History of the American gaming industry [Part 7]

Last time, while analyzing the history of consoles, we reached a turning point – the crisis of 2008, when revenues decreased by 32%, the capitalization of many corporations fell by 50%. And now we will finally find out how the gaming industry coped with it and became what we see it now.

Then what happened during a crisis happened – the concentration of capital. In the same way, the above-mentioned crisis has decimated the middle class around the world, it has thinned out the class of “strong middle peasants,” as was shown in the example of Midway in the previous part.
In the midst of a crisis John Richitello, The CEO of EA, in an interview with Eurogamer, said that he "hates current E3" And “Either we will return to the old format, or we will hold closed events”, which is what E3 was 10 years ago. Then corporations did without noisy shows and thousands of journalists with cosplayers, and information flowed uncontrollably to the people in a stormy stream. With such an unstable financial situation, a craving for an iron hand and censorship awakens, and the arbitrariness and freethinking of 5,000 journalists at E3 in 2008 is an unacceptable luxury. However, not everyone shared this opinion. Shigeru Miyamoto from Nintendo, on the contrary, advocated maximizing the expansion of the audience.

At the same time, speculation flared up with renewed vigor about the imminent and inevitable hacking of the PS3, which hackers promised in the first weeks after its release, citing the similarity of the system for launching game images with the PS2. And then in 2010 it happened. Although, everything worked fine only in 2011.

In general, nothing stimulates corporations to work more than a falling rate of profit. It all started with a price reduction, and soon Slim versions of both consoles arrived (Nintendo was doing great anyway). PS3 Slim for $300 came out in September 2009, and Xbox360 Slim in August 2010 for $200 (after all, it was necessary to sell off stocks of old models). This gave a short-term increase in PS3 and Xbox 360 sales by 104% and 32%, respectively.

Around the same time, the star of the Kinect (2010) and PS Move (2010) touch controllers quickly rose and set. They offered everything the Wii did and more. Just watch the presentations of both devices at E3.

It would seem that Sony should have been the first to understand everything when the gyroscope in their newfangled controller turned out to be of no use to anyone and even in exclusives they were allowed to refuse its services. The most obvious example is Uncharted 2, where, unlike the first part, they decided not to torment the player with “innovative” grenade throws.

Sony took the shortest route and completely copied the Wii concept, only with increased accuracy of motion tracking using the PS Eye camera. And no matter how many sophisticated demonstrations of techno demos there were at E3, in practice it did not go further than ports of Wii shooting galleries Dead Space: Extraction (2011) and House of the Dead: Overkill (2011), well, attempts to screw technology into exclusives (Killzone 3 (2011)), although they no longer bothered their best studios with this.

Basically it was all sorts of Just Dance, EyePet & Friends and Wonderbook. Sony initially stated 4.1 million. devices sold by the end of the year, but then these turned out to be only shipped devices. And the first statements were only forecasts, but taking into account Christmas. Well, we made a little mistake, the main thing is that the shares have risen in price. And it was necessary to wipe the nose of Microsoft with their Kinect and 2.5 million. gadgets sold in the first 25 days, making it the best-selling controller in history.

Kinect went its own way, which ensured its short-term success. As usual, a lot was promised at E3. The honored storyteller of the gaming industry, Peter Molyneux, especially distinguished himself.

In the end, it all came down to Just Dance, Kinectimals, Kinect Sports and further down the list, where, due to a misunderstanding, exclusive ones crept in Kinect Star Wars (2012) And Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor (2012). True, they gave me a chance to turn my head in Forza Motorsport 4 (2011).

All flirtations with hardcore players ended as soon as they began. But how did it happen? Why was only the Wii successful?? In addition to the purely financial side of the issue, which I have already touched upon, there was also a psychological factor. Here it is clearly described by the author Kotaku, Stephen Totillo.

He notes that it was the increased sensitivity of Move and Kinect that turned a simple exercise into a real confrontation with a crazy machine. Even when it came to the shooting range. If in Dead Space on Wii during a mini-game it was enough to simply move your hand down and to the left, then on PS3 you need to freeze and suppress any vibration of the body.

"Best Touch Technology of a Generation" turned out to be a confirmation of the proverb “the best is the enemy of the good”.

Plus, most Wii games didn’t require you to leave your couch at all. Super Smash Bros., Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Bros. or Animal Crossing: City Folk played great in “classic” mode. This option was also required for successful compatibility with GameCube.

Nintendo had a keen sense of proportion when it came to introducing innovative technologies. And it didn’t require more than waving your arms in the same SSX Blur. And at the same time, the imperfection of technology forced games to play themselves and skip various mistakes, creating an atmosphere of light family entertainment. Even Wii Sports required limited player participation. You made a mistake or the console did not count your movements correctly? We will never know, because the game continues. This simplicity attracted a new audience, and then for another 10 years it worked on the image of the console.

Everything turned out to be even more fun with Kinect. After the announcement, everyone immediately remembered the scene from Minority Report. The problem is that playing with nothing in your hands turned out to be even less fun than Sony’s. Totillo continues: “The gamepad is a beautiful metaphor”. "There’s nothing worse than pretending you’re playing a guitar or holding a lightsaber.". This is all fun only if you’re 6 years old. More advanced second graders are building all sorts of cool things in Minecraft.". Players are too used to keeping everything in their hands. Especially the hardcore ones. The release showed a lack of understanding of this simple fact “with glass clarity” Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor – continuation of the legendary 2002 game for Xbox. Now she has not forgiven or forgotten anything, and it is no coincidence that she was chosen for the role of a potential hit that will reach the icy hearts of loyal fans. But I haven’t lit it since 80.000 in USA out of 130.000 worldwide sales.

The general public was ready to admire the innovations in YouTube videos, but in no way brought these hardships and tribulations of future technologies into their living rooms.

As of 2009, 51% of casual gamers were women, the average age of such a player was around 35 years old and they often played with children. And yet, expectations were not met. This was indirectly influenced by the sharp rise in the popularity of a healthy lifestyle, which burned all the energy intended for jumping in front of the TV.

But what Microsoft was good at was with customers outside the gaming industry. Within a week, Kinect was disassembled down to the last line of code and a special driver was rolled out, opening it to everyone. First there were programs for 3D modeling. A couple of months later it was tried by those in need of cheap “Motion capture”.

Alex Kipman, on behalf of MS, promised to improve protection and threatened punishment for owners of custom software, but already at the beginning of 2010 he changed his anger to mercy and announced cooperation with the Universities of Washington, Southern California and many other government agencies and private structures. In 2013, a report came out in which researchers from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock stated that Microsoft’s Kinect gaming controller could cut US healthcare costs by up to $30 billion., allowing therapists and other healthcare professionals to interact remotely with patients. Unfortunately, it is impossible to say exactly the share of sales that came from such scientific and not so scientific initiatives.

Say a word about 3D

After the film’s release Avatar (2009) The 3D boom has spread to games. The first beacon on the way to a bright technological future was the game of the same name James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game (2009), but it turned out to be a mediocre clone of Lost Planet. As it soon became clear, this was not the case at all, it was just that 3D, both for consoles and for PCs, turned out to be of little use to anyone.

If we talk about consoles, 3D was only on Sony TVs and, accordingly, only on rare PlayStation 3 exclusives, like MotorStorm: Apocalypse. So homemade 3D of dubious quality, complemented by stripped-down graphics. And on a PC, this required 120 Hz monitors and appropriate hardware from GeForce with support for 3D Vision. In total, several dozen games were released with 3D Vision support, including Aion, Civilization 5 and others similar, although there were very worthy examples like Resident Evil 5. ATI also had its own analogue – HD3D Technology, which could not boast of anything. It was not inferior to Nvidia in almost anything, but the idea itself was dubious. And by the time the topic had exhausted itself, a new breakthrough loomed on the horizon – VR.

In addition, Microsoft’s passivity in promoting 3D was explained more likely not by the “weakness of the console,” which many people emphasized, but by the lack of need to sell brand new 3D TVs.

The next “revolution” lasted a year and a half and died along with another ambitious idea, in the form of home 3D.

Sony and Microsoft returned to more traditional gameplay and delighted us in the end with Uncharted 3 (2011), The Last of Us (2013), Gran Turismo 6 (2013), Forza Horison (2012), Halo 4 (2012), not to mention dozens of multi-platform projects like Max Payne 3 (2012), Far Cry 3 (2012), Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011), Dark Souls (2012), which represented an example of the old regime.

In this form, the seventh generation of consoles was approaching its natural ending. Only Nintendo broke the usual course of history and announced its new console at E3 in 2011. Wii U, again, turned out to be different and offered another innovative gameplay.

Many beautiful words were said that migrated from previous conferences, but something else is much more important – Nintendo decided to regain its hardcore audience. He said this at the end of April in Tokyo Satoru Iwata, speaking to investors. First of all, the survivalist should have helped with this – Zombie U (2012) and the continuation of the popular slasher – Bayonetta 2 (2014). Well, New Super Mario Bros. U, as if someone doubted. In addition to exclusives, Assassin’s Creed III, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Darksiders II, Batman: Arkham City were available at the release. Metro Last Light, Battlefield 3 and many others were also promised, but were not destined to make it to release. After all, the publisher revealed the potential of the new console too quickly.

This very potential was appreciated almost immediately and the corporation’s shares instantly reacted with a 10% drop. After that Satoru Iwata expressed concern about what was happening: “Honestly, the reaction to the presentation is what I heard from people; their mood doesn’t fit in with what happened on the stock exchange… It’s very strange.”.

Even the fact that it was the first console to support Full-HD left everyone indifferent. Just like the new network service – Miiverse, which, although it had a peculiar charm and interesting visual design, did not offer anything in terms of functionality.

I went the same way Nintendo TVii, whose capabilities were already built into most modern TVs back then. The console was released in the USA on November 18, 2012 and at first there was serious excitement. After all, this is the great Nintendo – it probably has a cunning plan to capture the souls and minds of humanity. And really 400.000 consoles in the first week is a serious claim to success. But by the end of the year, sales heroically crawled past the 3 million mark., 1.36 million. of which were in the USA. By September 30, 2016, sales reached 13.36 million., among them 6.41 million. in the USA.
News about the cessation of production of the console only formally completed its life cycle. The poor thing was just there all the time. In May 2013, Electronic Arts announced the end of support for Wii U, Ubisoft announced the same at E3, and Bethesda Softworks joined them in July.

When failure became obvious, www.unibet-casino-ontario.co.uk Shigeru Miyamoto shared his view of what happened. First of all, it turned out that Nintendo was counting on creating a tablet controller, which was supposed to play a major role. Apparently they were based on the data that most mobile games are mastered without leaving the living room, during commercial breaks. “Unfortunately, as tablets are becoming more feature-rich and affordable, our system came out at the wrong time.”.

And while the waves of progress were closing over the head of the Wii U, a real new generation of consoles appeared before us. But first, let’s talk about the PC and everything connected with it.

The golden five-year period for PCs lasted until 2005. This period saw all the most high-profile releases that formed the image of a full-fledged platform alternative to consoles. But by 2006, many of the games that, according to all laws, should have been released on PCs moved to consoles. Condemned: Criminal Origins (2006) was just the first sign, reaching PC a year later. It’s scary to say, but even Battlefield, represented by Modern Combat (2006), Bad Company (2008), Battlefield 1943 (2009) were released only on consoles. Red Dead Redemption (2011), again, didn’t look into it.
Other potential multi-platform hits were simply outbid, primarily by Microsoft, as was the case with Mass Effect, which was released on PC with a delay of a year. Mirror’s Edge – again a year, Assassin’s Creed – again a year delayed (although all earlier projects, like Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell and others, were released on time). This was a necessary measure in the face of the merciless face of piracy.

By 2006, Nvidia pushed ATI out of the market into the arms of console manufacturers, and now could no longer care about quality, but concentrate on the number of video cards produced with a variety of specifications. I had to forget about the optimization level 2002-2005. But this did not bother the developers, and they unanimously switched to Xbox 360 and PS3. They just met the expectations of all high-tech lovers.

In this regard, the fate of Crysis (2007), released under the patronage of EA, is extremely indicative, since the rights to Far Cry (2004) remained with Ubisoft. But nothing has changed fundamentally. We are also alone on a relatively open tropical island for exploration, surrounded by enemies, but soon we meet a completely different – more dangerous enemy.

After the success of Far Cry, which, while remaining exclusive to PC, confidently sold more than 1.000.000 times, it was logical to assume that Crysis would have similar success. It didn’t work out. In the first 2 weeks we sold 86.633, and then they waited another year for her to reach the coveted million. On the one hand, users have stopped investing so actively in assembling a powerful PC, preferring to switch to a console for $300-400 and not know grief, and on the other hand, hardware manufacturers have stopped working hard in bringing games and their technologies to perfection, shipping a dozen new video cards for every taste and color. Crytek did not take this trend into account and, with high demands on resources, Crysis did not shine with optimization.

As expected, it became a new benchmark, and an obligatory component of the review of a new video card was the answer to the question: “Will she be able to handle Crysis??». And even despite sky-high critic scores of around 90 out of 100 and a bouquet of “Shooter of the Year” and “Game of the Year” awards, it did not encourage PC owners to splurge on the next GeForce, which will certainly run it at maximum speed. But Crysis became the most downloaded (pirated) game of the year. Disappointed with this development of events Cevat Yerli stated that his company will no longer release exclusives on PC.

But Far Cry 2 (2008) and the Canadians from Ubisoft Montreal, despite the break with the first part, created a universal sandbox formula. There was already a gentleman’s set of checkpoints, towers, similar tasks, even partners were somehow added, and all this in a boring open world. Players accustomed to GTA and Half-Life greeted her with hostility, but it soon became the most popular form of organization for open-world games, which captured the market for the next 10 years.

Who would have thought that Far Cry 2, dull in its monotony, the meaning of which boiled down to the monotonous clearing of respawning checkpoints and enemy camps, would lay the foundations for all the major games from Ubisoft and not only to everyone’s lament?. Far Cry 2 became a prototype of the future in small ways, even more than Assassin’s Creed (2007) and what the design of a wide variety of games will come down to. Only with Watch Dogs 2 (2016) did Ubisoft begin to develop the world not in breadth, but in depth.
Neverwinter Nights (2002) made over 2 million happy in a year. PC users. But now Dragon Age: Origins (2009) has sold 500 on PC.000 times, while the Xbox 360 and PS3 contributed 2.56 million. and 1.67 million. copies accordingly. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (2010) modestly left less than 1 million on PC. copies, although on Xbox 360 and PS3 3.47 million. and 2.98 million. copies. And this is the ratio for studios that started on PC and have ironclad authority and respect. Large PC exclusives outside of strategies and RPGs in the period 2007-2013 are difficult to find. And even those are entirely continuations of old series like Total War, Civilization, The Sims, Sim City, King’s Bounty: The Legend. StarCraft 2, Hearts of Iron, etc.d. Anomalous indicators of Minecraft with its 25 million. copies do not change the average temperature in the hospital.

In the future, the “AAA” manifestation of the industry could truly grow massively only on the basis of consoles for $300-$400. Thus, Crysis and, accordingly, 2007 became a watershed for the PC and ended with a short but eventful period when it had every chance, through Steam and the help of hardware developers, to curb the elements of the market, standing on par with consoles.

So here it is, this clever attempt to sell monotonous "Open-world" games took off on a simple idea: if the majority of players don’t have money for many “AAA” projects, but have money for a WoW subscription and a donation for MMOs, where they spend tens and hundreds of hours, then let them spend them in our game. The point is not to sell the game as a work of art, but as a “timekiller”. After all, a potential buyer simply chooses where he will spend his evenings after a hard day at work. Let me remind you that in the USA the average age of a player is 30-35 years old.

Due to the progressing piracy, many publishers began to delay the release on PC and MMOs came to the fore.

Throughout the 1980s, sales of gaming PCs grew, prices fell, and by the end of 1990 they totaled 54 million. computers in American homes, whereas 10 years ago there were only 2 million.
And already in 1991, the owners of Dungeons & Dragons entered into an agreement with AOL and two development studios Stormfront Studios and Strategic Simulations Inc. (SSI) to create the first MMORPG Neverwinter Nights (1991). Not to be confused with Neverwinter Nights (2002) from BioWare. An hour of play cost $6, and by the time it closed in 1997, it had read 150.000 registered users.
Already in 2003, the production budget alone was estimated at $10-15 million. Hence the monthly subscription system for $10-15. The first of their kind were Dark Ages of Camelot (2001), Final Fantasy XI (2002), Everquest II (2004), World of Warcraft (2004), Guild Wars (2005), Dungeons & Dragons Online (2006) and Vanguard (2007), the latter a complete commercial failure.

Visually and gameplay-wise, they relied on the proven system of multiple classes and races from D&D. The gameplay boiled down to extracting experience from various monsters in the process of completing a quest taken from an NPC in a medieval setting. And advanced users who were bored with Player versus environment (PvE) could switch to Player versus player (PvP) mode.

But WoW stole the show with its 10 million. users. For example, Everquest in 2004 had 500.000 users. Last but not least, this is due to the thoroughness of Blizzard’s work in polishing its masterpiece and the merciless elimination of bugs.

The success of World of Warcraft (2004) disturbed several large corporations. What was most striking about the WoW phenomenon was the success of the subscription system, when Free-to-Play was already actively rising.

It was decided to repeat the success, which required a universe ready to be converted into an MMO RPG. EA had one. Consequently, the announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic was not long in coming. The events in it take place 300 years after the games in the Knights of the Old Republic series, and the development was carried out by the famous Bioware and SW:TOR became the first fully voice-acted MMO. The release took place on December 20, 2011. One week after the game’s release, the number of subscribers exceeded 1 million, and in February 2012 – 1.7 million. Human. But by the end of March, according to a report by Electronic Arts, this figure dropped to 1.3 million. people, and already on November 15, 2012, Star Wars: The Old Republic switched to a free-to-play model, not justifying the highest trust placed. But the total cost of the project is estimated at approximately $160 million. I went the same way The Elder Scrolls Online in 2014.

But even earlier, in 2007, EA, which was not afraid to experiment then, published Hellgate: London – a Diablo-like action RPG that was in many ways ahead of its time. The gameplay combines the role-playing component with a first-person shooter (or third-person shooter, depending on your choice). Characters can earn experience, gain levels, distribute skill points and increase stats, and randomly generated levels, randomly placed monsters, randomly dropped items and quests seriously increased replayability. Unfortunately, the game was focused only on cooperative play and did not have any social functionality. Alas, Flagship Studios went bankrupt in 2008, and the game servers were closed in 2009.
Then some decided to try their luck in MMOs but not RPGs.

An interesting experiment was All Points Bulletin (2010) from Realtime Worlds And David Jones – the creator of the original GTA and, more importantly, Crackdown (2007) – GTA in its purest form: endless chases, shootouts, explosions and grotesquerie from the 90s. All this needed to be transferred online. The ambitious MMO TPS with its appearance was intended to attract supporters of single-player action games like GTA and Crackdown, and not to position itself as one of many MMORPGs.

Players were given a huge city with peaceful and combat zones, they were free to try on the roles of policemen and criminals, which determined the range of missions and tasks. And by doing them, they upgraded several skills, in isolation from the usual level system. APB also featured a very extensive character customization system.

But times were not simple then, the development driven by the publisher was not really completed and what arrived on the shelves was not at all what people expected.

Eurogamer appreciated the optimization, but “for a game about chases and shootouts, they paid too little attention to turning them into something interesting”. The basic mechanics could compete with GTA: SA and GTA:VC, but not GTA IV or Crackdown and Saints Raw. The average score remained at 6/10 and less than a year later the developer went bankrupt. In short, the result was infinitely far from what Rockstar Games created in GTA Online. But APB was bought by the publisher GamersFirst and began to spread throughout the system F2P in exchange for a subscription, in which state it still exists and even on Xbox One.

Need for Speed ​​World (2010) – stands in the same line of cunning plans to transfer familiar genres for single or cooperative play to the MMO plane based on Free-to-play. The authors, without hesitation, gave the player locations from Most Wanted and Carbon. Players were free to ride around the city and participate in 6-person races. The number of players on the map that a player could see was limited to 15. Actually, that was the end of the gameplay.

Surrounded by these ambitious experiments, classic MMOs existed and developed to the delight of fans: Guild Wars 2 (2012), Lineage 2 (2004), Aion (2009), The Secret World (2012), etc.d. They all had their own specifics, but they did not stray far from the usual D&D model.

On consoles, the growth of computing power coupled with the constant increase in Internet speed led to a number of experiments in the field of shooters, the conductor of which was Sony. She published the first MMOFPS Planetside (2003), which professed a subscription system for 30 and 90 days for $14.99 and $44.99 respectively. Released in 2012 Planetside 2, but already on Free-to-Play with the ability to buy various hats and armor coloring. The first part offered ten huge continents, multi-stage capture of bases, battles in which more than a hundred people took part on each side, a variety of ground and air equipment.

But it suffered from the syndrome of all MMOs of that time: it was impossible to play it alone. In the second part, the graphics were improved, the scale of battles was increased (up to 2000 characters on each of the three continents!) and simplified the game mechanics, borrowing many ideas from the Battlefield series. But who openly opposed themselves to Batllefield: BC2 is the PS3 exclusive – MAG (Massive Action Game) (2010). The most impressive feature was the 256-player multiplayer and also introduced the fresh Rush mode, which also debuted in BF: BC2.

If we take the industry as a whole and not just on PC, the main trend after 2005 was the creation of realistic physics, whereas before that everyone was more concerned about the transition to full 3D.

If on PC skirmishers became known to everyone F.E.A.R. And Half-Life, it was on consoles Gears of War, whose success provided the entire industry with the most popular engine. Convenient SDK and amazing adaptability of the new technology for all platforms, for which you can safely shake hands with Nvidia programmers, some of whom moved to Epic Games.

Iintegrated Partners PEpic’s rogram made it the most affordable "AAA" engine of the decade. According to this program, a common database of updates and improvements was created, available to all partners.

Thus, even if the company was not remembered by the world for its breakthrough game, then all the developments were added up to the common fund. For example, Kamcord Inc., joined IPP in 2014, left behind a more advanced system for integrating mobile games with YouTube, Facebook* and Twitter, which was more about capturing and transmitting video from mobile devices and was called Kamcord. After which Black Wing Foundation dragged all these developments into her Monster 500, and the head of the studio Alexey Savchenko honestly admitted that without IPP they would have continued to bang their heads against the wall. Similarly, in 2011, it became available to partners Digital ExtraTM System from GRIP, greatly simplifying the creation of AI. There are a huge number of examples of this, the main thing is that all the developments did not have a chance to disappear in the bowels of the development studio.

This shift towards realistic display of physical phenomena did not go unnoticed by many other developers. First of all, Nvidia, whose share of video cards in the PC market at that time was approaching 75%. In 2008, it acquired Ageia, making the PhysX SDK the property of NVIDIA, and that same year Nvidia announced that it would make the PhysX SDK an open standard available to everyone.

It consisted of 3 main components:
• processing of solids. rigid body);
• fabric processing. cloth);
• liquid handling. fluid);

PhysX replaced Havok, which has been used in more than 100 games since 2001, but after the purchase of the Intel company of the same name in 2008, it first became free for non-commercial use, and then Havok Physics And Havok Animation switched to open platform status, but only on PC. In the same 2008, Intel entered into an agreement under which it would cooperate with AMD in optimizing ATI Radeon graphics cards and AMD central processors for the Havok physics engine.

This has become another nerve in the confrontation between Nvidia and AMD in the PC market. In October 2009, Ubisoft signed an agreement with Havok, according to which the Havok engine will be used in games developed by Ubisoft for many years. Even Half-Life 2 includes some reworked Havok Physics version 2 code. Well, NVIDIA PhysX signed a contract similar to Ubisoft and AMD with THQ in 2008. And then with Sony and Nintendo, giving all PS3 and Wii game license holders free access to the full set of NVIDIA PhysX technology tools, including libraries, header files, help files, documentation, etc. n.

But the intensity of the confrontation also noticeably decreased due to the fact that AMD secured its income through contracts with Sony and Microsoft and did not actively interfere with PCs.

However, many managed on their own, but internal developments remained within the studio and did not have any effect on the industry outside the projects where they were implemented. Take GTA 4 and the engine Rockstar Aadvanced Game Engine with their exclusive add-on "euphoria", which automatically creates character animation on the fly.

There are several other physics engines, but they are all less popular. Among those that are well-known are Digital Molecular Matter, Bullet Physics Library and Open Dynamics Engine (the last 2 are completely free).

And while for many the ability to kick a corpse or a box has become as important as good graphics, the 7th generation of consoles and PCs attracted the public not only with powerful hardware, but also with network services that reached a completely different quality level.

With consoles everything is simple – there is a single platform holder who sets the rules. For Xbox 360/One this is Xbox LIVE, for PS3/4 this is PlayStation Network, and on PC Steam could become such a standard.

Initially, Valve simply needed to solve the problem of timely release of updates for Counter-Strike and its other games. But real success came after the release of Half-Life 2. After it, Valve decided to expand, and if 2005 began with the sale of some Rag Doll Kung Fu and Darwinia, then soon the first agreements were concluded to provide their platform to such large publishers as id Software, Eidos Interactive and Capcom. And after a couple of years, there were about 13 million users, and the number of games was measured in hundreds.

A sharp rise occurred in 2007-2009. At the same time, “achievements” and normal chat, so popular on consoles, appeared. And in 2010, Steam moved to OS X. Analysts from FADE estimated Steam’s revenue for 2010 at $970 million., and $468 million for the first half of 2011.

Steam was doing so well that EA refused to release Battlefield 3 (2011) on it for the sake of its service – Origin, justifying itself by the fact that it will be difficult to release updates. Even then it was clear that BF3 was just the beginning. EA set its sights on great things, fully confident that it could repeat the success of its competitor. It was supposed to bring Origin to a state of competitiveness with its main rival – Steam. Although EA Downloader originated back in 2005, the new service allowed you to download publisher games, videos, demos and DLC. From the same series and transformation Games for Windows – Live in 2010 from a small add-on with “achievements” to a full-fledged online store, with all that it entailed in the form of abandoning Steam. You can still remember Uplay (2009) from Ubisoft, which reached the level of Steam (in terms of the scale of design, not implementation) only in 2012. In addition to the store, rewards and player profiles with a normal communication system have already appeared there.

All this frantic activity to promote each of its services was provoked by the crisis of 2008, which halved the capitalization of corporations, and its consequences for, for example, EA are still reverberating. As you know, a penny saves a ruble. And against the backdrop of a catastrophic drop in sales, give about another 15-20% (there is no exact information about Steam’s share, but for Fez and other indies they give 30%. Let’s assume that “AAA” projects are sold on more humane terms) is too expensive. Stands a little off to the side Good Old Games from the beloved CD Projekt and in 2008 began with the release of old games for $5 and $10 without any DRM. And his popularity grew along with the success of CD Project. In 2012, GOG discarded the old Good old games decoding and began offering AAA-class games and games from independent developers on their service, in addition to only classic releases. The service began to be called simply GOG.com. According to PC Gamer data on online sales of The Witcher 2 in 2011: Direct2Drive, Impulse[en] and Gamersgate[en] together sold 10 thousand.copies (4%), GOG sold 40 thousand.copies (16%), and Steam sold 200 thousand during the same period.copies (80%)

Corporations solved their immediate problems and, having created a bunch of services of varying degrees of lousiness, forever blocked the possibility of PC consolidation around Steam. And if the question is “what to play??"there were natural limitations, then the question of "how to play?» Valve had every chance to show better than others and, in general, showed.

It was Steam that set the fashion. A system of regular discounts, elegant micro-transactions (“caps” for TF2 have become a household name, like “cases” are now in CS:GO) and finally the Steam Workshop. In 2011, Steam even moved to PS3, and at the end of 2012 it acquired a mobile application.
And after all, every decision hit the bull’s eye, and self-confidence grew by leaps and bounds, in the role of which was the annual profit of $ 720 million., of which $400 million. accounted for Dota 2, Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. With that kind of money you can take risks and, seeing a dead end at the end of the PC industry, Valve for the first time tried to break through a stone wall with its head with a logical result.

Steam OS was announced in 2013. SteamOS, or rather Linux, will provide all the same applications and features for the average user. But if you are on Windows and want to play Dota 2 or any other game from the Steam library with increased performance, you need to start the PC under a different OS, and then exit the game and boot Windows again to open Word or something. Despite the fact that Steam OS is available as an operating system, free for users and freely licensed for developers, many at first did not understand what was happening and what it was for.

Already on September 20, a page with the name appeared in the Steam store "The Steam universe will expand in 2014". Many developers, including DICE, creators of the Battlefield series, and Creative Assembly, creators of the Total War series, have said that they plan to support their games on Linux and SteamOS.

At CES 2013 it was revealed that it was developed for Steam Machines (then called Piston). As one figure with the initials said G. N.: "Linux and open source software are the future of the gaming industry".

During the exhibition, Piston was demonstrated at Valve’s stand, but the manufacturer refuses to disclose the technical characteristics of the console. It was only known that the data storage capacity could reach 1TB and parameters such as the amount of RAM and the processor could be upgraded at the request of the user. It’s worth noting that the console images shown did not include the Valve logo, but only the Xi3 logo. It is known that the project was financed by Valve, but was implemented by Xi3; representatives of both companies refused to comment on the extent of Valve’s participation in the project. In March 2013 Doug Lombardi stated that although Valve worked with Xi3 on the Piston project, it is no longer involved in it in any way. Other prototypes presented at the exhibition were computers from Alienware And Digital Storm. On September 25, 2013, Valve announced Steam Machines – computers running SteamOS. Valve announces Steam Controller on September 27.

On January 7, 2014, at CES 2014, 13 Steam Machine models from Valve’s hardware partners were announced. And then everyone understood everything, because the price range fluctuated between $500 (CyberPowerPC – Steam Machine A And iBuyPower) and $6000 (Falcon Northwest — Tiki).

The release was scheduled for 2014, but soon shifted to 2015. And already At CES 2015, a representative of Origin PC, in an interview with GameSpot, said that the concept of a personal computer under the Steam Machines brand was practically dead, since it is nothing new in its essence – just another name for a media center, which is built on a PC, for the home. What you would expect.

Optimistic experts in their statements linked potential success to personal authority Gabe Newell. He also has a positive attitude towards the gaming community, supporting projects such as Kickstarter. Well, the rapidly changing situation in the gaming world and in the ways of financing projects in it will allow the emergence of many unusual and bold games, the distribution of which is supported by Steam, and the “big” publishers are too clumsy to adapt so quickly to changing conditions and change their culture of working with players. Other journalists, and along with them representatives of large corporations, reasonably pointed out that supporting a digital distribution store and launching your own platform under a new OS, and at the same time hardware, are two big differences.

And the same Sony reported that the company does not feel there is any particular danger to the PlayStation platform. Even if we ignore the financial side of the issue (even the lowest price cannot beat the cost of PlayStation 4 – $399, and Xbox One – $499). Steam Machines/Box only offered add-ons, like linking the economies of different games. For example, artifacts from Dota 2 can be exchanged for things from Skyrim.

This is what we propose to focus on – providing access to the main game for free, attracting a large number of players, and making money on additional content that allows you to change the game: things, new enemies, the ability to trade within games, sponsorship items (coloring pages, banners). That is, the creation of a separate platform for Free-to-Play. This model is contraindicated for most genres. Would you like to see Skyrim like this??

“The worst time to develop games is the NES cartridge era.”. It was a huge risk – all your money was locked up in someone else’s office and you had to remain very conservative in your decisions and not deviate from the contract. Now everything is different: we can release something on Steam, provide it to people around the world, make changes. We can take more risks… Retail doesn’t know what to do with these games. On Steam, you have no restrictions or boundaries.".

— Gabe Newell, Rock, Paper, Shotgun

With the growth of digital distribution and platforms like the Steam, gog.com and Humble Store, it became possible to distribute games much more freely, without being bound by contracts with Microsoft and XBLA, Sony and PlayStation Network.

But the problem of financing remained. By the early 2000s, the gaming industry was divided between 20-30 major publishers. In the early 1990s, a team of 5 people with a budget of $200.000 could create a real hit. In 2003, EA’s profit was $2.48 billion., which is 13 times the profit of Midway Games. After the crisis, the room for maneuver narrowed even more, and all power was concentrated in the hands of a few transnational corporations. In 2012 Entertainment Software Association announced the following data on average gaming budgets for different platforms: consoles – $8.728.125, PC – $995.675.

Some found patronage from Valve, like Kim Swift And Jeep Barnett – authors Portal (2007), others had to knock on the doors of publishing houses, like Phil Fish And Renault Bedard With Fez (2012), whose development lasted from 2007 until Microsoft invested in it, receiving a temporary exclusive. Or you had to create your own little masterpiece in makeshift conditions without any budget. For example, Ron Carmel And Kyle Gabler, founders and sole employees 2D Boy, developed their hit – World of Goo, using various cafes with Wi-Fi as an office. The spread of broadband internet has begun to erode and erode the power of publishers and the absolute monopoly of retailers on access to consumers.

And some, like the creator Oddworld Lorne Lanning, refused the publisher for ideological reasons. He stated that he would only work independently and would not contact publishers: “I would rather not be involved in games at all… I will not be a slave to corporations that care more about their shareholders than about their customers.”.

And then I came to the rescue Kickstarter — a website for raising funds for the implementation of creative, scientific and production projects through a crowdfunding scheme (that is, voluntary donations), which was launched in 2009. Time called him "One of the best inventions of the year". However, after collecting the required amount and paying 3% for the provision of the site, there is no guarantee that the project will be published.

And yet, people continue to spend money, believing in the idea or the authority of the creator. Today the absolute record holder is Star Citizen from Chris Roberts and Cloud Imperium Games Corporation, which has already raised $140 million. (although the main amount was already collected outside of Kickstarter) and it is not known when it will be released. Of what came out, the most ambitious were Wasteland 2 (2014) with $3 million. people’s money, Pillars of Eternity (2015) with $4 million., well Planetary Annihilation (2014) from $2.2 million. fees. The OUYA gaming console stands out, for which more than $8 million was paid for the opportunity to play games with Android. Well, let’s not forget that the Oculus Rift began its life on Kickstarter. So we can confidently say that the concept is "games for people’s money" completely justified itself.

There were more and more games, they became much more diverse (which is not always good, given a dump like Steam Greenlight) and by March 2016, the volume of the indie industry, according to Steam, amounted to $1 billion. Large publishers correctly assessed the prospects of a growing trend and began to actively invest in their advertising for a small share of the profit; they renegotiated contracts in favor of small third-party developers. Sony and Microsoft have already dedicated entire sections of their presentations to various indie. She even tried to refocus the PS Vita on numerous original projects. For example Mighty No. 9 (2016) from the creator of Megaman and about the same thing, Salt and Sanctuary (2016) — a two-dimensional arcade action game in the spirit of Dark Souls and Castlevania, Darkest Dungeon (2016) – a role-playing game with roguelike elements from the independent studio Red Hook. There are dozens, if not hundreds of them.