There is a great rift in the gaming world that borders on a civil war that can essentially be summed up as PC Gamers vs. Console Gamers. It is a rage contained mostly within this decade with both sides firmly entrenched. Mac and Linux users are scoffed at for belonging to neither camp, and the gaming underworld is generally a more negative place because of all of it.
Judging by the comments on my column “Times are tough for PC gamers” (ODE, Nov. 3), the conflict is still heating up.
One reader writes: “PC gaming is the way to go for the best visual and audio experiences, consoles become outdated since you have to buy an entirely new console every five years or so.”
Another responds: “Why? A standardized gaming experience, less cheaters, better match-made gaming without some idiot who kicks you out of a lobby because he is ‘waiting for his friends,’ no need to upgrade my PC and I can sit on my couch!”
If these two readers can be taken as a diorama for the camps at large, they are not indicative of the industry at all, which seems more than happy to do away with exclusive content unless they are handsomely compensated under the table.
Let me reload the level for a minute, however, and start at the beginning. The ’90s were a golden time: There was never much conflict. The genre lines were divided equally with consoles taking fighting games, eastern RPGs, and platformers, while the PC took real-time strategy, first-person shooters, flight simulators, simulation games like “SimCity,” and puzzle games. Racing was equally divided, thanks to Electronic Arts’ “Need for Speed” being on both and realizing a market for PC gamers who would buy a gamepad to play a racing game quicker than they would buy a console to play one.
Most gamers had a PC, an N64, a PSX and potentially a Dreamcast. There were good games and there were bad games, but it wasn’t about what system they were on.
I blame the end of this era on three games specifically: Medal of Honor for the PlayStation game console, StarCraft 64 and Halo: Combat Evolved. Medal of Honor showed that a first-person shooter on the console could be good, could sell well and could kick off an entire franchise. StarCraft 64 showed that both an RTS could be done on a console and that a major company (Blizzard Entertainment) would stand behind a console port. Halo did two more things: It brought FPSs to the masses, and it showed that a console FPS could be more popular and outsell a PC FPS.
It wasn’t until midway into the 2000s that the PC market decided it wanted console games. This gave us Onimushas, Resident Evils, Halos and an improved ability to utilize controllers, with Vista fully supporting Xbox 360 controllers.
At this juncture, it was essentially an inbred mess of copy protection, terrible ports, failing hardware and messed-up multiplayer experiences. What we have evolved into is a society in which games are made for all platforms simultaneously, hardware is made to be shared across both camps and the end-user is left looking confused at a bunch of specifications. This has two major problems: One is that it caused all consoles to essentially be the same and the buyer’s choice is based on hardware specifications. Second, games no longer fully utilize or take advantage of the subtle nuances of the systems.
Games aren’t streamlined for either controller or mouse and keyboard control, and they don’t take advantage of the unique graphical qualities of every system. Game developers and hardware manufacturers want it this way; they don’t want anyone to have a leg up over anyone else and any port of a game to outsell any other port. Of course, this does no justice to the end-user at all and essentially makes whatever choice they made (PS3, 360, PC) moot. This causes systems like the Wii, which offers a specialized and tailored experience with exclusive content, to shine to the casual gamer market and bring in bank, even though the hardware is almost identical to the GameCube.
The major differences as they stand today are that PC has the ability to create and run modifications and to control private servers, as well as being the superior multiplayer platform.
Consoles act like PCs in offering hardware choices, and PCs act like consoles in their limited online matchmaking services (Modern Warfare 2). In the end, it seems consoles will disappear entirely as PCs become much more restrictive. And you won’t buy a Sony PlayStation, you’ll buy a Sony computer with proprietary hardware allowing you to run certain games. When you go out and build your own PC, you’ll end up buying a few pieces of proprietary hardware to unlock the ability to play a certain “brand” of games. While a monoculture is great to a degree for the PC operating system market, it is a terrible endeavour for games, and only ends up in crappier games that cost more money.
I say that the PC vs. console cold war needs to heat up. The sides need to do more than just draw lines in the sand; they need to send a message to the industry by utilizing exclusive content and ignoring games that are developed for four or more platforms simultaneously. The only alternative is losing their good qualities entirely.
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Gamers: Keep the civil war alive
Daily Emerald
November 23, 2009
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