Our former hosts, Gamespy, have just posted their PC Game of the Year feature. The list isn't too surprising, although it's nice to see a turn-based strategy game take out the #1 place (it shouldn't be too hard to guess what it was, there was all of about one TBS released this year!). The introduction to the feature contains a somewhat depressing wrap up of the state of PC gaming:
It's hard not to see 2005 as a down year for PC games, one in which PC gaming arguably found itself heading in the wrong direction.
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The most discouraging thing about the state of PC games in 2005 was the feeling that the big publishers just don't seem to care that much about growing the PC platform and its audience. Games are routinely shoved out the door prematurely, with the assumption that a "Day Zero" patch can be released to clean up final bugs. Many publishers are still gun-shy about releasing games in the DVD-ROM format, even though they're releasing cutting-edge graphical games with virtually no hope of running acceptably on "average" hardware. Multiplatform games are dumped on the PC with little care shown to improving the visuals. Even some of the best games of 2005 -- Civilization IV, Battlefield 2, etc -- have had significant technical issues. It's just accepted now that PC gamers will deal with it. It's enough to make you wait 8 hours in line or spend $800 for an Xbox 360.
The PC is still the only platform which you can realistically play certain genres such as RTS, MMO, TBS and simulations, but overall it's difficult not to agree with this pessimistic assessment. Lets hope Heroes V doesn't fall prey to many of the negative PC gaming trends identified in this feature.
