PC game
A personal computer game, or abbreviated PC game, also known as a computer game, is a video game played on a personal computer. The term PC game has been popularly used since the 1990s referring specifically to games on "Wintel" which has dominated the computer industry since.
Mainframe and minicomputer games are a precursor to personal computer games. Home computer games became popular following the video game crash of 1983. In the 1990s, PC games lost mass market traction to console games on the fifth generation such as the Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64 and PlayStation. They are enjoying a resurgence in popularity since the mid-2000s through digital distribution on online service providers. Personal computers as well as general computer software are considered synonymous with IBM PC compatible systems; while mobile devices – smartphones and tablets, such as those running on Android or iOS platforms – are also PCs in the general sense as opposed to console or arcade machine. Historically, it also included games on systems from Apple Computer, Atari Corporation, Commodore International and others. Microsoft Windows utilizing Direct3D become the most popular operating system for PC games in the 2000s. Games utilizing 3D graphics generally require a form of graphics processing unit, and PC games have been a major influencing factor for the development and marketing of graphics cards. Emulators are able to play games developed for other platforms. The demoscene originated from computer game cracking.
The uncoordinated nature of the PC game market makes precisely assessing its size difficult. PC remains the most important gaming platform with 60% of developers being most interested in developing a game for the platform and 66% of developers currently developing a game for PC. In 2018, the global PC games market was valued at about $27.7 billion. According to research data provided by Statista in 2020 there were an estimated 1.75 billion PC gamers worldwide, up from 1.5 billion PC gaming users in the previous year. Newzoo reported that the PC gaming sector was the third-largest category across all platforms as of 2016, with the console sector second-largest, and mobile gaming sector biggest. 2.2 billion video gamers generate US$101.1 billion in revenue, excluding hardware costs. "Digital game revenues will account for $94.4 billion or 87% of the global gaming market. The APAC region was estimated to generate $46.6 billion in 2016, or 47% of total global video game revenues. China alone accounts for half of APAC's revenues, cementing its place as the largest video game market in the world, ahead of the US's anticipated market size of $23.5 billion.
History
Mainframes and minicomputers
Bertie the Brain was one of the first game playing machines developed. It was built in 1950 by Josef Kates. It measured more than four meters tall, and was displayed at the Canadian National Exhibition that year.Although personal computers only became popular with the development of the microprocessor and microcomputer, computer gaming on mainframes and minicomputers had previously already existed. OXO, an adaptation of tic-tac-toe for the EDSAC, debuted in 1952. Another pioneer computer game was developed in 1961, when MIT students Martin Graetz and Alan Kotok, with MIT student Steve Russell, developed Spacewar! on a PDP-1 mainframe computer used for statistical calculations.
The first generation of computer games were often text-based adventures or interactive fiction, in which the player communicated with the computer by entering commands through a keyboard. An early text-adventure, Adventure, was developed for the PDP-11 minicomputer by Will Crowther in 1976, and expanded by Don Woods in 1977. By the 1980s, personal computers had become powerful enough to run games like Adventure, but by this time, graphics were beginning to become an important factor in games. Later games combined textual commands with basic graphics, as seen in the SSI Gold Box games such as Pool of Radiance, or The Bard's Tale, for example.
Early personal computer games
By the late 1970s to early 1980s, games were developed and distributed through hobbyist groups and gaming magazines, such as Creative Computing and later Computer Gaming World. These publications provided game code that could be typed into a computer and played, encouraging readers to submit their own software to competitions. Players could modify the BASIC source code of even commercial games. Microchess was one of the first games for microcomputers which was sold to the public. First sold in 1977, Microchess eventually sold over 50,000 copies on cassette tape.As with second-generation video game consoles at the time, early home computer game companies capitalized on successful arcade games at the time with ports or clones of popular arcade video games. By 1982, the top-selling games for the Atari 8-bit computers were ports of Frogger and Centipede, while the top-selling game for the TI-99/4A was the Space Invaders clone TI Invaders. That same year, Pac-Man was ported to the Atari 8-bit computers, while Donkey Kong was licensed for the Coleco Adam. In late 1981, Atari, Inc. attempted to take legal action against unauthorized Pac-Man clones, despite some of these predating Atari's exclusive rights to the home versions of Namco's game. Thousands of children attended the 1982 West Coast Computer Faire to see computer games there, despite organizers warning that the convention "is designed for mature individuals".
Industry crash and aftermath
As the American video game market became flooded with poor-quality cartridge games created by numerous companies attempting to enter the market, and overproduction of high-profile releases such as the Atari 2600 adaptations of Pac-Man and E.T. grossly underperformed, the popularity of personal computers for education rose dramatically. In 1983, American consumer interest in console video games dwindled to historical lows, as interest in games on personal computers rose. The effects of the crash were largely limited to the console market, as established companies such as Atari posted record losses over subsequent years. Conversely, the home computer market boomed, as sales of low-cost color computers such as the Commodore 64 rose to record highs and developers such as Electronic Arts benefited from increasing interest in the platform.Growth of home computer games
The North American console market experienced a resurgence in the United States with the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System. In Europe, computer gaming continued to boom for many years after. Computers such as the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro were successful in the European market, where the NES was not as successful despite its monopoly in Japan and North America. The only 8-bit console to have any success in Europe would be the Master System. Meanwhile, in Japan, both consoles and computers became major industries, with the console market dominated by Nintendo and the computer market dominated by NEC's PC-88 and PC-98. A key difference between Western and Japanese computers at the time was the display resolution, with Japanese systems using a higher resolution of 640x400 to accommodate Japanese text, which in turn affected video game design and allowed more detailed graphics. Japanese computers were also using Yamaha's FM synth sound boards from the early 1980s.To enhance the immersive experience with their unrealistic graphics and electronic sound, early PC games included extras such as the peril-sensitive sunglasses that shipped with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or the science fiction novella included with Elite. These extras gradually became less common, but many games were still sold in the traditional oversized boxes that used to hold the extra "feelies". Today, such extras are usually found only in Special Edition versions of games, such as Battle chests from Blizzard.
During the 16-bit era, the Amiga and Atari ST became popular in Europe, the Macintosh and IBM PC compatibles became popular in North America, while the PC-98, X68000, and FM Towns became popular in Japan. The Amiga, X68000 and FM Towns were capable of producing near arcade-quality hardware sprite graphics and sound quality when they first released in the mid-to-late 1980s.
Growth of IBM PC compatible games
Among launch titles for the IBM Personal Computer in 1981 was Microsoft Adventure, which IBM described as bringing "players into a fantasy world of caves and treasures". BYTE that year stated that the computer's speed and sophistication made it "an excellent gaming device", and IBM and others sold games like Microsoft Flight Simulator. The PC's CGA graphics and speaker sound were poor, however, and most customers bought the powerful but expensive computer for business. One ComputerLand owner estimated in 1983 that a quarter of corporate executives with computers "have a game hidden somewhere in their drawers", and InfoWorld in 1984 reported that "in offices all over America executives and managers are playing games on their computers", but software companies found selling games for the PC difficult; an observer said that year that Flight Simulator had sold hundreds of thousands of copies because customers with corporate PCs could claim that it was a "simulation".From mid-1985, however, what Compute! described as a "wave" of inexpensive IBM PC clones from American and Asian companies, such as the Tandy 1000 and the Leading Edge Model D, caused prices to decline; by the end of 1986, the equivalent to a $1600 real IBM PC with 256K RAM and two disk drives cost as little as $600, lower than the price of the Apple IIc. Consumers began purchasing DOS computers for the home in large numbers. While often purchased to do work on evenings and weekends, clones' popularity caused consumer-software companies to increase the number of IBM-compatible products, including those developed specifically for the PC as opposed to porting from other computers. Bing Gordon of Electronic Arts reported that customers used computers for games more than one fifth of the time whether purchased for work or a hobby, with many who purchased computers for other reasons finding PC games "a pretty satisfying experience".
PC game sales rose by 198% year over year in the first half of 1987, compared to 57% for the market overall. The formerly business-only computer had become the largest and fastest-growing, and most important platform for computer game companies. More than a third of games sold in North America were for the PC, twice as many as those for the Apple II and even outselling those for the Commodore 64. By 1988 Computer Gaming World agreed with Joel Billings of Strategic Simulations that an inexpensive clone with EGA graphics was superior for games. The Tandy 1000's enhanced graphics, sound, and built-in joystick ports made it the best platform for IBM PC-compatible games before the VGA era.
By 1988, the enormous popularity of the Nintendo Entertainment System had greatly affected the computer-game industry. A Koei executive claimed that "Nintendo's success has destroyed the software entertainment market". A Mindscape executive agreed, saying that "Unfortunately, its effect has been extremely negative. Without question, Nintendo's success has eroded software sales. There's been a much greater falling off of disk sales than anyone anticipated." A third attributed the end of growth in sales of the Commodore 64 to the console, and Trip Hawkins called Nintendo "the last hurrah of the 8-bit world". Experts were unsure whether it affected 16-bit computer games, but games lost shelf space at computer software stores, and many of the hundreds of computer-game companies went out of business. Hawkins said that while foreign videogame competition increased, "there's an increase in product supply without an increase in demand". He in 1990 had to deny rumors that Electronic Arts would withdraw from computers and only produce console games. By 1993, ASCII Entertainment reported at a Software Publishers Association conference that the market for console games was 12 times that of the computer-game market.
However, computer games did not disappear. The industry hoped that the CD-ROM and other optical storage technology would increase computers' user friendliness and allow for more sophisticated games. By 1989, Computer Gaming World reported that "the industry is moving toward heavy use of VGA graphics". While some games were advertised with VGA support at the start of the year, they usually supported EGA graphics through VGA cards. By the end of 1989, however, most publishers moved to supporting at least 320x200 MCGA, a subset of VGA. VGA gave the PC graphics that outmatched the Amiga. Increasing adoption of the computer mouse, driven partially by the success of adventure games such as the highly successful King's Quest series, and high resolution bitmap displays allowed the industry to include increasingly high-quality graphical interfaces in new releases.
Further improvements to game artwork and audio were made possible with the introduction of FM synthesis sound. Yamaha began manufacturing FM synth boards for computers in the early-mid-1980s, and by 1985, the NEC and FM-7 computers had built-in FM sound. The first PC sound cards, such as AdLib's Music Synthesizer Card, soon appeared in 1987. These cards allowed IBM PC compatible computers to produce complex sounds using FM synthesis, where they had previously been limited to simple tones and beeps. However, the rise of the Creative Labs Sound Blaster card, released in 1989, which featured much higher sound quality due to the inclusion of a PCM channel and digital signal processor, led AdLib to file for bankruptcy by 1992. Also in 1989, the FM Towns computer included built-in PCM sound, in addition to a CD-ROM drive and 24-bit color graphics.
In the late 80s and throughout the entire 1990s decade, DOS was one of the most popular gaming platforms in regions where it was officially sold.
By 1990, DOS was 65% of the computer-game market, with the Amiga at 10%; all other computers, including the Apple Macintosh, were below 10% and declining. Although both Apple and IBM tried to avoid customers associating their products with "game machines", the latter acknowledged that VGA, audio, and joystick options for its PS/1 computer were popular. In 1991, id Software produced an early first-person shooter, Hovertank 3D, which was the company's first in their line of highly influential games in the genre. There were also several other companies that produced early first-person shooters, such as Arsys Software's Star Cruiser, which featured fully 3D polygonal graphics in 1988, and Accolade's Day of the Viper in 1989. Id Software went on to develop Wolfenstein 3D in 1992, which helped to popularize the genre, kick-starting a genre that would become one of the highest-selling in modern times. The game was originally distributed through the shareware distribution model, allowing players to try a limited part of the game for free but requiring payment to play the rest, and represented one of the first uses of texture mapping graphics in a popular game, along with Ultima Underworld.
In December 1992, Computer Gaming World reported that DOS accounted for 82% of computer-game sales in 1991, compared to Macintosh's 8% and Amiga's 5%. In response to a reader's challenge to find a DOS game that played better than the Amiga version the magazine cited Wing Commander and Civilization, and added that "The heavy MS-DOS emphasis in CGW merely reflects the realities of the market". A self-reported Computer Gaming World survey in April 1993 similarly found that 91% of readers primarily used IBM PCs and compatibles for gaming, compared to 6% for Amiga, 3% for Macintosh, and 1% for Atari ST, while a Software Publishers Association study found that 74% of personal computers were IBMs or compatible, 10% Macintosh, 7% Apple II, and 8% other. 51% of IBM or compatible had 386 or faster CPUs.
By 1992, DOS games such as Links 386 Pro supported Super VGA graphics. While leading Sega and Nintendo console systems kept their CPU speed at 3–7 MHz, the 486 PC processor ran much faster, allowing it to perform many more calculations per second. The 1993 release of Doom on the PC was a breakthrough in 3D graphics, and was soon ported to various game consoles in a general shift toward greater realism. Computer Gaming World reiterated in 1994, "we have to advise readers who want a machine that will play most of the games to purchase high-end MS-DOS machines".
By 1993, PC floppy disk games had a sales volume equivalent to about one-quarter that of console game ROM cartridge sales. A hit PC game typically sold about 250,000 disks at the time, while a hit console game typically sold about cartridges.
By spring 1994, an estimated 24 million US homes had a personal computer. 48% played games on their computer; 40% had the 486 CPU or higher; 35% had CD-ROM drives; and 20% had a sound card. Another survey found that an estimated 2.46 million multimedia computers had internal CD-ROM drives by the end of 1993, an increase of almost 2,000%. Computer Gaming World reported in April 1994 that some software publishers planned to only distribute on CD as of 1995. CD-ROM had much larger storage capacity than floppies, helped reduce software piracy, and was less expensive to produce. Chris Crawford warned that it was "a data-intensive technology, not a process-intensive one", tempting developers to emphasize the quantity of digital assets like art and music over the quality of gameplay; Computer Gaming World wrote in 1993 that "publishers may be losing their focus". While many companies used the additional storage to release poor-quality shovelware collections of older software, or "enhanced" versions of existing ones—often with what the magazine mocked as "amateur acting" in the added audio and video—new games such as Myst included many more assets for a richer game experience.
Many companies sold "multimedia upgrade kits" that bundled CD drives, sound cards, and software during the mid-1990s, but device drivers for the new peripherals further depleted scarce RAM. By 1993, PC games required much more memory than other software, often consuming all of conventional memory, while device drivers could go into upper memory with DOS memory managers. Players found modifying
CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files for memory management cumbersome and confusing, and each game needed a different configuration. Computer Gaming World provided technical assistance to its writers to help install games for review, and published sample configuration files. The magazine advised non-technical gamers to purchase commercial memory managers like QEMM and 386MAX and criticized nonstandard software like Origin Systems's "infamous late and unlamented Voodoo Memory Manager", which used unreal mode.