[General Discussion] Trend Index: What Americans are Playing

As you might have heard recently, Nielsen Media Research compiled a list of the Top 10 PC Games played by Americans, and a List of Consoles and their usage, with the latest polling taking place in October 2008: Trend Index - Video Games

First, the PC titles:


Next, an aggregation of what consoles people are playing and how often:



Now obviously this is only a slice of the total population as not everyone here participated in that study, so keep that in mind. The results here would be very different from a study conducted by Valve for example.

My impression on the PC Titles: I'm sure most here have played the Top 4 and Halo, but the other ones I'm surprised to see up high on this list (At my last job I worked on Cellphone versions of some of those games, so to see the PC versions of them being popular is not all that surprising, I just didn't figure it'd be in the Top 10). In place of some of those more E-for-Everyone rated games, I would have figured another RTS or perhaps one of dozen FPSes to grace the ranks, but I guess the lesson here is not to underestimate casual titles.

For myself on the Console Usage: The original Xbox being more popular than the PS3 was a bit of a surprise, I would have figured it would have been regulated to Xbox Media Center hackers & people who haven't upgraded to the newest consoles. The Playstation 2's number one spot is not really unexpected, but I would have thought the usage minutes would have been closer to the 360 and Wii. I would have liked to get a sample of what other consoles are listed in "Other", but I guess anything from the original Playstation to retro-gaming standby NES would apply.

So for those reading these lists: How accurate do you see this being, and what correlations do you find with it in your own experiences? In other words: what's your take on this?

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Well I play a lot of Warcraft 3 (6000 hours and counting as far as Xfire is concerned) and find myself using the 360 and Wii more often than the others, but considering the games on top, wouldn't PC be "other?"

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I'm surprised Spore is played more than Sims 2 games. That game is very shallow, notwithstanding the degree of customization that you can do.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Looks like everyone is enjoying Persona 4!

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Cetra

Looks like everyone is enjoying Persona 4!

This.

That aside, I'm really not surprised at all by WoW being in #1. I'm a little surprised at the stats they show for it, but whatever. As for the PS2 being in #1, well, I expected something like the 360 to be ahead of it, but like Cetra said--Persona 4 seems really popular.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Given that there are over 140 million PS2s in circulation, it's not exactly a surprise that it's the most played console although I imagine a global survey would put the DS on the list and probably near the top.

As far as PC gaming goes, this pretty much shows how PC gaming is dying. Not because people don't play PC games but because a load of people are playing PC games from a few years ago. Developers need to realise that releasing games that only someone with a brand new, high-spec PC can play properly is not the way to garner high sales.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

You really do have a particular axe to grind there, don't you Shin.

FELIPE NO

Not particularly, just repeating comments I had seen elsewhere on the subject that I agreed with. I have nothing against PC gaming, I have quite a few PC games and have enjoyed playing loads over the years but I find it rather frustrating that to play any made in the last year or so would require a massive investment on my part to play them the way they were designed and I feel that by doing this, developers are shooting themselves in the foot somewhat.

There will always be people happy to fork out for a shit hot PC to play these things on but it just seems like a weird marketing decision to alienate a lot of your potential userbase right from the outset. Those figures show that older games are still massively popular which would suggest that there's something wrong with newer games, no?

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Look at the list of most played online games for the 360 in the last year and you'll see that Gears of War 2 has been played more than Gears 1, even though Gears 1 had an 11 month head start. I might be wrong but I'd be amazed if a new, cutting edge version of, say Counter Strike would amass as much netplay in a month as the older version managed in 11, my point being that because you can buy an 360 game, stick it in and know it works, people are more likely to buy the latest thing.

Obviously there's more to it than that, the constant evolution of older PC titles through user generated content and updates being a huge factor for one but I think my argument still stands.

How ya doing, buddy?

I think, really, a lot of the image problem that PC games have is the insistence from a lot of players that the games are somehow unplayable if they don't crank the graphics way the fuck up. Most newish titles ARE playable on a shitty rig, you just have to make some compromises. I've successfully played Left 4 Dead on a machine with no video card and only 1GB of ram, and Fallout 3 on the same machine, and Spore. Do I have the graphics as high as possible? No. Are the games entirely playable and decent-looking? Absolutely. (Anyone with left 4 dead PC, try it. Turn the graphics all the way down. Game still looks fantastic.) People try to pretend that the PC platform somehow FORCES you to buy a massive video card and a power supply the size of the moon, which isn't true. If you want to do that, it's just a bonus.

The problem with dispelling this myth is that video card manufacturers spend a lot of money to have their names attached to 4-star games and that source of funding dries up in a hurry if you admit they're about as important as spinnin' rims.

I think the problem with these surveys is the massive data skew caused by WoW poopsockers and the PRO GAMER types that lurk around Counterstrike (which is assuredly where HL2's high place is from) and Warcraft. These games are being played a lot, but it's all inside the confines of constrained retard ladder play which effects real human beings not at all.

If you look on Steam's game stats page, the two versions of Counterstike are outscoring everything. But #3 and #4 are both games released in November '08. It's hard to draw direct comparisons here, because the console world doesn't really have such a thing as servers for 9-year-old games. The hardware rotates and they're gone. Possibly we'd see the same thing there if it were possible. Sure, there's backward compatibility with a few A+ titles but it's not guaranteed.

I admit freely I have no idea what kind of idiots are still playing Halo PC, though. There's never any servers up when I reinstall it for a lark so they're all presumably doing the singleplayer campaign. Over and over and over.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Heh, I used to play the original Quake with plain white walls. Team mates were blue cubes, enemies were red cubes and the pickups were small, green cubes. I used to get a ping of about 10 on a dial-up modem (And some questions about the non-standard character models I was using, especially on Barry's World, untrusting fucks).

When I look at the side of the boxes for PC games though there's normally a hardcore list of minimum specs that my three year old laptop isn't up to and I figure that with most games being multi-format, I'd rather get the 360 version and have the ease of running it without installing it or fucking about with drivers and shit, the easy access online through Live and a control scheme I'm used to without having to remap everything with the controller. Sure it might not look quite so pretty as on a high-spec PC but it'll work first time and it'll be easy to get online.

The only games that are PC exclusive these days are RTS games (Which I hate anyway) and silly things like World of Warcraft which hold no interest for me whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by Pangalin

You really do have a particular axe to grind there, don't you Shin.

He may well do, but he sort of has a point. I still think there's scope for great PC gaming experiences, I know if I still had a PC I would definitely have grabbed Left 4 Dead already, and would be looking forward to stuff like Empire: Total War, but I much prefer knowing that games I buy for my consoles will just run.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

That's fine, if you'd rather have a bicycle over a car because a bike is more reliable and easy to understand that's a valid perspective but it doesn't mean car driving is dead!!!!

PCs are "dying" in the same way Nintendo has been "dying" since the N64: By doing just fine, thanks.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

PCs often represent refinement of ideas to me at this point, which is largely why I enjoy them. Yes, a lot of folks are playing older games on them, but I feel like it has allowed people who create to bring so much more to the table. It represents itself with stuff like Gary's Mod and GGPO/2df where people can think of new ways to entertain and create and play. You get a better online fighting game experience through GGPO/2df than you can with most consoles, that's a niche that's filled without all the bullshit of patches and trying to sell a game to the folks managing the library of X-Box Live Arcade.

Consoles seem like such a one sided experience.

I can see why Consoles can generate the revenue that they do, but I don't find that particularly noteworthy or interesting outside of business statistics. There is certainly a point about what people are willing to invest in, but I don't think those standards really hold up to what gets accomplished on PCs.

Edit: OUTSPONDED BY PANG THANKS

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Pangalin

PCs are "dying" in the same way Nintendo has been "dying" since the N64: By doing just fine, thanks.

I wasn't agreeing with that element of Shin's argument, I was talking about the "Developers need to realise that releasing games that only someone with a brand new, high-spec PC can play properly is not the way to garner high sales" bit. I don't think PC gaming is dying, it never will, not least of all because there are certain types of games which are just always going to work on a PC and not really elsewhere. Like anything the PC games market goes through peaks and dips in interest, and with DRM nonsense and a bit of a console gaming boom, it's currently going through a dip. Like I said, if I had a gaming PC there's a few things I'd be quite interested in right now. But, I did find the issue with PC gaming, when I did so, was that quite often the latest games wouldn't run all that well, or at all (even with settings turned down), unless you had some stupidly expensive hyper-computer.

I don't think that's the fault of PC gaming as such, but developers who keep trying to push the bounds, but beyond what most PC gamers will ever be able to run. Valve have always been very good in that respect, and it's one of the things I like about their development practice.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I'm surprised the PS2s share isn't bigger. Seriously, the install base for that fucking thing is insane. Not to mention everything that comes out still gets a PS2 version. This is of course helped by the fact that the PS3 is a huge joke but you've gotta give Sony credit for still being able to bank on an eight year old console.

I wouldn't take that "ten year plan" shit seriously with the PS Triple but I think they pulled it off nicely with the PS2. I <3 my PS2 Slim.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Pangalin

That's fine, if you'd rather have a bicycle over a car because a bike is more reliable and easy to understand that's a valid perspective but it doesn't mean car driving is dead!!!!

PCs are "dying" in the same way Nintendo has been "dying" since the N64: By doing just fine, thanks.

Yeah, I was a little overdramatic there I guess. I still think that without WoW propping up the figures then you'd see a dramatic drop in the PC gaming userbase over the years and surely this will only encourage more developers to follow ID's lead and focus on making console titles to shift to PC rather than vice versa, as used to be the status quo.

Whilst the PC has the huge advantage of user generated content, Little Big Planet and Halo 3's Forge map editor has shown that this is, to some extent possible on consoles too and I'm sure the coming years will see more and more of this. The other thing LBP has shown us is that the majority of user generated stuff is bollocks, hence why games and level designers keep their jobs. If the money is all in console game development then increasingly the talent will follow it, leaving a potential talent vacuum at the PC developers' offices.

I never understood why people accused consoles of lacking the depth of PC games though. I mean, sure WoW is a big old game but at the heart of it is a very simple number crunching exercise that differs only from the majority of console rpgs in the amount of different items there are to be found (And the stupid amount of time it takes to find them).

I don't know the game's story but I don't think most people play it for the story do they and I'd be amazed if it was better told than say Suikoden 2. There's a lot of character customisation options, probably more than you'd see in your average console rpg but as with any game, a lot of them are pointless, certainly from reading the WoW thread here there's a "Right" way to build a character and play it. I also don't really see how a Warcraft clan gathering to do some raid or whatever is any different from a bunch of mates getting together for some Halo in terms of social interaction. If anything, Halo (To me at least) is more interesting as you get to fight different people each time rather than just mindlessly farming AI monsters for some stupidly rare item or other.

It's interesting that Rotor cites the PC as a better platform for fighting games as I've never considered the PC as a fighting game option. I've never really considered playing them online though, fighting games for me have always been something to get out when pissed back from the pub for a bit of Tekken or Street Fighter and I have to say the instances of playing anything on a PC when drunk are very few and far between.

Ridiculous as the term is, I'm a casual gamer. I spend a load on games but I like to just jump in and play a bit of this and that every now and then and for those purposes, a console will always be preferable to a PC in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Pangalin

Most newish titles ARE playable on a shitty rig, you just have to make some compromises. I've successfully played Left 4 Dead on a machine with no video card and only 1GB of ram, and Fallout 3 on the same machine, and Spore. Do I have the graphics as high as possible? No. Are the games entirely playable and decent-looking? Absolutely. (Anyone with left 4 dead PC, try it. Turn the graphics all the way down. Game still looks fantastic.) People try to pretend that the PC platform somehow FORCES you to buy a massive video card and a power supply the size of the moon, which isn't true. If you want to do that, it's just a bonus.

Man, if you know how to play Left 4 Dead on a computer with no video card, do tell. Here are the results of testing the system requirements on a computer that I bought new literally a few months ago (not primarily for playing games, obviously):




Now, I don't know, maybe it would run regardless, but of course there's no way to test it, since there's apparently no demo.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

It's only been recently that fighting games on the PC stack up better than consoles, but that's mostly for competitive play and certain little elements an enthusiast probably looks for before a guy just looking to have a few rounds before moving on to the next thing. Nothing wrong with that. If you had the option of going to an arcade or assembling some pals to play together in person, then I would sooner recommend that. But GGPO and 2df have better implemented leaderboards, replays, and record keeping. Things similar to, say, the stat keeping Halo 3 gets.

But it's free.

I also agree that user generated content isn't really a selling point for the consumer regarding specific titles, it's more of a selling point of the platform. The potential to get that kind of stuff. It's how GGPO and 2df, for someone such as myself, became an option. That potential on PCs to get something genuinely awesome, a new idea or a refined idea for a video game, makes it worth having. User expansions, fan made games, and little quirks help make the medium worth investing in. Not because you make a return like creating something yourself (that probably sucks) for profit, but because you can usually get something back (entertainment) from someone else's efforts and, usually, it's free.

You're right that saying "The game has a great level editor, you should get it" to most people isn't anything worth wasting breath on. But having new skins or mods around certain games does, in fact, make things more interesting for certain types of games, because that's how full games like Counter Strike were created. And I think PC takes advantage of that potential because it isn't heavily regulated. There's a lot of crap regarding this stuff, but the things that are quality do get recognized and when they do get support, it's the players who get to reap the fun.

There's nowhere I can't reach.