_1993

Member
I'm aware that you don't need high end machines to play the popular PC games.

You don't need it for WoW, or MInecraft or League of Legends or the Sims..

Basically, the mainstream.... Which was my point. PC games are mainstream. It's not necessarily audience as the console audience, but the market is almost as big as all consoles combined. You can't be much more mainstream than that.

Of course - but the mainstream audience don't read the specialist press.
As I said in a comment before that one, while the hardcore PC gamers are solid as a rock, they're relatively small in number compared to the amount of console owners.

The amount of people who own a PC is pretty much everyone ever.
The amount of people who own a hardcore PC is reasonably tiny, not enough to sustain basing your entire output on anyway.
 

iansherr

Neo Member
But you're wrong. That's exactly where they are going.


Hard data tell us otherwise.
It could be argued that sales for specific titles tend to be higher on consoles (which isn't even a constant, by the way) but the amount of gaming software sold as a whole is an entirely different story.

Ok, challenge accepted. I've written extensively about this on the WSJ, so my data sources are out there. But what hard data are you speaking to? If you can show me comparable data that's meaningfully different from what I've seen (again, NPD, SuperData, PwC), then I'm happy to read through it.

Honestly, I feel like there's not enough data out there and I'm constantly looking for more. So I'm really excited to read what you have.
 

Lingitiz

Member
Giant Bomb is a little different in that their PC focus isn't on genre's like RTS, and more on the long list of older PC titles. They're a video focused site and new games come out on PC every week. Even their GDC coverage this year had mostly people who are PC developers first with a desire to get on consoles second.

Point being, a site like Giant Bomb isn't really having that kind of focus out of an actual change in direction, but from a desire to follow where the most quality content is being produced. For better or worse, a ridiculous amount of PC games release weekly, which is very beneficial for a video content focused site like GB.

Quick looks on their site are really effective in getting across the message of a game with initial impressions. However on a site like IGN or Gamespot that has multiple branches producing all sorts of video content, it's a lot harder for that sorta stuff to stand out, so I understand the lack of focus on that front.
 

Erico

Unconfirmed Member
Great post, OP.

I think you really do hit the nail on the head about the shift from enthusiast PC gaming journalism to fan-oriented console journalism. Back in the day, I was an avid reader of PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World for the good insight into the game development process, learning about the hardware and technical side of the hobby, and coverage of a wide genre of games. Modern console-focused game journalism seems quite superficial in comparison, almost like you're reading straight from the publisher's PR releases. To be fair, this also reflects the decline in games journalism as a whole.
 

Into

Member
The market dictates what is published, written and covered. You already acknowledged this more or less. So it is not out of bias, or hate. If IGN could write endless articles about some PC game and get insane amount of page views, they would. We all know they would, so would every other publication.

There might be 94 billion League of Legends players, but a very small fraction of them give a shit to read what some journo thinks about their game or any other PC game. WoW players hang around official Bnet forums, MMO champ and Arena Junkies, they do not care about IGN, Gamespot, Gametrailers or anyone else. Shane Satterfield even noted years ago that he wasent even sure why they were producing a WoW Expansion video review, because that community did not care what they think anyway.

There seems to be a divide in the PC gaming community, where there is no central hub for everyone to gather around, perhaps because of negligence through the years, so they stick with communities and sites that only cover their own game. So sites that cover little bit of everything never get their traffic. Thus no content is produced for them.

Everyone on GAF knows these sites, because consoles are pretty prominent in this community, everyone more or less knows who Jeff Gerstmann is here. But you go ask in a random game of WoW, Minecraft or League who or what "Giant Bomb" is and i bet very few players will even recognize what it is.

This divide is nothing new, back in late 90s i used to hang around PlanetQuake, Heat forums, Diabloii.net, TeamLiquid and many other game specific places because they were the biggest sites for these specific games. Fan sites certainly have existed for popular console games, but they were nowhere near as big as PlanetQuake, TeamLiquid etc.


Maybe i am projecting how i play and enjoy PC games compared to how i play and enjoy console games. But i dont sit around and play a console game for 4-5+ years, whereas i have played Brood War, Diablo 2, Unreal Tournament, Quake 2, WoW for years on end. So having a more hardcore and indepth place was preferably to IGN telling me awkwardly how to Zerg rush in Starcraft or GameTrailers giving me Arena tips for WoW. Perhaps this is how many players treat PC gaming differently, hence the popularity of those game/series specific sites.
 

Haunted

Member
Very good post.

From the circumstances described, I assume OP is in the US, yes?

The situation is slightly better in Europe, where computer gaming is still just as prevalent than the console counterparts, but it's still not ideal. I get where you're coming from. It can be frustrating.

But because of the nature of my job, I typically focus on AAA titles
This is another problem with the way the US entertainment press works.
 

ghst

thanks for the laugh
I think GiantBomb's roots of gamer centric content spawned a wider appreciation for PC games. The founders of the site didn't have to answer to a corporate head looking for viewing numbers. It gave them the ability to be more open with their chosen games and platforms.

The question now is: "Will GiantBomb change now that they have been purchased?"

giantbomb is a site built around its personalities. it's very hard to put any idiosyncratic flare into a playthrough of ultra polished AAA people mover #12, so it's natural for their content to ride gaming's unclaimed frontier.
 

Omega

Banned
The creator of Thomas Was Alone, Mike Bithell, said he felt as though PC exclusives got a degree of 'legitimacy' when they went to consoles, but I think he's got it a bit wrong. It's not so much consumers, it's press. We're not seeing consumers go "oh, because of this news article that a game is coming to consoles, I am going to buy this game," we're seeing journalists go "oh, this game is important now that it's coming to consoles, I'll write about it," people are becoming aware of the game, and then they're going out and buying it. The issue isn't with consumers, I think, so much as it is with the gaming press.

so true

While it's a F2P game, I've heard more people talk about Warframe in the past month or two than I ever did when it came out on PC a year ago

People usually won't buy/play stuff unless it's advertised. Word of mouth can only do so much
 

iansherr

Neo Member
Well first, let's settle an issue of semantics. Are we trying to discuss unit sales of individual games, or user base and revenue?

PC gaming largely has moved beyond boxed sales so this is where the comparisons get a bit convoluted. I'll show my hand a little bit and mention that no console player base touches the biggest PC games.

Number of users is one datapoint, but I'm definitely focused on worldwide and US revenues. That's what I originally posted, and what I was under the impression you had said was wrong. Boxed sales are only one part of this--Between the three data sources I noted earlier, I'm keeping track of boxed sales, digital download sales and free-to-play/in-app purchases, and my original comment is based on that data.
 

Llamadeus

Banned
I think you are looking at this the wrong way. PC gaming is great, sure, but regardless of how large it may appear to be, it is still an enthusiast market. You can't expect the mainstream media for gaming to bother covering niche games when their largest audience are most likely console gamers.
 
I'm reminded of how games journalist Patrick Klepeck had to literally have a pre built PC sent to him by a reader before giving PC gaming a chance. It has since become the source of most of his video content due to the sheer numbers of indie games and horror games on the platform, which are genres he is into.

I simply don't get how you can claim to cover games and ignore such a giant section of the market, just because it isn't convenient.
 

RionaaM

Unconfirmed Member
When it comes to reviews (which I don't do), I totally hear ya. But DocSeuss also talked about coverage in general, which is why I decided to chime in. I'll grant, I'm not really able to speak to the review part--which a lot of people are clearly passionate about. But I am able to talk about coverage, at least from my personal vantagepoint.
I think he meant letting readers know that such games exist. Many sites don't mention them at all, not a trailer, not a video, nothing. Thus the readers won't learn about them unless they stumble upon it by chance (be it when browsing the Steam store, Youtube or whatever) or someone recommends it to them/posts about it on some forum. Of course, it's not a gaming site's job to promote PC-only games, but it wouldn't hurt to at least acknowledge their existence.

For example, I could imagine an article showing the best mods for a bunch of games, or providing configuration tips for different specs or to achieve the best possible graphical quality, things like that.
 

patapuf

Member
Of course - but the mainstream audience don't read the specialist press.
As I said in a comment before that one, while the hardcore PC gamers are solid as a rock, they're relatively small in number compared to the amount of console owners.

The amount of people who own a PC is pretty much everyone ever.
The amount of people who own a hardcore PC is reasonably tiny, not enough to sustain basing your entire output on anyway.

I don't think that's because there aren't enough of a hardcore audience but because the PC gaming audience plays games differently than the average console gamer.

The average PC gamer is much more likely to have few games he has been playing for years suplemented by smaller games that can't sustain a site since they are smaller games, (and your average 10 hour action game will usually count as smaller game in terms of player numbers on PC).

In return, there are sites that are able to sustain themselves just covering one game. Which you rarerly see for console games.
 
As someone who mostly sticks with Giantbomb for games coverage, I haven't had this problem. They cover a lot fewer stuff than most websites, but they usually cover a larger variety, including PC exclusives. They just don't have the staff numbers to get articles/reviews about everything they cover so they tend to cover games in many of their video series. I do sometimes cringe when IGN editors are like "hey x game is coming to y console/handheld platform and it's totally awesome" when that game had been on PC for at least a year. It's just weird that they don't even try to play indie games on PC, which is where most of them come first. And indie games obviously don't require a dedicated GPU. Any modern laptop with Intel integrated graphics will play them without a single problem. The myth that PC gaming is janky and difficult is alive and well.

I think the real problem is that a lot of PC-only gamers don't really need coverage because they're already pretty aware of most things in that space. But that might be a massive assumption on my part. Secondly, with the exception of Valve and Blizzard, no massive company spends a ton of money on the PC market. Throughout the year, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo (not to mention third-party publishers) spend tens of millions of dollars just on marketing their products. This creates a massive amount of hype that the PC lacks. And even though most games that show up at E3 or Gamescom or any of the PAXes will come to PC, it's not the main focus. Just this past weekend, Transistor from Supergiant Games was shown on PS4 at PAX East even though it's also coming to PC. And now a lot of people will forget that there is a PC version because their most recent exposure to that game was on PS4. So it's tiny things like that multiplied by a thousand that make it seem like consoles are more important. When in reality, the two markets (PC and console) have largely different audiences.
 

Sentenza

Member
Ok, challenge accepted. I've written extensively about this on the WSJ, so my data sources are out there. But what hard data are you speaking to? If you can show me comparable data that's meaningfully different from what I've seen (again, NPD, SuperData, PwC), then I'm happy to read through it.

Honestly, I feel like there's not enough data out there and I'm constantly looking for more. So I'm really excited to read what you have.
Yeah, no, sorry, I'm not going to work on a business reportage for you fishing from news released all over the last three years just because you "accepted the challenge", whatever that's supposed to mean.

I'm not making shit up and I'm not talking about anything new, nor obscure and mysterious.
This isn't even a particularly new topic. We had DOZENS of threads about the size of these market fragments on this very forum and you could probably track back loads of data and well-developed arguments just checking Opiate's post history, as he apparently loves to dive in and destroy people's expectations every single time those baseless claims on the "self-evident prevalence of consoles" are thrown around.
 

aeolist

Banned
the only game sites in my RSS reader are rock paper shotgun and giantbomb so i'm pretty well covered there

if mainstream sites want to confine themselves to the tepid boredom of the AAA space they're welcome to it
 

Arulan

Member
Regarding sales discussion, this reply from Opiate seems relevant (from another thread).

The PC Gaming alliance is the best we have for estimating PC gaming revenues: http://pcgamingalliance.org/

Relevant chart from 2012:

Slide1.png


Estimates from the same year by DFC Intelligence (the analyst group cited in this thread) also reached the 20B figure:

http://www.develop-online.net/news/pc-games-achieved-record-20bn-revenue-in-2012/0114418

This is from 2012, which makes Nvidia's reported 24 billion figure seem fairly reliable.

http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/04...-24-billion-dollars-yearly-revenue-estimated/
 

Atomski

Member
I think its simply more corporate dollars to throw around. There is no central pc corp who is going to invite you to a gaming press party brought to you by moutain dew and taco bell.
 

iansherr

Neo Member
Yeah, no, I'm not going to work on a business reportage for you fishing from news released all over the last three years just because you "accepted the challenge", whatever that's supposed to mean.

I'm not making shit up and I'm not talking about anything new, nor obscure and mysterious.
This isn't even a particularly new topic. We had DOZENS of threads about the size of these market fragments on this very forum and you could probably track back loads of data and well-developed arguments just checking Opiate's post history, as he apparently loves to dive in and destroy people's expectations every single time those baseless claims on the "self-evident prevalence of consoles" are thrown around.

Trust me, I do my best to keep abreast of all the data out there and keep my eyes out all the time. But I don't catch it all. And moreover, you claim to know something I don't. If you aren't willing to point to it, I don't really know what else to say.
 

Qassim

Member
Ok, challenge accepted. I've written extensively about this on the WSJ, so my data sources are out there. But what hard data are you speaking to? If you can show me comparable data that's meaningfully different from what I've seen (again, NPD, SuperData, PwC), then I'm happy to read through it.

Honestly, I feel like there's not enough data out there and I'm constantly looking for more. So I'm really excited to read what you have.

Are you comparing retail sales? Where do you get data for digital (where the majority of the PC market is)?

We could take an example like BF4, the PC player counts beats every console version consistently except for the PS4. It often manages to pull ahead of the PS4 depending on the time of the day.

Battlefield is one of the most mainstream console titles out there. But I say all this, and when we look at player counts for other PC games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - not a particularly mainstream series these days by console definitions - it has 2.6 times the current player count than the current largest platform for BF4. A hair under the combined player count for *all* console versions (last + current gen) combined (at time of posting).

And CSGO is tiny compared to the biggest PC games. The PC market doesn't exist in places where your tradition consoles do, you don't see Steam sales in NPD, you don't see League of Legends or DoTA represented there, etc.

http://bf4stats.com
http://store.steampowered.com/stats
 

Sentenza

Member
Trust me, I do my best to keep abreast of all the data out there and keep my eyes out all the time. But I don't catch it all. And moreover, you claim to know something I don't. If you aren't willing to point to it, I don't really know what else to say.
Well, someone else apparently preceded me.
You can start checking post #72 just above.
And that's just one source out of many making very similar estimations in the last three years.
 

Omega

Banned
It would be nice if the press wasn't just free marketing for publishers.

Even on GAF you see people react to spec requirement threads and say "welp, going console then" because they can't max out a game.

Imagine if a site like IGN posted some screens of a decent rig playing a game on with a mix of medium/high settings and shows how it outclasses what you could get on consoles anyway

but then they wouldn't be allowed to get free ipads or consoles at the next event, so that'll never happen.
 
I just read the entire OP and I think I agree with everything in it. It's interesting that you point out Dragon Commander, since Swen (Vincke, Larian CEO) blogged about the difficulties in getting the media to cover a mid-sized PC game, especially US media.

Mid-sized in terms of budget obviously, not content!

One of the first things I thought of whilst reading the OP.

http://www.lar.net/2014/03/07/educating-players/

While I still don’t know if Game Informer will write about us in their magazine, I do know that if we hadn’t made the trip to bitter-cold Minneapolis, the reporters over there wouldn’t have paid a lot of attention to Divinity:Original Sin, if at all. Now at least they’ve been sufficiently tickled to give the game a shot and play it together in cooperative multiplayer.

It seems to be a repeating pattern.

We decided on doing another preview tour this late in development (which really is the most inopportune of times) because it became clear that there are still a lot of journalists out there who think of Divinity:Original Sin as a Diablo clone or a Diablo clone with tactical combat. This despite all the videos, walkthroughs, early access content and previews being out there. Better make that, despite the truckload of videos, walkthroughs, early access content and previews out there.

It makes me despair some times and tbh a bit worried too.
 

Llamadeus

Banned
Are you comparing retail sales? Where do you get data for digital (where the majority of the PC market is)?

We could take an example like BF4, the PC player counts beats every console version consistently except for the PS4. It often manages to pull ahead of the PS4 depending on the time of the day.

Battlefield is one of the most mainstream console titles out there. But I say all this, and when we look at player counts for other PC games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - not a particularly mainstream series these days by console definitions - it has 2.6 times the current player count than the current largest platform for BF4. A hair under the combined player count for *all* console versions (last + current gen) combined (at time of posting).

And CSGO is tiny compared to the biggest PC games. The PC market doesn't exist in places where your tradition consoles do, you don't see Steam sales in NPD, you don't see League of Legends or DoTA represented there, etc.

http://bf4stats.com
http://store.steampowered.com/stats

If we're talking about PC vs Console, shouldn't you lump all the console versions of BF4 together vs the PC? Why just cherry pick the PS4 version?

Edit: PC is currently at 38,677. Consoles combined is currently at 124,120.
 

Qassim

Member
If we're talking about PC vs Console, shouldn't you lump all the console versions of BF4 together vs the PC? Why just cherry pick the PS4 version?

I'm not talking about PC vs Console - I'm pointing out the significance of PC even in mainstream titles like Battlefield 4. It isn't "this is bigger than this" it's - "look, this thing you're saying is a fraction of consoles is competing well in the areas you're saying it is so much smaller in".
 

Sentenza

Member
If we're talking about PC vs Console, shouldn't you lump all the console versions of BF4 together vs the PC? Why just cherry pick the PS4 version?
Uh, no?
Actually, it's the other way around; that's what usually happens and I still have no idea why that's the case, as it doesn't make any sense.
 

iansherr

Neo Member
Are you comparing retail sales? Where do you get data for digital (where the majority of the PC market is)?

We could take an example like BF4, the PC player counts beats every console version consistently except for the PS4. It often manages to pull ahead of the PS4 depending on the time of the day.

Battlefield is one of the most mainstream console titles out there. But I say all this, and when we look at player counts for other PC games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - not a particularly mainstream series these days by console definitions - it has 2.6 times the current player count than the current largest platform for BF4. A hair under the combined player count for *all* console versions (last + current gen) combined (at time of posting).

And CSGO is tiny compared to the biggest PC games. The PC market doesn't exist in places where your tradition consoles do, you don't see Steam sales in NPD, you don't see League of Legends or DoTA represented there, etc.

http://bf4stats.com
http://store.steampowered.com/stats



As I mentioned earlier, I use a combination of data from NPD, SuperData (which tracks PC) and PwC (which tracks PC disk and digital sales). I also keep track of what individual companies say, of course. DoTA, LoL, WoT, CSO and others are hard ones because of course, player counts don't = $$.
 

aeolist

Banned
As I mentioned earlier, I use a combination of data from NPD, SuperData (which tracks PC) and PwC (which tracks PC disk and digital sales). I also keep track of what individual companies say, of course. DoTA, LoL, WoT, CSO and others are hard ones because of course, player counts don't = $$.

there's been tons of data published on (insane) revenues from those games, i remember seeing a thread about it just a few days ago
 

Omega

Banned
If we're talking about PC vs Console, shouldn't you lump all the console versions of BF4 together vs the PC? Why just cherry pick the PS4 version?

Edit: PC is currently at 38,677. Consoles combined is currently at 124,120.

yep, cuz 4v1 is a fair comparison.

Even League of Legends probably looks small when you compare the playerbase of every active multiplayer game across all 6 six consoles.
 

DocSeuss

Member
I think it's simply because that while the hardcore PC audience is VERY hardcore, it's also reasonably small compared to the console markets.
I guess most outlets don't really discuss it because their's not enough of an audience there.

PC gaming has definitely had a resurgence, which I mostly put down to Minecraft and partly due to the cheaper-than-ever-before prices and bargains, but all of those people who came for Minecraft won't stay to read the journalism behind it.

That's simply not true.

1) Steam accounts are growing at a rate faster than Xbox Live and PSN.
2) The most-played video games in the world are PC games.
3) Money spent on computer gaming is growing quite a bit. A year or two ago, a higher-up at EA said that the PC may become their biggest platform, based on the way things are growing. He's not the only one.

There's just something about PC gaming that inherently pushes away the mainstream, even in situations where a PC game is actually quite accessible both in term of owning it and in terms of playing it.

Like right now, System Shock 2 is $5 on Steam and was recently made available on Linux (in addition to Mac). You no longer have to mod it up to get it running on today's computers, and it will run on shitty laptops. All you gotta do is just rebind the keys and you can go ahead and play one of the greatest games ever -- the best BioShock game basically. But BioShock fans will probably never notice it until it get's ported to a console.

Right. How many retrospectives are you going to get of that? NOT MANY. Meanwhile, you'll get random stuff about Zelda pretty much all the time. Even just generic retrospectives or whatever are going to talk about it. And ffs, System Shock 2 is literally one of the most influential games ever made, with most of this-gen's biggest titles borrowing mechanics from it in some way, shape, or form. Zelda's influence is nothing compared to SS2 (what, mechanics like Z-targeting and repetitive dungeon design? Obsolete and frequently complained about).

Not trying to disparage Zelda here. It's a bit like saying Jaws isn't as great as The Godfather. They're both EXCELLENT. System Shock 2 just has way more of an impact, and it was pretty much completely ignored on its rerelease.

I do sympathize with not getting technical reviews of PC games since knowledge of performance and bugs are important to know for a platform that doesn't support rentals. Otherwise, I don't have a reason to care whether a reviewer specifically states that he/she played the PC version over a console version.

It's not just technical stuff. The journalists I mentioned as awesome? They're the kind of people who understood how games worked, well enough, in many cases, to make their own. A lot of the console-oriented games journalists write critiques that are pretty much "um, well, I had fun playing it, and it looked nice." Understanding the underlying ideas behind a work of art leads to good criticism.

Some of the best film critics that have ever lived also happen to be some of the best filmmakers. If we want better reviews, then we need the kind of people who actually care about how games are made, designed, and work. We don't get nearly enough of that.

This means basically nothing in context to what he said.

I read almost all of that, by the way.

Thanks. I realize it was long, and ran out of time to throw some pictures in to break up the flow. I am just in a tremendous amount of pain and wanted to distract myself.

As soon as you mentioned Shadow Warrior, I was firmly in agreement. I like to think I keep abreast of gaming news, I'm on GAF for crying out loud, but I would have never heard of Shadow Warrior, or even thought it was a decent title, if I weren't recommended it by a friend. I mean, it has a metacritic score of 73, which doesn't inspire confidence. I bought it for cheap, went in with low expectations, and it took me for a ride. My PC is getting on in years, but it still looked astounding, superb lighting, and the gunplay and swordplay had some of the best game-feel I've experienced in years. The storytelling reminded me of Bulletstorm in some ways, in that it appears infantile on the surface, but betrayed a much more thoughtful nature underneath it. It was one of the best games I had the joy to play last year, and it nearly passed me by.

I mean, I hadn't heard anything about Dragon Commander to make me interested in it before reading this thread. I looked up a couple of videos, and it looks absolutely glorious, and I know I'm going to have to check it out soon. Why don't these games get the attention they deserve? It may well be that they're PC exclusives, but might that be the sole cause? Perhaps it's due to developer pedigree. Larian have more of it, but still very nichey, but Flying Wild Hog only have Hard Reset, which met with a similarly quiet launch. Still not a good excuse.

I get the impression that Rock, Paper, Shotgun are really the best source to find out about these PC games, but that's at the cost of more widespread gaming coverage. I see no reason why PC games would be overlooked elsewhere, particularly when mobile games are given so much unnecessary attention. I would have thought a hardcore gaming website would be much better suited catering to PC gamers rather than mobile gamers.

And OP, do try your best to get to see a doctor soon. I've only heard bad stories from people who had left doctor-visits too late. All best.

What bugs me is that RPS and PCG are the only people who cover this stuff. We should see general gaming websites cover it, and we don't. It's a bunch of people who grew up with console games, and who tend to use macs rather than build their own computers, covering this stuff. People who liked playing games. Some of the writers I'm quick to criticize are people who show now interest in the way games work, just their personal response to them. What they don't get is that their response is influenced by how these games are designed--it's like they don't care about understanding their impressions.

All good points, but I'm looking at this from a higher vantage point. There are some examples where PC versions did better, but the larger industry trends aren't going in that direction. The Steam Machine may change that, but let's leave a question mark above it for now. Currently, most of the smart people in the room agree that PC game sales are still a fraction of consoles, and will be for the foreseeable future.

I'm not dumping on PCs or service platforms for them, but I'm trying to offer some perspective on that point.

The data I've seen indicate that this is far from the truth. If I can get some time--and I probably won't, I've got three or four massive projects to work on this week.

I don't write reviews, so this is a little out of my wheelhouse. But you make a good point here -- I overwhelmingly see console-focused reviews in the many I tend to read. Didn't Ars make a commitment a couple years ago to focus on PCs? I wonder where that went.

Again, part of it's just about coverage. We see spikes in sales when these games get coverage. When do they get coverage? Most often when they're going to get a console version. What we have are primarily console gamers not paying attention to games until these games hit the platforms they prefer--then these people go off and write about them, so the consumers become aware of said games. "People don't read about PC games that much" is very much a self-fulfilling prophecy.

On Twitter, right now, a dev has posted a question asking whether it's common to get requests for console codes after the PC version has already been reviewed. In all my time, I've seen a great deal of sites go back and review a game once it's rereleased on consoles--I don't think I've ever seen a site review the PC version.

Games journalism is VERY MUCH "meh, I don't care--oh, now it's on consoles? Sure, let's cover it!"

This is again getting a little out of my wheelhouse, since I make an active effort not to be promotional in my coverage, but I'm curious why posts about trailers matter to anyone other than the companies and their PR agencies who meticulously track this type of thing. Do you want to see the game succeed and so you believe additional coverage (even a paragraph and a YouTube link) will do that?

Consider another aspect of this: A lot of indies (and particularly small ones) do not employ PR people. PR people have databases and blast lists and know which reporters cover what, etc. Of course, reporters need to go out and learn about these types of games on their own, but there's only so much time in a day.

This I take issue with. I think you're assuming that correlation and causation. Unless a journalist has said they flat out refuse, my guess is that they don't have resources to cover every turn of the screw for every game.

1. I have spoken with indies who have been flat-out refused.

2. I pitched several articles to some sites recently. One site accepted some stuff, but rejected a piece of mine about one of the weirdest indie games in development right now (and its designer has a really cool personal story, I think, as he's very much an outsider to games), on the grounds that they'd "covered it before." The only article they had was one for the Kickstarter. This same site has run about 30-40 articles on various Pokemon-related stuff (including multiple reposts of dorkly comics) during 2014.

I feel that this is pretty typical of games coverage on the whole. "Sure, we'll post whatever we can find about pokemon games, even just fanart or whatever, but there's no way we want a feature on an upcoming indie game." When I hear that the biggest gaming publications in existence are saying "no, we won't talk about your game, or even mention your Kickstarter," this says, to me, "this is a problem."

I'm not a relic of anything. Have you read my NPD coverage? Or any other times I cite game sales data? Nearly all the time now, I include a lot more data than just NPD, and I'm constantly looking out for new sources of information (like SuperData, PwC, and comments from companies themselves). I've made a concerted effort to offer the broadest view of the market possible.

That said, if you have any specific details or insights to share about they way I've covered the economics of the industry, I'm all ears--I'm always looking to improve the way I write these stories.

Very little of this will give you PC figures, because digital distributors do not report their sales figures, most of the time. A good way to see where things are is to look at the quarterly financial reports of publishers by breakdown. We've seen a push towards Steamworks by many large publishers--Sega, for instance, actually went back and converted Company of Heroes to Steam, though they had no obligation to do so. Many games are removing GFWL, or engaging in better port practices, and their sales are growing. Several large publishers have indicated that the PC makes a great deal of their money--iirc, Ubisoft, Bethesda, and EA have all said things to this effect. For smaller games, read up on postmortems by their developers.

iOS, for instance, gets a TON of coverage. A TON. I believe it was fellow gaffer chubigans, who released his game Cook, Serve, Delicious on iOS, who said that he might as well have not wasted the time porting his game to mobile devices. It wasn't worthh the cost of the time it spent. He made most of his money on computers, specifically through Steam.

Even random, obscure iOS games (that are good!) get plenty of coverage.

I'm bothered about retro computer gaming is often ignored, I know this is often due to websites being understandably American centric but it's an important part of videogame history.

You see it most in discussions about the videogame crash that don't take into account the fact Europe wasn't as badly effected, or people pointing out that NES games were far more expensive than today's titles whilst ignoring something like the C64 budget range.

I gotta admit, I'd be bad at talking about retro computer gaming. My personal forte is from the mid-90s onward. But I wish more people talked about it.

Hard data tell us otherwise.
It could be argued that sales for specific titles tend to be higher on consoles (which isn't even a constant, by the way) but the amount of gaming software sold as a whole is an entirely different story.

You're right. What we tend to see is consoles selling more at launch, but PC games selling more in the long run. The money spent on PC gaming is ridiculously high, and growing.

Where did you get this from Starbreeze has never released the platform split only that 80% of the sales were digital. Anyway I agree that alot of it comes from the media only focusing on big release titles and ignoring medium to small titles. Maybe with the shift in indies on console it may make sites reevaluate how they cover games for pc. Unfortunately there is only so much time and web space so coverage will always be limited.

Spoke with someone who worked on the project about it.

What you're looking at is something approaching about 75% of all sales being on Steam, and 12-13% for both consoles. The PC SKU sold waaaay better, and basically saved the ompany.
 

aeolist

Banned
yep, cuz 4v1 is a fair comparison.

Even League of Legends probably looks small when you compare the playerbase of every active multiplayer game across all 6 six consoles.

actually at this point LoL probably dwarfs the active communities for every console multiplayer game put together
 
I think the places people go to get coverage of games is changing now. instead if reading a preview on IGN people will watch a YouTube personality or a Twitch stream. I also think the extended generation pushed more journalists to the PC. Giant Bomb's PC coverage has increase substantially over the past 2 years compared to when they started.
 
PC game coverage has never been greater. It is amusing to see all the people jumping to PC gaming now that it is trendy again and then complain about the coverage for it.

Way to conform to the stereotype PC superiority complex OP.
 

TheD

The Detective
If we're talking about PC vs Console, shouldn't you lump all the console versions of BF4 together vs the PC? Why just cherry pick the PS4 version?

Edit: PC is currently at 38,677. Consoles combined is currently at 124,120.

Because each console is not the same FFS!
Games binaries for a PS4 will not work on a XB1. Games have to be programmed for a console, pass what ever technical requirements a console maker sets out and pay their fees to the console maker for each console.

Using the numbers from all consoles combined to shit on the PC is crap that only console fanboys do.
 

Sentenza

Member
You're right. What we tend to see is consoles selling more at launch, but PC games selling more in the long run. The money spent on PC gaming is ridiculously high, and growing.
No, that's not what I meant.
I mean, there's that too, but my point was a bit different. To recap:
- Consoles tend to sell a lot of copies with few, selected heavy hitters.
- On PC you have hundreds of different games that build their own niche over time. Some of those are more or less negligible and/or even complete failures, of course. Still, a lot of "mid-tier" and indies games find a very fertile ground to build their own success, even if not necessarily on a scale deserving a nine columns title with exclamation marks.
 

Tain

Member
FriedConsole said:
PC game coverage has never been greater. It is amusing to see all the people jumping to PC gaming now that it is trendy again and then complain about the coverage for it.

Game coverage in general has probably never been greater, but we're talking about the very noticeable disparity.
 

lewisgone

Member
I have a feeling that there wouldn't be a huge number of Animal Crossing articles (I don't know if that is true or not) if they didn't get enough hits to be worthwhile. There might be some writer-bias there too, but do you really want articles written by someone who is not interested or knowledgeable in the subject matter at all? Hiring someone who is interested, like you suggested, even "below the poverty line" might not even guarantee a return in investment. It's hard to tell when you don't know any of the numbers.
 
And CSGO is tiny compared to the biggest PC games. The PC market doesn't exist in places where your tradition consoles do, you don't see Steam sales in NPD, you don't see League of Legends or DoTA represented there, etc.

http://bf4stats.com
http://store.steampowered.com/stats

CSGO is a good example to use here. Compare it to Halo 4, the latest Halo game. Both of these games came out in 2012. Going by this population graph, Halo 4's numbers these days are about ~15k. CSGO on PC regularly peaks at 130+k nowadays, two years post-release. Would you say these games got similar levels of hype/coverage? I wouldn't, especially with CSGO having a PC focus and being a historical PC series. And it is clear the market hasn't followed only that which the games press judges to be hot, maybe if they did give it it's fair due of coverage they would have gotten the clicks they so desire, because there is clearly a huge base of people interested in the game.

Also, the recent Steam statistics published by ArsTechnica showed Borderlands 2 sales to be 3.2 million on PC , where the last time they talked overall sales they said 8.5million total. That would make PC sales a huge and significant chunk of the total. I think a lot of games press underestimate how the PC market is doing.
 

Atolm

Member
The market dictates what is published, written and covered. You already acknowledged this more or less. So it is not out of bias, or hate. If IGN could write endless articles about some PC game and get insane amount of page views, they would. We all know they would, so would every other publication.

There might be 94 billion League of Legends players, but a very small fraction of them give a shit to read what some journo thinks about their game or any other PC game. WoW players hang around official Bnet forums, MMO champ and Arena Junkies, they do not care about IGN, Gamespot, Gametrailers or anyone else. Shane Satterfield even noted years ago that he wasent even sure why they were producing a WoW Expansion video review, because that community did not care what they think anyway.

There seems to be a divide in the PC gaming community, where there is no central hub for everyone to gather around, perhaps because of negligence through the years, so they stick with communities and sites that only cover their own game. So sites that cover little bit of everything never get their traffic. Thus no content is produced for them.

Everyone on GAF knows these sites, because consoles are pretty prominent in this community, everyone more or less knows who Jeff Gerstmann is here. But you go ask in a random game of WoW, Minecraft or League who or what "Giant Bomb" is and i bet very few players will even recognize what it is.

This divide is nothing new, back in late 90s i used to hang around PlanetQuake, Heat forums, Diabloii.net, TeamLiquid and many other game specific places because they were the biggest sites for these specific games. Fan sites certainly have existed for popular console games, but they were nowhere near as big as PlanetQuake, TeamLiquid etc.


Maybe i am projecting how i play and enjoy PC games compared to how i play and enjoy console games. But i dont sit around and play a console game for 4-5+ years, whereas i have played Brood War, Diablo 2, Unreal Tournament, Quake 2, WoW for years on end. So having a more hardcore and indepth place was preferably to IGN telling me awkwardly how to Zerg rush in Starcraft or GameTrailers giving me Arena tips for WoW. Perhaps this is how many players treat PC gaming differently, hence the popularity of those game/series specific sites.

I think this post here sums it up. Your average LoL, Dota or whatever PC exclusive game player doesn't give a shit about media coverage, and the press goes the other way. It's a chicken/egg situation, I think.
 

epmode

Member
OP has it absolutely right. Seeing Dragon Warrior and Kentucky Route Zero outright ignored by so many outlets is very disappointing. I expect a console-focused site like GAF to overlook them but I always hope for more unbiased coverage from general review sites.

RPS isn't perfect by any means but I'm so glad that they exist to shine a light on PC exclusives.
 

iansherr

Neo Member
there's been tons of data published on (insane) revenues from those games, i remember seeing a thread about it just a few days ago

True, but the question is that in aggregate, are they larger than aggregate sales for consoles? From the data sources I've seen so far, the answer is no, but I'm keeping my eye out.
 
A rant that grossly generalizes about the attitudes of hundreds of journalists?

wSvoup5.gif


Game sites talk a lot about PC games. Minecraft, DayZ, Rust, League of Legends, Dota 2, and Elder Scrolls Online are some of the current examples. Do some of the smaller indie games get lost in the shuffle? Yes but that happens for every platform, even consoles.
 
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