"I think the mainstream PC market has been hurt lately by people investing too much money into too elaborate projects that are too speculative and too risky. That's made publishers now super gun-shy to really do anything in the mainstream PC market."

It would be nice of him, to name those projects, I can't remember elaborate projects, that were to speculative and risky for the PC in the last years. Don't really know what he is talking of, the PC market has big problems, that are hardware related (too much incompability, lack of wide gamepad support, etc.), but I don't think the problem were to elaborate games.

I agree Christian. I think part of his statement is more marketing spin than honest opinion. It sort of contradicts his own game however, since his game is new IP designed around an elaborate game design that is looking to extend out to MMO. If that's not risky for a fledgling company then I don't know what is. PC has a lot of issues, but I don't think that "too elaborate" games is one of them =). I blame integrated video cards; die IV cards, die already.

So you guys don't think the 20 MMO games released each year to bee too risky? or the FPS games that require next years graphics cards to run properly?

Think back at all the failed games and companies leaving the PC space. What did they do? They produced risky games and expect to be successful.

What's elaborate in 20 MMo games each year, what's risky in developing a graphic engine, that every owner of a new GFX card will buy for benchmarking and impressing-his-friends issues?
Those games aren't risky, speculative or elaborate.

Nowadays on PC, you can release games online - let's say in web browsers or Facebook, and to some extent with updated downloadable games - with a much smaller amount of the game complete. You can then see what the public thinks and keep on iterating it. So I would absolutely agree that these massive 'sink or swim' projects are risky, especially on PC where there are now alternatives. I bet that's one of the reasons why Torchlight is coming out as a single-player game first, _then_ extending to an MMO. It's a really smart way to gauge fan response, see what works, and tune things appropriately.

Torchlight is a great name...it's hard to get a name right...and that evokes the genre and setting well.

I just want to agree with Andrew and add that Torchlight is one of the best game names I've ever heard. I actually brought it up in the full version of this interview because I was so pleased.

I'm curious about this as well. What PC games have failed, taking the PC game market down with them, for being "too elaborate projects that are too speculative and too risky"? If you're going to criticize, name names so that the suspects can defend themselves. And what makes the PC platform uniquely susceptible to the claimed effect compared to consoles (particularly the Wii) on which some "speculative" games have also underperformed?

I see this claim (and the interviewer's agreement that the PC traditionally did "middle tier" games) as reading history exactly backwards. The PC has historically been the platform of choice for interestingly complex games because it has had more resources (memory, hard drive space) than consoles, as well as a much more flexible control mechanism (keyboard, then keyboard+mouse).

Blaming innovation and depth of gameplay (or blaming the PC platform for most effectively supporting those features) as a reason for gamers moving to consoles seems odd when we know that -- unlike each console -- there's no one manufacturer motivated to aggressively promote the PC platform or make back-room exclusivity deals for "elaborate" games for it.

Assuming that Runic want to make a game that's relatively simple compared to what the PC platform has traditionally made possible, that's not an unreasonable business/design decision. Why is it necessary to promote that choice by criticizing games that offer more depth?

If a PC game marketplace that is somewhat "hit-driven" is the price to pay for letting game designers try the occasional product that offers real depth of choice in gameplay, why is that too high a price compared to the danger of stagnation by offering too many small games that copy each other, or of dissipating a studio's creative energies by expanding into multiple untested hardware markets?

Bart,

My comment as the interview was not at all suggesting that such games have any less depth. My point was that developers COULD make games that were riskier from a design standpoint on the PC because they were less financially risky. In the 90s on the PC, which is where I played most of my games, there was tons of innovation and quality coming out of small teams, many evolving out of garage developers. Often those games would be less polished than their console counterparts, but that's what you get when you're doing more with interactivity. Eventually we started getting stuff like Ion Storm and these other insanely opulent PC superstar studios, and they all tanked or at least scaled down and became considerably less relevant.

With a few exceptions, PC games in the 90s were expected to sell SIGNIFICANTLY less than their console counterparts, but they were also budgeted accordingly. They didn't have the same TV advertising, they didn't have the same market awareness, they weren't as accessible. And yet amazing stuff was consistently done on the PC, and many studios were successful for a long time. Another problem now is that publishers put out multiplatform games with one (usually badly ported) PC version, and the PC version sells less than the console version, and then that's seen as a poor reflection on the PC. Well, that kind of release has never been what PC gaming was about. While I personally still play most multiplatforms on PC, most people obviously don't.

To me, the PC should still be a place where relatively smaller teams can make more innovative, interesting games with less financial burden. After all, shareware was born on the PC. When it comes to the home market, single-author games were always most prevalent on the PC. Garage developers were always most prevalent on the PC. I don't think these things are coincidences.

It's also true that a lot of people just like using consoles better for their convenience. That can't be denied as a factor. It's getting easier than ever, but I do hope the video card manufacturers and Microsoft get it in shape at some point to ensure compatibility guarantees that are a lot better than what we have now.

Chris, excellent points. Thanks for taking the time to help me better understand the questions that were asked and the context for the responses.

I will admit I'm still not entirely convinced. :) Console-focused studios have cratered or restructured as well, and some relatively large and baroque games on the PC have done rather nicely for their makers -- Bethesda Softworks comes to mind. The once-independent BioWare also did well making big PC games that pushed a few envelopes.

Certainly there's more risk in creating a big and innovative game than a small and innovative game. But to view this risk as so great -- relative to the risks faced by developers of other kinds of games on other platforms -- as to prescribe that PC developers should just stop even trying to make big, innovative games... I have trouble with that.

Again, I certainly have no arguments against a developer who wants to make small and innovative games for the PC. The question is, what about the developer who wants to make a big, innovative game for the PC, and who can find a publisher willing to accept the risk?

If they tank, do they really do worse long-term damage to the PC platform than a console developer whose equally elephantine game crashes and burns?

Or to put it another way, what makes developing large, innovative games for the PC more dangerous than developing similar games for a console? Is the PC game marketplace really so fragile in some way that it just can't afford to take any major risks?

If PC gamers must resign themselves to playing only games that are either big-but-conventional or brief-but-innovative, that's hardly an endorsement of the PC as a platform that deserves to survive.

None of which, of course, should take away from the overall focus of the interview on Runic and Torchlight. Good luck to all!

@Christian: Spore would be an example of a high-risk PC only venture. Many years in development, tons of money put into it, for a game with broad/hard-to-define gameplay mechanics. When a game like that is considered somewhat a flop in the consumer's collective conscience, it sends red flags to publishers about greenlighting that kind of game in the future. Throw in a recession that has hit most major developers, and you have a recipe for a slew of low-risk, high-reward games. These games may not redefine the gaming industry, but they will keep giant publishers alive.

I agree with what people have said above, and as I quick note I think that all FPS are better on the PC because of the keyboard/mouse peripherals. And certain game genders are still virtually impossible to produce on consoles, like RTSs (or even MMOs to a certain extent). So there are still reasons why PC gaming can be at the forefront or the gaming industry.

As for Schaefer's comment that publishers are "investing too much money into too elaborate projects that are too speculative and too risky", well how exactly do casual games fit into this? I would not consider a simple puzzle game to be elaborate, expensive, or speculative. Sure, it may be a risk, but that's because it takes little effort (compared to most AAA titles) to produce. Especially if the game is download or in-broswer only. This the one advantage of the pc market, casual games are easy, cheap, and have low risk assessments, but can still become tremendously popular (like bejewled or Mafia Wars).

@Justin

I agree with you, Spore was a risky and elaborate game, but I wouldn't say it was a flop, the franchise sold 3.2 mio copies in the last 12 months according to this Gamasutra article (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25509), as far as I know, the franchise appeared on the DS and the iPhone apart from the PC, but from my knowledge neither of this versions made it up high into the charts, so my guess is that the majority of this 3.2 million copies go to the PC version, which I think is an awful lot.

This is an incredibly relevant topic considering the NPD #s recently and the paradigm shift from physical to digital product that is in heavy play. I think PC games made it possible for console games to exist, and PC games are alive and robust as ever. If we point to examples such as WoW, Mafia Wars, Pet Society, Steam, Addicting Games, and so on, we see a huge surge in PC upside, from MMOs to casual.

Most publishers acknowledge this and are investing heavily into emerging platforms, especially for PC and iPhone. I think publishers are still primarily attracted in the console space due to the huge investments and infrastructures that have been created to develop and publish these products ongoing. Also, retail doesn't provide a ton of space for PC box product anymore. Consumers buy what’s on the shelf still.

The Torchlight game is really interesting next to the other games from Perfect World. Its more westernized in every way. Finally, I don't think successful publishers are as nervous about investing in PC games as they are nervous to invest in MMOs that compete against WoW. There's plenty of room for contemporarily relevant and newer genre MMOs. The fantasy genre is a tougher one due to the behemoth IP that dominates the world.

I think that business thrives where consumers live. We’re all online now. Publishers mainly react to trends, and this is generally smart business. Publishers may be late to the new PC party, but they will be in it strong moving forward (IMO).

..hehe or ya could just take a look at some of the newer projects in the Latest Jobs Section and ponder that.

@Christian: Spore may have sold a lot, but how much was invested in it's production and marketing? 3.2 million sales probably equates to approx. $50 million in revenue for EA (assuming $16 of revenue per unit sold) - however, the overall development/marketing costs for Spore have been projected to be approx. $50-75 million[*]. If true, then, EA will have been lucky to just hit break-even.

Equally, I can think of a lot of overly ambitious PC titles over the last few years, from The Movies to Republic and Stalker. And I'd also argue that writing games which target the high-end market (by definition a small subset of the total userbase) to be a high-risk strategy - and the high infrastructure costs for MMOs makes launching them equally risky.

The key issue for the PC is that it's key features (huge storage capacity, large amounts of RAM, high-end physics/GPU capabilities) tend to encourage the production of more complex games - the key thing linking all of the above (including Spore) was the attempt to produce more realistic worlds and AI. For whatever reason (lack of horsepower in the PS2 era, more tightly defined demographics in the PS3/X360 era), the console world has tended to rein in their ambitions a bit more.

Then too, the console world offers more stable technology (with wider availability - how many modern PCs are running with an Intel GPU?), a lower risk of piracy and (at least on the Xbox 360) an established online community and online gaming infrastructure. Shifting development focus from the PC is currently something of a no-brainer.

However, things may well shift back the other way: the GPU wars are trailing off and even Intel is bringing some decent horsepower to the GPU with Larabee. Nintendo are likely to stay with their low-cost, low-processing model and Microsoft and Sony can't afford to bring out another console in any near timescales: instead, they're focusing on add-ons such as Natal and motion control.

On the third hand, by the time the PC regains the upper hand in terms of capabilities, it may all be over anyway, if the newfangled remotely-rendered-games technology gets any significant traction. Developers will then be targetting clustered server-farms, not home appliances!

[*] http://www.romow.com/games-blog/is-spore-the-mother-of-all-video-games/

I think there is a huge under-serviced PC gaming market of people looking to play speculative, risky and experimental games.

My counter point to Schaefer's statements would be that PC gaming is hurting because on the 'consolization' of PC titles, making them simpler, less interesting, and utilizing less innovative designs.

I mean, Torchlight wouldn't even be the game it was if they didn't , back in the day, actually invent a novel new design with Diablo (which is basically a excellent remake of Rogue type games, but nonetheless, introduced a lot of great ideas and was a perfect execution.)

PC gamers are under-serviced right now: so many games are getting simplified and neutered in a misguided attempt to attract casual gamers, resulting in the alienation and growing disinterest of what was once a large and loyal bunch of gamers who game primarily on the PC.

Furthermore, PC hardware has a huge advantage right now --especially with the introduction of DX11. It is the time to get experimental and speculative incorporating these new changes --and not designing games that are rehashes of 10 year old mechanics; like Wolfenstein, which sold terribly.

Let's face it: there's an elephant in the room here - piracy. After 15+ years of very hard, professional, dedicated efforts, they've finally accomplished what publishers have warned about and tried to fight since, like, forever - to kill the traditional retail based PC market as we once knew it. Of course few big budget PC projects are greenlit - there's just no money to be made any longer. In the meanwhile the (sort of) piracy-immune publishers of MMOs are doing better than ever - hard evidence there's nothing wrong with the PC as a gaming platform. Zynga have 47M daily unique users, Playfish 12M, Slashkey almost 6M, etc.