dal numero 85 di
Develop MagazineFULL STEAM AHEAD
Some of the biggest developers are saying that the PC is dying as a gaming platform. But one in particular – Half-Life
and Portal creator Valve – thinks that the PC is where the next generation is going to happen first, as Ed Fear finds out…
Apparently, the PC is dead as a gaming platform. Piracy, increasing console userbases, the nightmare of drivers and
infinite hardware combinations – all too much for the increasingly profit-hungry industry. Which makes it all the stranger to be sitting in Valve’s industrially-themed meeting room – more prominent pipes and metalwork guns
than executive plush – alongside a handful of other journalists from across the world. After all, if PC gaming is dead, why is Valve still here? The answer, you might be thinking, is that Valve exists in a bizarre in-between space. It’s
primarily a developer, but it only partners with publishers for distribution. It’s a developer, but it also publishes other people’s products online through the massively-popular Steam network.
It’s a developer, but – well, it’s more.
Is that why Valve is still here? Is this why we’re all assembled here? The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is no. The reason, it soon manifests, is that Valve is concerned – or perhaps more accurately perplexed – about the
bizarre sequence of stories and reports that has sparked this poor platform’s funeral procession. Rather than being a development graveyard best left fallow during the console crop’s harvest, Valve is keen to get the message out
that, actually, the PC is the best place for a game developer to be.
SEEING THINGS
“There’s a perception problem: the stories that are being written are not a true reflection of what’s really actually happening,” explains Valve co-founder and honcho Gabe Newell.
“I mean, go ask [Blizzard president] Rob Pardo if PC gaming is dead – if he can take the time out from making money hats, I’m sure he’ll give you a really eloquent explanation of why probably the most valuable entertainment
franchise of the moment is PC-specific.”
The misconception stems from the fact that online commerce – be it sales of digitally distributed games, subscriptions, microtransactions or whatever – remains untracked and under-represented by organisations such as NPD and ChartTrack, and it’s leading analysts to make assumptions based on massively incorrect data. Is it fair to judge a market on figures that don’t include the fact that, for example, Blizzard makes $120 million in gross revenue a month? Or on figures that usually only reflect English-language territories, ignoring massive opportunities such as China and Korea and emerging markets like Russia? Even if you just consider vanilla MMOs alone, the figures significantly out, says Newell.
“Essentially, Blizzard is creating a new Iron Man each month in the studio in terms of the revenue they’re generating. Any movie studio that was doing that would be heaped with praise, but all of this is essentially invisible to the way that data is being aggregated and recorded. You’ve got MMOs, online, ourselves, GameTap, Metaboli, PopCap, RealArcade, Nexon – and all are completely invisible to business press and stock analysts.”
Not everyone has the infrastructure or time to develop a World of Warcraft competitor, of course – and even those that do still can’t seem to find that special something – but that’s actually the point Valve is really trying to make:
that by embracing online and treating games as an ongoing entertainment ‘service’, small teams can make tight games and foster a community that can continue to support a company for a long time, much in the way that Warcraft’s player base sustains Blizzard.
Experimenting with player relationships in this way can only really be done on the PC, Newell explains, because the PC’s open nature means that it’s the best place to innovate, and the only place you can try out new models
without the restrictions of a format holder. “It’s the place where innovative new business models are coming from. Given the vast amount of R&D done on the PC, consoles are really just becoming stepchildren of the capital
investments being made there. In the future, in the 2010 timeframe, the next generation of gaming standards are going to be established not by the Nintendos and Sonys of this world, but by Intel and Nvidia.[/i]”
TANGLED WEB
If you’re wondering why Valve is championing the online model, well, it thinks it has a solution – Steam and Steamworks. The combination of the Steam delivery platform and the free Steamworks community functionality can
provide developers with detailed play metrics, helping designers to recognise choke points or imbalances and then iterate accordingly.
“Not only does doing that help your business people make better decisions, it’s also having a huge impact on game designs themselves,” says Newell. “Iteration and managing risk are the keys to being able to innovate – we really believe that taking smaller, riskier steps will end up taking your game designs further faster.”
And if you want an example, look no further than Valve’s own Team Fortress 2, which has been updated 53 times since its October 2007 release in response to player feedback. “It’s really about having an entertainment
service with the community – all of our decisions are geared towards how can we do something that’s interesting and exciting. If we see that users want movies in Team Fortress 2 – like we are – and we can see its impact on sales
and on gifting, well yeah, we’re going to do that. It’s moving towards that mindset – people thinking ‘how can I generate web hits on to my servers?’ are much closer to the mentality for what’s going to be successful going forward.”
Newell is quick to mention that, in all fairness, it shouldn’t be Valve championing this particular cause – the aim is not to promote Steam, rather the PC as a whole – but that the decentralised management structure of the PC platform means that there’s no PR army on hand to put a positive spin on any story. “The people who traditionally drive these messages, like Intel or Microsoft or Apple, are not very effective for various reasons,” he explains.
“Intel and Apple both have anti-gaming positions that they’ve traditionally followed – although that’s changing now. Microsoft has clearly decided to create a closed proprietary platform so that they don’t have to compete
with the YouTubes and Googles of the world. The success of everyone else in the space effects all the others – if Nvidia does better, we do better. If Crytek makes an awesome engine, it’ll drive Intel’s sales. We recognise that we’re
part of this and we’re trying to do our part.”
[...]
Riassunto veloce. Secondo Gabe Newell il mercato PC non è in crisi ma anzi gode di buona salute perché:
- WoW genera 120 milioni di dollari lordi al mese;
- NPD e Chart Track, oltre ai vari analisti del settore, trascurano in maniera massiccia l'online, quando invece ci sono miriadi di transazioni;
- I mercati considerati sono solo quelli in lingua inglese, che al giorno d'oggi non costituiscono la sola realtà videoludica prosperante nel mondo (basti pensare a Cina e Corea del Sud);
- ovviamente il successo di Steam.
Buoni motivi secondo cui insistere sul mercato PC consisterebbero in:
- maggiore contatto tra developer e utente, che crea un meccanismo di miglioramento del prodotto anche post-uscita;
- libertà di sperimentazione di nuovi franchise;
- nessuna royalty da pagare ai costruttori.
Inoltre, Newell prevede che saranno Nvidia e Intel i reali attori del videoludo nel prossimo decennio, perché si sono finalmente accorti delle potenzialità del settore, perché, secondo lui, "se Crytek realizza un engine stupendo, allora potrà guidare le vendite di Intel".
Personalmente, non sono molto d'accordo con:
- insistere sull'esempio di Blizzard: quante compagnie possono vantare di aver raggiunto risultati paragonabili?
- pensare che immettere sul mercato videogiochi più esosi in termini di requisiti hardware possa giovare ai produttori di cpu e schede video: semmai è il contario; ricordo una survey condotta proprio da Valve secondo la quale la stragrande maggioranza degli utenti di Steam possedeva macchine ben lungi dall'essere top di gamma.
Se il mercato PC troverà nuovi spazi e nuove declinazioni attraverso le quali potrà dimostrare grande vitalità non può che farmi piacere, perché è vero che molti sviluppatori indipendenti solo in tale ambiente hanno completa libertà, oltre al fatto che personalmente trovo una piattaforma open ma ben guidata dai costruttori (mediante la PC Gaming Alliance già costituita, ad esempio) preferibile alla chiusura delle attuali console.
Che ne pensate?
