I'm a Civ Dodo.
As game consoles continue expanding their memory and console games thus become more sophisticated, will consoles eventually supplant computers as game platforms? The debate smolders along, sustained by newsgroup cross-pollination. Right now, consoles are superbly suited to video games and near relatives, but unable to cope with the intensive strategy simulations like Civilization, SimCity, and Age of Empires. Oh, there may be adaptations – my brother had a SimCity (I) cartridge for his Nintendo – but the interface handles badly, and some of the more complicated features go missing when a game migrates from computer to console. So the question of computer games’ survival worries those of us who like to test our analytic skills rather than our reflexes.
For a while, I was reassured by an argument that went something like this: until and unless consoles can do what home computers do, they won’t be able to compete, and computer games will survive; if and when consoles progress that far, no one need care that computer games die. That made a lot of sense, but I’m beginning to fear it overestimates the strategy market.
Game design shares two traits with the rest of the electronic media industry: it’s a high-risk business, and it thrives on uniformity of format. Together, these facts create a dreadful Darwinian environment, where mass marketing trumps actual quality. Given a choice, some customers will buy one system, others will buy other systems. But whichever system has the largest customer base enjoys an enormous advantage: software developers will naturally be attracted to the largest market share. More titles will come out for the more popular system, or at least a version compatible with that system will hit the shelves first. New customers, attracted by the greater availability of titles in the most popular system, will buy into that market, creating a positive feedback. Customers who want to share data with their friends tend strongly to buy what their friends already own. When competing systems are evenly balanced, quality can play a decisive roll in tipping the scales, but more often, market share alone determines the fate of competing formats. Witness how VHS wiped out Beta, and PCs stole the market from Apple.
Now, if computers and consoles weren’t competing for market share, there would be no problem. Unfortunately, many gamers like both, and companies seeking to broaden their base find it much easier to get a hardened micromanagement grognard to spend a few hours popping soldiers in Field of Honor than to get a twitch-gaming sniper to spend several months plumbing Master of Orion. Maybe the liquidity of teens, time constraints on adults, and shortening attention spans of both are taking their toll, but I see the invisible hand of market pressure at work.
Back up my claim? Consider worrying trend one: the progression of revolutionary computer games, and of the dominant genre following in their wakes. There has been a clear evolution from 4X games following the lead of Civilization. through RTS games in the mold of Warcraft, to first-person shooters pioneered by Doom. Every step has been towards speed, graphic flash, and portability to consoles, at the expense of planning, depth, and exploiting the computer’s advantages.
Worrying trend two: shelf space devoted to computer games shrinks yearly in mall outlets, making way for more platform games. We’ve reached a point where used console games get more space than new computer games. Whatever the gamers may claim they want to see, you can bet the stores are voting their pocketbooks.
Worrying trend three: an increasing percentage of computer games are rapidly ported to console. The turnover is fast enough that reviewers in CGW complain of needlessly simple game design, and needlessly awkward interface – needless, that is, for computers. The “dumbing down,” by coincidence, is just great enough to handle a game with two joysticks and eight buttons.
That’s the flaw in the argument that computer games will survive as long as they do things consoles can’t: consoles can do almost everything a computer game can do these days, nearly enough that short-sighted executives will order designers to cut important corners. Consoles just can’t do it all as well, or as smoothly, or as fun. Take the fun out of the computer games, and gamers will stop buying them. Stop buying computer games, and quality companies will stop trying to write them.
I worry that games that I will play are going the way of the dodo, and I’ll be stuck rehashing my favorites forever. At least it will save me the need to upgrade my system periodically.