Comments on: Stupid single-player games ruining it for MMO’s!

By: DPirate

DPirate — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 02:29:50 +0000

This is some sort of joke? First, most of the really good single-player games (and designers/programmers) are genre products with limited appeal. Paradox Entertainment, for instance, or a lot of the games put out by Matrix. Second, my memories of WoW are that it’s success was predicated upon being polished upon release and bringing a single-player mentality to the MMO genre (best of both worlds type of thing), and not that it was innovative in any major way, though perhaps it was somehow. No PvP for the first couple years likely helped as well.

More to MY point, the success of WoW is realized by it’s mediocrity, exemplified by it’s cartoon feel. It is the Risk of boardgame wargaming, and the MASH of tv shows. Comparisons between WoW and other MMOs make me think of Risk vs. Squad Leader, and MASH vs. Nova. The popularity, of either WoW or some single-player game which everyone is attracted to, does not demonstrate greatness, is what I am saying. If we substitute Budweiser for WoW in your post, does it follow that microbrews suck?

By: The “Death” of PC Games « Inside Voice

The “Death” of PC Games « Inside Voice — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 16:09:15 +0000

[...] gave Dusty a hard time for his recent assertion that the death of PC gaming wasn’t due to MMOs but rather five years of shit games. I probably should have beat him up for suggesting that there has been any “death” at [...]

By: Acronymicon: MGORPG « Tish Tosh Tesh

Acronymicon: MGORPG « Tish Tosh Tesh — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:11:39 +0000

[...] Stupid Single Player Games Ruining it for MMOs (Dusty) [...]

By: Links of the week « Welcome to Spinksville!

Links of the week « Welcome to Spinksville! — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:26:01 +0000

[...] Anyone else noticed that lots of people are easing up on their MMO playing at the moment because of all the great single player games that have been coming out? Dusty asks (tongue in cheek?) whether single player games are ruining our MMOs. [...]

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:10:29 +0000

“What has killed PC gaming for the past five years has been the fact that, by far and large every game released for the PC outside of WoW (and the Sims) has been absolute SHIT.”

I know it’s subjective, plus I haven’t played everything, but here’s a provisional list of some well-known “not shit” games from the last five years:

2005: KOTOR2, Darwinia, BiA, SWAT4, Trackmania, Psychonauts, GTA:SA, Fahrenheit, FEAR, Civ4…
2006: Oblivion, Hitman Blood Money, PREY, CoH, NWN2…
2007: STALKER, Bioshock, Portal, TF2, The Witcher, Crysis…
2008: World of Goo, Dead Space, Fallout 3, L4D…
2009: Braid… (and obviously a bunch of newer ones which I haven’t ‘digested’ yet – personally I prefer to have a bit more perspective than a week or so before pronouncing something as a ‘classic’)

I do miss the more quirky, offbeat and ‘hardcore’ style of games that seemed to occur between 1998 and 2002, before the mass ‘buy-up’ of minor studios by the massive multinational ones.

By: heartlessgamer

heartlessgamer — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:24:43 +0000

I think PC gaming is misrepresented. It is easily the most profitable platform for any company that approaches it correctly. No, its not great for the big boys that only push out the latest hardcore 3D games because PC hardware varies so much. However, that is such a small part of PC gaming that it should be outlawed to have it represent ALL of PC gaming as it currently is portrayed in the media.

PC gaming is broad and I firmly believe at some point we’re going to see a group like NPD actually track the entire spectrum of PC gaming and go “oh shit, we’ve missed the golden goose”.

By: UK_John

UK_John — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:37:22 +0000

The reason for the decline in PC gaming was the decline in hardcore RPG’s. The resurgence in PC gaming is because we have had Divine Divinity, Spellforce, Two Worlds, The Witcher, Drakensang, Risen, Fallout 3, Torchlight and Draghon Age: Origins, all in the space of a couple years. We haven’t had that many RPG’s on PC in a decade! Hence the resurgence.

Don’t believe me? Well, in terms of PC units sold worldwide, Two Worlds, The Witcher and Risen have sold more as individual titles than Bioshock, Crysis, FEAR, Far Cry 2, Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space and Left for Dead did individually on PC. Combine all the ales of the RPG’s and all the sales of the shooters and you have an almost 3 to 1 ratio!

While the shooters mentioned sell well in North America, where most of the media is, the belief is they are huge hits, hardcore RPG’s sell worldwide! The Witcher has sold more in just Germany and Poland than Bioshock did in North America for example.

Now granted, shooters are easy to release on console too, but if we’re talking PC. PC gamers will only buy RPG’s in their millions. Not action-RPG’s or shooter-RPG’s, but good old fashioned RPG’s. For example, in terms of PC sales Dragon Age is walking all over Borderlands!

To the extent that next year, and the two years after that probably, we will be back to maybe two or three real RPG’s (I am hoping Fallout: New Vegas is one of them!), making the average one a year, I expect this PC ‘resurgence’ to come to an end.

Diablo III a PC only game, has been delayed beyond 2010, for example, and Mass Effect 2 is going to be even more shooter and less RPG than Mass Effect 1 was, according to Bioware. It’s still being called an action-RPG though – because even publishers think if you add ‘RPG’ to the genre, you sell more. I say make games like Jade Empire and Mass Effect real RPG’s and you would have sold just as many on console and four times as many on PC…!!

By: Dusty

Dusty — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:18:14 +0000

@Ian M. Fischer:

heheh well sweeping generalizations are just that, and exceptions to them can almost always be found. Those were indeed outstanding games, but those were rare diamonds, imho, in a sea of crap that gamers had to choose from, including such hits as Sin Episodes, Locomotion, and Singles: Flirt up your life. There *were* some good ones, to be sure. But most of it was crap — OR, second thought ports of 1st run console games.

I completely agree with the second part of what you said, and was essentially what I was saying — publishers were throwing all their money at console developement, and ergo, there wasn’t much to be had outside of the Sims and MMO’s for orginal PC titles. And yeah, MS pretty much effectively abandoning the PC as a gaming platform was certainly a huge part of that.

I think the resurgance is a combination of digital distribution and the growth of the of the web as a platform (which is also sort of “digital distribution”).

By: The Sunday Papers | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The Sunday Papers | Rock, Paper, Shotgun — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:05:53 +0000

[...] pointed me at this piece of slightly tongue-in-cheek commentary about stupid Single Player Games ruining it for MMOs. Point being, who has a chance for an MMO when there’s so much actually compelling single or [...]

By: Ian M. Fischer

Ian M. Fischer — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:08:34 +0000

Come on, Dusty.

What killed PC gaming for the past five years was that everything released for the PC has been shit? Really?

Battlefield 2? Guild Wars? Civ 4? Half Life 2? Oblivion? Call of Duty 4? Age 3?

Come on.

What “killed” PC gaming was several billion dollars of cash tossed around by MS in their attempt to go after Sony and Sony’s (eventual) response in kind to this threat. It shouldn’t shock anyone to see a decline in PC sales after retailers reduce their shelf space by 75% and large numbers of PC devs are courted fot Xbox / 360 / PS3 launch titles….

The resurgence underway now is due only to digital distro coming of age….