It seems that the popularity of GOI has helped console gamers find a home in an era when online games are everywhere.
No network era, PC games become our entertainment main body
PC game is not strange to us, its traditional meaning refers to the entertainment game that can be completed by a person without connecting to the Internet. In the pre-Internet era, PC games brought the post-80s and post-90s childhood fun worth recalling.
The most original stand-alone game should be Tetris, through the game machine operation, will be different shapes of the block to build and gradually eliminate, so that the block can not touch the top screen of the game machine and win. The simple game model and operation have been popular with players of different ages. According to statistics, Tetris has been sold 125 million copies in 2009, and is favored by players in more than 50 countries and regions, and is available in more than 50 languages.
With the continuous progress of Internet technology, gradually emerged as “Super Mary” and “King of Boxing” and other gamepad games, the color changes, than the traditional black and white single-player game Tetris appears more rich; And in the production, it is added to the game background story, so that the characters in the game no longer seem monotonous. In The case of Super Mario Bros, the game’s developers have added a number of hidden levels to make the game more difficult while also making it more exciting to discover new modes.
In an era when computers began to be popular but smart phones were not, PC PC PC games have witnessed explosive growth after continuous technological progress. “Meteor Butterfly Sword”, “CS Counter-Strike”, “Red Alert” and other excellent single-player games are born, so that the game needs tend to be diversified game players can be satisfied. A series of IP games such as Chinese Paladin were remade into popular TV dramas. At that time, THE DOMESTIC RPG (role playing game) and RTS (real-time strategy game) were at their peak.
For players, the production cost of some console games is low, resulting in relatively simple game graphics and tasks. Players can constantly explore the fixed rules in the process of playing the game, so as to formulate the corresponding plan. Take Super Mario Bros. for example, since there is no need to connect to the Internet, the level setting and hidden items in the game are fixed, and players can get the best or fastest way to enter the level and complete the game task after many times of exploration.
In addition, players do not need high teamwork in the process of the game. Players with good understanding of the game can get started quickly after fully understanding the game play and improve the efficiency of completing tasks. Therefore, the single-player game can allow players to have more free game time, avoid the problems of team communication differences due to the formation of a group, and there is no problem of affecting the game task schedule and personal attack by teammates.
In addition, the single-player game has automatic archiving and manual archiving functions, players can save the current progress through the archive when something temporary, and players can choose to continue the game from the archived game progress after returning to the game, avoiding the trouble that players repeatedly enter a close, but also save players in the game precious time. Many characteristics of the single-player game let it once become a lot of players of the entertainment.
The decline of PC games has become a foregone conclusion
However, with the advent of the Internet era and the continuous popularity of intelligent products, the single mode of single-player games has been unable to meet the increasingly diversified game needs of players, and the market share of single-player games is gradually decreasing, showing a decline. In the first half of 2016, the actual sales revenue of Chinese PC game market was only 80 million yuan, plummeting 42% year on year, according to forward-looking data. Revenue in the mobile game market exploded 79.1 percent to 37.48 billion yuan.
The bleak market for players on the future development of stand-alone games. From the current development of single-player games, there are three reasons for its decline.
First, the production technology of single-player games is simple, leading to its loopholes. For stand-alone games, the integration of running scripts and installation programs reduces the difficulty for players to modify scripts. Players only need to find the corresponding running script in the game in the program of the single player game, and they can change the game instructions according to their own needs to get more game gold coins or other game equipment, so that they can complete the game task more quickly. Because of the low cost of script modification, players can easily complete the game, and the common plugins make the single-player game boring.
But for online games, players have only the client in their hands, and the running script of the game content needs to run through the Internet. Separating the running scripts for the client and the game content effectively limits the ability of players to tamper with the scripts. Tampering with the client script will only cause the player to be unable to enter the game, not change the player’s instructions and equipment in the game. At the same time, online games have the processing ability of real-time update of player data. In the ever-changing online games, players will pay more time and energy to change the game script.
In terms of vulnerability treatment, the manufacturers of single-player games cannot monitor the single-player games in real time through the Internet and repair the game loopholes in time. Some players take the loopholes as a shortcut to complete the game tasks, resulting in the loss of fairness of the game. From “the call of duty” series to the grand theft auto “series, and game developers on the vulnerability of the continues to happen, but recently the most popular” GOI “has bugs, an anchor in his live with the hammer in the middle of the ground, in the following operations, directly from the midway for not careful to fly into space, to complete the game tasks… Standalone games can not be connected to the Internet, so it is difficult for the game r&d department to obtain real-time data when bugs appear, resulting in player feedback problems can not be solved in a timely manner.
Second, console games are cheap to develop, allowing unearned pirates to muddy the market. Due to the low production cost of stand-alone games, the game task mode is fixed, while online games require real-time processing of player information with big data, and the use of Internet technology for game operation and maintenance. As a result, it is easier to copy console games than online games, leading to a more chaotic market environment for console games.
In games, it’s common to see a huge market response to a game followed by a huge number of clones. On November 6, 2017, five games such as “The Annals of The Three Kingdoms 13” and “Warring States Matchless 4-2” were sued and paid more than 1.62 million yuan for copying foreign games. And in these copies, there are inferior game businesses selling dog meat, but also let players in the search in the face of a variety of index results can not correctly identify the legitimate game, poor experience of pirated games and other adverse factors led to a more chaotic market environment of single-player games.
Third, the rise of team mode online games, single-player games “outnumbered” fell into the abyss. In the single player game, players keep doing tasks and grinding copies in order to complete the game as the ultimate goal, and there is no real-time interaction with other players in the game. However, in this era of Internet popularization, the single-player game has been unable to meet the interactive game needs of players.
With the continuous progress of Internet technology, online games are gradually developing towards the mode of teamwork. In team mode online games, while enjoying the fun of the game, players can also interact with other players through text, voice or video in real time to meet the social needs of game players. In the process of interaction, players can also share their game experience and combat plan to achieve a more tacit game cooperation, enhance the teamwork ability between players, and promote the rapid completion of game tasks.
While the Internet has given people more diverse ways of entertainment, traditional PC games have also fallen into decline. In the process of continuous decline, many PC game manufacturers have closed down or been acquired, but there are still many PC game developers struggling to find a way out of PC games.
Internet era, PC game network is a good way to revive?
From the current market, many PC game developers have PC game to the network, such as “Chinese Paladin Legend four” and so on. And in this Internet era, can through the Internet to empower, the traditional single-player game network, so that the single-player game to revive it?
The network of stand-alone games can effectively change the carrier form of stand-alone games, so that the game in the hands of players become the loading end of the whole game. But players need to be connected to the Internet to play the game, making it more expensive to crack traditional console games. Networked PC games can avoid the problem of bugs in traditional PC games and improve the game experience of players.
But with the growing network of the single-player game, game makers in the traditional stand-alone game in the process of bridge structures, and the Internet, LAN game and network structures, difficult weakness is obvious, the “diablo 3”, for example, the entire networking Settings for players to lose the traditional stand-alone game without the characteristics of the network, in the network after the game, The fact that players have to queue up to log on to the server to get into the game has made it even less appealing for players to continue playing.
Another problem brought about by the Internet is that, like online games, online violence caused by the uncertainty of the player will also occur, resulting in a poor game experience for the single player. Team play enhances interaction between players and makes team play fun. But for some single player, in the first contact because do not understand and teammates blame, even abuse, will make single player more resistant to online games.
In traditional console games, players have more time to look up the guide and understand the buffer of the game, and can digest the task by pausing and saving. The feature of the console game is not connected to the Internet, so that players can have a quieter game environment to play. In contrast to such a game environment, traditional single-player games seem to help people release pressure and purify the online game environment.
In addition, with the current commercialization of online games, game suppliers to promote the consumption of players more and more diversified, players of online games tend to moderate heat, and PC games how to output more attractive network PC games in the rational online game market has a great challenge. In addition to being squeezed by popular online games such as Honor of Kings and PUBG, it is difficult to survive on a console game, whether networked or not.
It can be seen that simply networked PC games can not save the continuous decline of PC games, and while networked PC games, we should also consider whether the elements and characters in the game are suitable for the current network environment, and whether the game will cause poor game experience and other problems. Developers must follow the principle of gameplay and experience first in order to attract users. Or to learn from the popular online games, heavy plot, operation and sense of reality, so that the stand-alone game in the game market to accelerate the recovery, full blood resurrection.
Liu Kuang, meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110