PC gaming's future

[skavenhorde]

It's why I expect there to be more interest, almost on a month by month basis, in retro gaming, with retro PC gaming in particular getting more interest. After all, how many times have we been told of the 100's of million's of PC's in homes around the world, and how quickly has someone said 'but thy can't run the latest games'. No. But they can play all the games from, say, 2001/2 backwards! Even if you're a gamer that still wants the box, most pre 2002 games can be bought for $5-$10, which just the odd Planescape Torment or System Shock 2 needing the full $50 of a new game.

Given the state of the market, I wouldn't be surprised if a cheap laptop pre-configured with 20-30 DOS games (utilizing DOSBox) that you could just start the game from a list by double clicking on it, all with PDF manuals, or at least readme's for those games with no tutorial, wouldn't sell quite well! Add a freeware word processor spreadsheet and internet capability and I think it would attack a decent market! If only I had a 100,000 to get the thing off the ground! Put my money where my mouth is, as it were!

I'd buy it, but you and I have a distinct advantage over newer gamers. We were slowly introduced to better and better graphics. Ahh the good ol' days of EGA, VGA then SuperVGA etc....But one problem even some hardcore RPGamers have is the inability to overcome the dated graphics.

I have no problem popping in Realms of Arkania, Starflight or even really good C64 games like Autoduel or Moebius (although I've never passed either), but I have nostalgia on my side where as others don't. A lot of gamers joined our ranks with Fallout/Baldur's Gate and anything older just doesn't appeal to them.

Having said all that I am reminded of your post about the 10 millionth download of Dosbox. Even I didn't know about that and I think that program is the next best thing since sliced bread. Do you know how hard it was to get anything running before that program existed? Well, actually you probably do, but that is another subject.

I don't know. I certainly wouldn't mind retro games becoming more popular and with sites like GoG looking like it's doing well and Dosbox's success maybe a healthy shot of retroness is what this industry needs

When I was writing my little comment about AAA games and movies I flashed on what happened to E3 last year or the year before (my memory is horrible). But the gist was it became too big for it's own good and had to be downsized from the gigantic monster it had become. It would be great if the devs and publishers stopped concentrating on big and flashy and started concentrating on quality.

 

[UK_John]

Well, one thing about threads like this (and there are more than you think!), is they are showing us long time gamrs getting a bit more vocal. I think it's us, not the newer gamers, that have brought indie gaming more into the mainstream, forcing media coverage, etc. I think only long-time gamers like us can find a game like Space Rangers 2, a game from a small Russian publisher, that is part Pirates, part Star Control, part Elite, and part Infocom (all retro titles) and through word of mouth raise it's status to the point where Gamespy makes it's No.4 in it's Top 10 Games of 2007! New gamers don't do that. New gamers don't have the knowledge or the where with all.

To that extent, if we find we have a more decent, smaller, more gameplay orientated PC games market in a couple years, it will because of us. Gamers that have been here for the long haul. Gamers that know a good game when thy see one, whatever the level of graphics. It us that don't mind the indie level of graphics and help games like Aquaria sell 50,000 copies in it's first two months. It's gamer's like us that downloaded a module for Neverwinter Nights called Darkness over Daggerford over 150,000 times in it's first month of availability, and it's gamers like us that have downloaded DOSBox 10 million times. Like it or not, we are the drivers of this market in many ways. It's down to us, through threads like this, to get our important point of view across.

After all, it sounds like you were surprised to find DOSBox had been downloaded 10 million times, and if we can surprise each other, imagine what we can do for the newbies!

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

It's gamer's like us that downloaded a module for Neverwinter Nights called Darkness over Daggerford over 150,000 times in it's first month of availability,

It would've been far more if the module had been properly translated into other languages, imho.

(*still on my crusade*)

 

[UK_John]

Alrik Fassbauer, you can only expect so much from a FREE module. English is by far the best language as 80% of the PC games market and NWN sales were in English speaking countries (North America, Australasia, Great Britain and Ireland, Scandinavia, etc.

 

[DArtagnan]

If only we could eliminate all languages but one.

 

[pibbur]

If only we could eliminate all languages but one.

Good idea. I suggest Norwegian, since it in my experience is very easy to learn.

Sorry, I just had to write this. And of course: Here is the Norwegian version of what I just said.

God ide. Jeg foreslår norsk, siden det etter mine erfaringer er svært lett å lære seg.

Beklager, jeg bare måtte skrive dette. Og selvsagt: Her er den norske versjonen av hva jeg akkurat sa.

 

[DArtagnan]

Nu er jeg jo dansker, så jeg kan leve med norsk

Men eftersom jeg er så hooked på det koncept med kun at have et sprog, så er jeg villig til at gå med til et hvilket som helst sprog. Bare vi KUN og jeg mener KUN bruger det.

Hold da kæft det ville løse mange problemer på lang sigt.

Men folk er for fatsvage og selvfede til at acceptere sandheden i det

 

[UK_John]

You defeat you're own arguments by the fact you live in non English speaking countries and yet you can speak (or at least type) excellent English! As someomne from the UK, I take no credit or pleasure from the fact, but history has just meant the vast majority of the world is English speaking. half of Europe, Africa, North America, Australasia, Asia, The five continents of the planet with the vast majority speaking or learning English. It is, de facto the world language. It is the language of travel, the language of the web, the language of technology, the language of trade and business, the language of so many things.

We are where we are there is no going back. And I repeat, if a small game publisher in Norway or Germany or wherever wants to make the maximum amount of profit from their game, they MUST release it in English. And for a FREE NWN Module, that 5 Canadians spent a year working on to be converted into other languages is patently ridiculous!

 

[pibbur]

You defeat you're own arguments by the fact you live in non English speaking countries and yet you can speak (or at least type) excellent English!
...

I'm not sure we were presenting an argument - I was trying to be funny. I know of course the position of the english language as THE international language.

But there are also good reasons for localized versions such as guarding national language and culture. So I won't call translating a NWN module into (I assume) french ridiculous.

 

[DArtagnan]

But there are also good reasons for localized versions such as guarding national language and culture. So I won't call translating a NWN module into (I assume) french ridiculous.

Are you suggesting that culture will somehow disappear because we change languages?

I'm curious what value people see in their language. All languages are by nature imperfect ways of communicating - and we can only enhance our understanding of each other by sticking with a single imperfect one.

English works for me, by the way.

 

[pibbur]

Are you suggesting that culture will somehow disappear because we change languages?

I'm curious what value people see in their language. All languages are by nature imperfect ways of communicating - and we can only enhance our understanding of each other by sticking with a single imperfect one.

English works for me, by the way.

For many people language is a major part of national culture. I haven't made up my mind about it, but I can see that it is an important issue.

 

[DArtagnan]

For many people language is a major part of national culture. I haven't made up my mind about it, but I can see that it is an important issue.

Yeah, I know that it's a major part.

What I don't understand is why people think their cultural history will disappear because they change languages.

What might happen is that their culture will change in this specific way, but I fail utterly to see what's bad about the change - given the obscene advantages for the future of mankind.

 

[UK_John]

Hey, the Scottish speak 'English' and only English, and they certainly have not lost their culture!

 

[pibbur]

Content of post deleted by me. Disregard it.

 

[Corwin]

Hey, the Scottish speak 'English' and only English, and they certainly have not lost their culture!

Is that necessarily a good thing!!

 

[skavenhorde]

Damn straight it is. I love my ancestors skirts...uh I mean kilts

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

You defeat you're own arguments by the fact you live in non English speaking countries and yet you can speak (or at least type) excellent English! As someomne from the UK, I take no credit or pleasure from the fact, but history has just meant the vast majority of the world is English speaking. half of Europe, Africa, North America, Australasia, Asia, The five continents of the planet with the vast majority speaking or learning English. It is, de facto the world language. It is the language of travel, the language of the web, the language of technology, the language of trade and business, the language of so many things.

We are where we are there is no going back. And I repeat, if a small game publisher in Norway or Germany or wherever wants to make the maximum amount of profit from their game, they MUST release it in English. And for a FREE NWN Module, that 5 Canadians spent a year working on to be converted into other languages is patently ridiculous!

Straight to the point: I hate this "must".

To me, it is the essence of arrogance of a language towards everything else in the world.

It's so convenient. You don't even have the NEED to learn other languages ! Because everyone in this world speaks English.

I personally am kind of proud of my own language, AND I believe that everyone else should be so !

Only recently I read in a discussion at the Belgian Larian Studios board that the people there play ONLY games that are in the English language - because they are so much used to it that they would consider a game in their own language just "silly".. No joke, several people just wrote that, and Lynn from Larian confirmed that there is simply no market there for games in the both major Belgian languages. No-one would actually buy that, I was told.

Great. Now the importance of the English language has become so great that even members of other languages would despise games made in their own languages !

To me, this is kind of an "language imperialism". And still smaller languages die out in favour of the English language.

If I was to measure the power of a language with the number of countries sppeaking it, it would be easy. Chinese is spoken by so many people as well, but they don't live all over the world - in the same way as people capable of the Englis language do.

I even go further and do believe that native English speakers have a slight advantage at programming languages - because there aren't programming languages out there which use native words of other languages.
If the key words/instructions of major programming languages were mere symbols, why didn't their inventors just use keywords from exotic world languages ? They would've been just symbols, too.

No, I'm clearly for diversity. I'd like to see games NOT in one prominent language being spread all over the world, I want to support ALL languages of this world ! (As far as I can, that is.)

To me, this is simply monopolism vs. diversity. And to me, diversity is richness.


There are too many games just unnoticed because they never come to the attention of gaming sites which are focused on English-language games. We would need someone in French, for example, to enable us to show us what's going on on the French RPG market. Similar things go on for other countries as well. Gothic was unknown in the English-language world for a time, because it wasn't in English language, so no-one covered it. Until it was released translated, of course.

To me, it is just too easy to leave things alone by saying "but it is in English and everyone KNOWS 3/4 of the world speaks that !". To me, that's no progress - even worse: It hinders people from getting to know other languages !

The impact of language on culture should be clear to everyone who knows the history of Tolkien's Middleearth.
To me, language is to a great part = culture, and that's why it is important to me to defend the languages of the world of the monopolism of having a single language.

 

[DArtagnan]

The journey towards a better future is long, indeed.

When people attribute this much value to a system of communication, I'm afraid it will be at least a couple of hundred years until we can eliminate so many of the tragedies caused by miscommunication.

What's most interesting, is that all the problems you're talking about would actually solve themselves by having a single language. Do you really think german developers would stop developing games if they switched language?

Do you really think Tolkien's work would have been any less good if written in a different language?

You're not making any sense whatsoever.

 

[skavenhorde]

To me, this is kind of an "language imperialism". And still smaller languages die out in favour of the English language.

If I was to measure the power of a language with the number of countries sppeaking it, it would be easy. Chinese is spoken by so many people as well, but they don't live all over the world - in the same way as people capable of the Englis language do.

I had a feeling you might have something to say about this and I agree with you 100%, my friend.

First, it will never happen. English isn't the only dominant language out there. There is also French, although to a smaller degree. I found out about that reading PJ's thread about his trip.

Of course there is also Chinese, which I am very well aware of Over here the games normally come in both languages. You have the option of loading Chinese or English(On a sidenote, if you ever saw the TV series Serenity then you'll understand a little of what it's like to live in Asia. Lots of Chinese and English mixed together). Anyways, I don't think you ever have to fear for smaller languages dying out. More likely than not, the children will just be taught more languages. For example it is very common here for people to know three languages Chinese, Taiwanese and English (though it's hard to find many people who will actually speak English with you, they're too embarrased )

So while English might be dominant it will not likely take the place of the countries language.

 

[DArtagnan]

Unfortunately I won't be alive when it happens, but otherwise I'd take a bet that this WILL happen eventually. My estimate is a few hundred years.

Whether it'll be english or not - I can't say - but it's too obviously the right thing to do, that even the human race can't ignore it forever.