Robert Ashley of 1Up recently wrote an excellent article on the relationship between game developers and online forums, focusing on the very popular NeoGAF and the less popular but better connected Quarter to Three. I had a couple quotes:

I definitely can’t keep myself from wading into a thread about Civ, especially when it appears on a non-Civ forum, as the opinions tend to be more varied in the wider world. I will post from time to time to answer questions. However, it’s hard to know what to say, as I don’t believe developers should ever post opinions about their own games. One should never defend a game in public. It’s OK to post facts, but it is too hard to be objective when discussing attitudes, opinions, and feelings about games, especially your own.

Forums are a great way to get unfiltered feedback on your game, and I can think of many interesting ideas and suggestions for Civ that came from the forums. With Civ III, unfortunately, most of that feedback came after release, so the changes were only evident in the patches. To solve this problem with Civ IV, we pulled in around 100 of the best posters from the Civ forums into a private test session over a year before the game’s release.

My first experience with gaming forums came via the Civ-focued Apolyton and CivFanatics sites. In fact, I first heard about Brian Reynolds leaving Civ3 to start a new company on the former. I’ve had great experiences over the years at both places, from either gathering feedback or meeting true Civ fanatics that became either private testers, development consultants, or – in the case of Jon Shafer (Trip) and Alex Mantzaris (Alexman) – full-fledged Firaxians. There were some hairy moments to be sure (the release of Play the World comes to mind) but the franchise would have never grown in the same way without this direct interaction.

Nonetheless, I can’t help feeling a little bit of regret that I can never just post my normal thoughts within these environments. Everything I say publicly is always – whether I like it or not – a reflection on the company I work for, the people I work with, and the products I work on. I wish I could post whatever I want, whenever I would, but human nature dictates otherwise. Some game developers solve this problem by posting anonymously, but I have always been horrified at the prospect of being discovered saying something I would not be comfortable attaching to my own name. A little-known fact of the industry is that a number of private forums and mailing lists exist to let developers vent without fear of public exposure. These groups can suffer from being a little insular – they are essentially cliques, after all – but a little free communication is much better than none at all!

Apparently, the Sims franchise just recently sold its 100 millionth unit. This milestone suggests some interesting math. The original Sims was released on Feb 4, 2000 – 2,994 days ago – which means that Sims products have sold an average of 33,400 copies a day for over eight years!

As a matter of perspective, Stardock’s Brad Wardell recently stated that selling 100,000 units was a good threshold for success in the PC market, which means that the Sims franchise sold the equivalent of a hit PC game every 72 hours…

Wow.

Edit: Apparently, I fail at the maths.

Yesterday, Next Generation released a listing of the best-selling games over the last 12 months. (Note the detail here – these are the best-selling games released and sold during the arbitrary period March 1, 2007 to March 1, 2008.) Today, they published an analysis of the data, including a remarkable graph on platform exclusives.

Obviously, it is no surprise that Nintendo rules the roost here with exclusives as their platforms have such unique user interfaces. However, there is another platform up here with a completely unique interface and yet a tiny number of exclusives – the PC. Apparently, the PC had only one exclusive title released in the last twelve months which showed up in the top 100 sales list. This is so appalling that I need to write it again: only one non-port PC game released last year was among the top 100 in sales!*

I find it bizarre to even think of native PC games as “exclusives” as it’s a format without an owner but also one with such a long, storied history. The chart will probably looks significantly different next year with the release of Spore and whichever Blizzard product comes out next. If nothing else, this chart emphasizes that the middle of the PC retail industry has disappeared entirely. Franchises like Civilization and Age of Empires and StarCraft are still quite safe, but oft-kilter games from major publishers like Majesty and Sacrifice and Tropico are gone, gone, gone, and they are not coming back.

All of this is not to say that the PC market is doomed. In fact, quite the opposite is happening as today – right now! – is the most profitable time in history to be making games on the PC. From Blizzard earning literally billions from World of Warcraft to PopCap crossing the $100 million revenue barrier from selling casual games to the untold millions Steam and its games are making from direct distribution.

Furthermore, a stealth PC games industry is emerging that is only slowing beginning to receive mainstream recognition. Indies are experiencing significant success, such as Ironclad’s Sins of a Solar Empire or Vic Davis’s Armageddon Empires. More importantly, however, small teams which approach games as a service, not a product, are showing the real future of PC gaming: MapleStory, Habbo Hotel, Puzzle Pirates, and so on. The Gower brothers, creators of the web-based MMO Runescape, are now the 654th richest men in the UK, each worth over $200 million.

Many developers do not consider these products as part of the games industry proper – at GDC this year, Cryptic Studios’s Creative Director Jack Emmert revealed, shockingly, that he had never even heard of MapleStory – but this too will change. With the Web’s explosive and continued growth, people are certainly using their PC’s more than ever. Accordingly, the PC games market should dwarf all other games markets in the long run. The market, however, will never be the same as it was during PC gaming’s “golden days” of the late-90s.

PC Games are Dead! Love Live PC Games!

*OK, actually more than one. I certainly would not claim that The Orange Box is a console game ported to the PC. That product messes with categorization in so many ways! Also, as Tom points out below, C&C 3 and Football Manager (and a couple others) are certainly PC-focused also. By the way, anyone want to guess what the only PC-exclusive title was to show up on that list? Don’t cheat and look it up!