PC Gaming Alliance Head To Make Group More 'Vociferous'

Author: by Staff

Matt Ployhar, the recently-appointed head of non-profit consortium the PC Gaming Alliance, told Gamasutra in a new feature interview that he intends to make the group more visible and outspoken on issues in the PC gaming sector. Asked about the quiet nature of the PCGA, which initially established itself as a unified voice for PC gaming in 2008, Ployhar said, "that exact sentiment is something, I'm thinking, is one of the immediate aspects to fix." Typically, the PCGA would release an annual report about the PC gaming market and make small, scattered announcements. Ployhar, who succeeds former PCGA president and fellow Intel employee Randy Stude, wants to let the industry know what the group is up to more often. "Instead of holding back 90 percent of our cards, and only talking once or twice a year, let's just release something every month," Ployhar said. "We've got a ton of things to talk about, and a ton of things that we are already working on," he said. "So, better communication, level-setting expectations, outlining what we're going to be doing for 2011. We've got a pretty big announcement coming up for GDC." He said when the PCGA was founded about three years ago, there were companies that didn't feel like there was a champion for PC gaming. Meanwhile, console and retail game sales were grabbing much of the attention, making the PC appear as a gaming platform that had little commercial opportunity. At the time of the PCGA's founding, "there was also kind of a big, large sentiment to address with what I would call industry propaganda or FUD," said Ployhar. "There are a lot of people running around, Chicken Little-ing it, saying 'Oh yeah, the sky is falling, PC gaming is dying, blah, blah, blah.'" "And I won't say who the source is, but I know who a lot of the research was based off of, and that's just a very narrow point of the whole picture," he said. "Holistically, if you step back, there's a bigger picture thing going on [beyond PC retail sales]." Ployhar added, "The way I look at it or articulate internally, is taking this organization from crawl to walk. This is a marathon, not a sprint. That's where we are today. It's helping and gathering, building things out, so that we can be a lot more public and vocal, and vociferous." For more on Ployhar and the PCGA's stance on DRM, piracy and the very definition of a "PC game," read the full Gamasutra feature interview, available now.