PC Elitism – Because PC Owners Can Be Smug Pricks Too

So I’ve lambasted Apple and stuck my nose up at the smuggery of the self-satisfied lifestyle that they promote, but I feel like maybe I’ve been unfair. Perhaps I’ve been overly biased, because very recently I saw something that made my blood boil and caused me to reach an epiphany.

Names have been censored because I’m a big wuss, and also because I have no idea if there’s legal grounds on posting from someone’s Facebook wall without their permission.

PC owners can be ugly, smug pricks too. Either that, or I’ve got the wrong end of the stick and this sequence of posts was all layered with thick sarcasm…but I severely doubt it¹.

In light of this moment of realisation, I’m going to let Apple off the hook for the moment and turn my narrow-minded attention to a matter fairly close to my heart, that of games console versus PC.

I’m not sure why that Facebook wall post has incensed me to the point it has; I’m satisfied with my games console, is that not enough? I think it’s actually more of the amount of spite infused in the conversation. This is what I can deduce for what’s inferred:

• GAME has in some way slighted the three or four people partaking in this wall conversation, to the point where they genuinely harbour hatred for the brand². I’m guessing that GAME employees must have urinated on their cornflakes or ran over their puppies to inspire this much hate.
• The business model of digital downloads should replace the current, physical media model (i.e. buying games on discs in boxes).
• Next gen – the next generation of games (better graphics and gameplay) is coming soon, and presumably is being held up by the technology caps of the current console generation.

Personally I’m disgusted over how people can be happy over 2000 people being made unemployed, but then that’s apparently their fault for working within an outdated business model for a blatantly evil company. Sucks to be you, guys!

Let’s address some of the issues touched upon one-by-one.

Is the PC genuinely a better platform for games than consoles?

Yes. Well it goes without saying. PCs are infinitely upgradeable and are not technologically limited as games consoles. When you purchase a games console, you’re restricting yourself to the hardware’s limitations for the next five or six years until the next series, or generation (“next gen”), of consoles are released. This is why new consoles will appear around the same time as each other, and there’s usually two or three for good competition. Some past examples:

• The SEGA Mega Drive (Genesis in the United States) and Nintendo’s Super Nintendo (or “SNES”).
• The Sony Playstation, the Nintendo 64 and the SEGA Dreamcast (which lost out and caused SEGA to drop out of the hardware market and go into producing third-party software instead).
• The Sony PS2, the Microsoft Xbox and the Nintendo Gamecube.
• The Sony PS3, the Microsoft Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii (notably the least powerful of the consoles by intention to market to a non-gaming audience).

Competition is a good thing – it means that the companies participating against each other always look to make their product more beneficial to the consumer. For example, Sony’s PS3 was the most expensive console on the market, and yet they were still selling it at a loss in order to build their consumer base back up. If they’d have sold it at full value, you’d have probably been looking at around £799 instead of £399. The opposite of competition is a monopoly, which is the thing nobody wants because the company with the monopoly can arguably charge what they want on the basis of “supply and demand” (which is why petrol’s so damn expensive these days). The closest thing to a monopoly there is on the gaming marketplace would be the marvellous digital download marketplace Steam from Valve – more on that in a bit.

With the hardware limitations, all console manufacturers can do is push out software updates to improve or add functionality. With a PC, you don’t have to worry about any of that because if you feel like updating the graphics, you buy a new graphics card. Want more memory? Just buy some more and plug it in! Surely this means that the PC is the greatest gaming platform of all time? It is, if you know what you’re doing.

I’m sad to say that I’m part of the general masses of plebeians who doesn’t know how a computer works. I vaguely know which bits do what and if there’s a software fault I can usually figure out how to fix it, but otherwise I’m fairly certain there’s a collection of gnomes, fairies and leprechauns inside that computer box that do all the hard work. I’m satisfied with that, too, because the last thing I want to do is have to worry about trying to get the thing I play my games on to work properly. Here’s a list of problems I’ve encountered with PC gaming:

• The game I want to play doesn’t like the graphics card I’ve got installed, or it’s alright with the graphics card as long as my software drivers are set to an obscure beta release version hidden somewhere on the graphics card manufacturer’s website.
• I’ve bought a new game and, in the month between buying my last PC game, there’s been a jump in the technology requirements that means that my PC just isn’t powerful to run the thing, even with graphics set to minimum. The game likes to crash to desktop.
• The game wants to install a whole bunch of proprietary software on my system that I don’t need or want (I’m looking at you, EA).
• The game runs fine but there’s odd quirks that only affects my PC and the PCs of the two other people who’ve posted on the game developer’s forums asking about fixes for these quirks. In order to be able to give us an answer we’re required to go through the rigmarole of providing the developer with a detailed spec of our computers, because it’s an obscure bug that they obviously can’t recreate because they didn’t build the game with our three PCs in mind.

In comparison, here’s the list of problems I’ve encountered with console gaming:

• I’ve played the console so much that I’ve fried its interior, and now require to purchase a brand new console in its entirety, rather than salvaging the bits that still work for a repair job.
• Most of the consoles I’ve bought have failed within the first two weeks, and I’ve had to take them back to the store in exchange for a new one.
• The Playstation Network has been down for maintenance (the worst case obviously being the whole Lulzsec hacking scandal, which left people like me without online gaming for about three months!). This is more of a restrictive infrastructure issue rather than a hardware/software issue, but I acknowledge that PC gamers just need to find another server to play on if one goes down.

Basically, I’m lazy and want the thing I’m playing my games on to just work. I don’t want to spend time trying to fix issues, I get enough of that at work spankyouverymuch! In the long run however, if I took the time to learn what makes the computer tick and what parts I can upgrade, play with and overclock, I’d probably have a better gaming experience that has as much variety as the internet offers.

Is the gaming experience better on a PC?

There’s no “yes” or “no” answer to this, because it’s subjective. Personally, it’s “no”. You can have just as good a time with an Xbox 360 as you can a PC, but it comes down to personal preference.

If you’re really all about the gaming and improving your kills/deaths ratio, it goes without question that the PC is the playing field of champions. A keyboard and mouse are far more sensitive and responsive than a game controller will ever be, even with the little joystick nubs. A view path on a console will always be a smooth movement because you have to move it from one place to another, whereas (on a PC) if you suddenly want to dart your viewpoint to 180 degrees behind you and looking upwards you can do it with a quick flick of the mouse.

Top: a smooth view path you get when using a game controller. Bottom: a direct point-to-point path you get when using a mouse. Screenshot from Battlefield Heroes.

I’ll attest to confirming these response times – I used to play Battlefield Heroes using a PS2 controller via a USB adapter. Even with the sensitivity turned right up, my character was a lumbering cretin compared to all the other players on the field. My character’s turning circles were distinctly slower than the quick, sharp reactions of everyone else. I still kicked a lot of arse, but I was handicapping myself as well because my hands get confused when there’s a line of keys in front of me that I’m required to press with urgency. Using a controller is just far more accessible!

That’s the gameplay, but what about that other thing, the GRAPHICS? How do the pixels differ? Between the consoles (by which I mean the Xbox 360 and the PS3, not that rehashed excuse for a PS2, the Nintendo Wii) it’s fairly level. The Xbox may not be quite as pretty as the PS3 in theory, but in execution it turns out that many multi-platform games actually look and play better on in over Sony’s console on the grounds that the PS3 just renders things differently. For example, on the Fallout games the anti-aliasing is far superior on the Xbox and is occasionally non-existent on the PS3. On the other hand, games developed with the PS3 specifically in mind blow the Xbox out of the water in terms of what can be rendered – I’m thinking of the PS3 exclusives of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and the Uncharted series.

As for the PC, the sky’s the limit. If you’ve got an amazing rig you can look forward to playing games with far more polygons³ than the consoles can handle. Shame that the “next-gen rig” is such a niche audience that not many game developers actively pursue it as a demographic. In these days where a game can cost a couple of tens of millions of pounds to produce (if you’re lucky), it’s just not viable to develop specifically for one platform (or for a high-spec PC the majority don’t have), which is why most big games are developed with intent to port it across the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Unfortunately this often means that PC gamers get a half-arsed, buggy port of console games, sometimes months after the console gamers have played it to death.

To bang on an oft-touted drum, great graphics don’t necessarily equal great gameplay. Some of the biggest PC games are the Sims, World of Warcraft and Minecraft, and they don’t exactly tax the limits of digital rendering – in the case of the latter, showing a non-gamer your latest build on Minecraft would be like being a five year old showing their mum the stack of play-blocks they’ve made: it’s terribly basic.

Oh, there’s another thing PC gaming offers: mods. Everyone loves mods.

While we’re talking about the gaming experience, what’s the Digital Rights Management (DRM) like across PCs and consoles?

If you don’t know what DRM is, it’s basically code in the game you’ve bought that ensures that you purchased the game legally and didn’t download it online for free. It’s a massive area for debate but I’ll summarise what I think about it by paraphrasing George Orwell like the pretentious sod I am: if you want to know what DRM is, imagine a boot stamping on a consumer’s face – forever (or for at least 3 installs maximum).

There’s actually two separate issues at work here, because DRM is a PC concept. The console equivalent would be the modern (as in recent) interest of gaming publishers of attempting to kill off the used game market. You rarely get illegally downloaded games on consoles, but the sky’s the limit and I’m aware of hackers accessing Sony’s development portals to access games early and the like⁴. Let’s tackle both these equivalent issues.

DRM is a pain in the bum – it’s there to ensure that you have obtained the game via legitimate channels. Did you know that in almost every DVD or Blu-ray there’s usually some small print that says that by purchasing the product you are effectively not buying the disc and its contents for ownership, but instead a licence to access the content on the disc for your own personal use? If you ever watch Be Kind Rewind there’s a particularly memorable scene where the FBI come in to the video store and have all the tapes destroyed because the shop owners had been recording over them following a series of wacky events. DRM is the equivalent of the game publisher looking over your shoulder to make sure you’ve been a good boy/girl/consumer.

I’ve literally grabbed the first game to hand (Batman: Arkham City in this case), scanned in the EULA and highlighted the relevant part.

Back in the day PC copy-protection often used quirky methods like codes written in the manual or physical items that would give you a code to input. By comparison, here’s some of the modern techniques:

• Requiring an internet connection at all times so the game’s publisher can connect to your computer to make sure you’re playing legally. What happens if the connection dies? You can’t play it any more. Sometimes it’s the other way around, which can be a problem because the publisher is then required to be online at all times. This also applies to single player games, and a recent example of when it went wrong was Diablo III.
• Limiting a game to one user login – I remember EA tried this with Spore, which was a damn nuisance because it was my girlfriend’s game and I wanted to play it too. Eventually you could add users to a single account, but at the end of the day it was making me jump through hoops just to be able to share my creations online.
• Limiting the amount of game installations – again, Spore originally limited you to three installs before public outcry caused a tool to be released for this. Problem is, what happens if three computers die on you, or if you have three installations that go wrong?

So that’s a kick in the nuts for the PC experience, then. While game publishers are still trying to work out what DRM method works best, the gamers all suffer while they experiment. I’ve heard and read stories about BioShock’s DRM making the game inaccessible, with people who paid money for a legal copy having to pursue methods to crack the game in order to play it. Bit of a joke when you consider I just stuck it in my PS3 and got straight to the business of playing it.

Consoles don’t really suffer from this problem. You’re buying proprietary software that only works specifically on your console, so it’s difficult (but possible) to download and run games on them. Xbox users pay a subscription to access online gaming, which is a managed resource that acts as the security – if you step out of line, Microsoft are more than happy to ban your Xbox Live ID. Sony’s PSN is free, but with some of the more recent “big” titles (like Batman: Arkham City and Uncharted 3) there has been the implementation of codes that come with the game that allow you to access extra content or the online multiplayer gaming – this is so that those who pick up a second-hand used copy of the game are required to then pay extra to receive their code and access these features. This is a move being made to curtail the second-hand game market…

You’re going to tie this into GAME in some way, aren’t you?

Well I suppose I better had, since that’s what started this blog rant in the first place.

If you buy a game in GAME, more often than not the clerk behind the counter will offer you a pre-owned copy at a significantly reduced price. This is because they make most of their profit from the used game market, with new games feeding money back to the publishers and distributors, etc (GAME only takes a small slice from this). With the used games, none of the money gets back to the publisher. Game publishers and developers don’t like this. This situation is quite unique to video games, as you don’t get James Cameron or Francis Ford Coppola making statements that used films are cutting into their profits, or authors complaining about charity shops carrying their paperbacks for 50p.

With the current graphics cap on consoles, it’s bloody expensive to make a game. It’s considered a gamble to release a game because the stakes are higher in making a return profit once its released. This is why there’s been god knows how many Call of Duty games – publishers would rather hedge their bets with “safe” IPs (intellectual properties) they’ve made a return on before. Personally I think the industry has become stymied by the technology cap, just look at how many third-party⁵ titles the PSone and the PS2 had, and then compare that staggering amount to the number of third-party titles on the PS3. It’s mostly big releases with big budgets and big marketing campaigns. I suspect that this is where the rise of the term “indie developer” came from, because these days if you’re making games on a small budget you’re indie, but back on the PSone your small development team doing it on the cheap were…well, a small development team going it on the cheap. You were lumped in of that crowd of “third party developer” regardless of how many people were working for you and how much you were paying them.

If GAME were ever to completely bite the bullet (although they’ve been saved for the moment), you’re not particularly just killing off the overpriced new releases (which I suspect is the part those in the Facebook post took issue with), but you’re killing off affordable games for the underprivileged who can’t afford £40.00+ on a video game. Even if you take the stance that it’s better to buy from an independent game retailer (and I do⁶), from that position it’d be more expedient to be concerned over supermarkets undercutting prices on games to kill off the smaller stores.

There will never be the situation where digital download is the only option. Sorry, guys, it’s just not happening. Even with Netflix and streaming services becoming an increasingly popular (and controllable) means of distributable content, while there’s a market for physical devices companies will continue to produce physical items for purchase. Maybe in the far-flung future when the generations who use physical devices die out, maybe then it’ll be all-digital, all the time (and you won’t need to call it “digital” because “analogue” won’t exist any more so using the term to describe the norm will be redundant). Another aspect of why digital isn’t all that would probably be the fact that for a lot of games currently on the market, the Physical versions are cheaper, and come with more stuff. Even video game market leaders like Blizzard can’t get their heads around this.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not endorsing GAME at all. I buy most of my games from supermarkets or online from Amazon, so I’m in no position to defend my GAME loyalty card.

You mentioned something about next-gen being held back by consoles?

I’m glad you’re paying attention, literary device I use to break up the page with questions!

Consoles are more marketable for publishers to release their content on. It gives them opportunity to target the regular non-PC literate plebeians, and they feel safer knowing it’s a controlled environment where the game is less likely to be pirated or run illegally. Of course, it’s only controllable to a certain extent – I’d be showing untold bias if I didn’t explicitly mention the Sony Lulzsec hacking debacle where they let hackers get ahold of reams of unencrypted user data (including credit cards), but that’s an anomaly of the whole picture. When you offer your game on the PC, there’s a whole subculture of getting the game for free. Some developers actually don’t mind all the piracy, and it could be argued that DRM just encourages it.

Because of this console favouritism, consoles have a five year lifespan. The argument is that because consoles have limitations, the games made for them also have limitations that a PC doesn’t have, and thus “next-gen” is held back by the console market. PC gamers can’t have nice things because the unwashed console scrubs are holding the technology cap and games market back. Which is clearly bollocks. Fact is, if you think next-gen is going to be better, you’re going to be in for a disappointment:

• With the technology cap raised, games are going to cost even more to develop. Wave goodbye to some more of the lesser game studios.
• It wouldn’t benefit Microsoft or Sony to put tech that’s too sophisticated into their consoles, because otherwise they’re back to selling at a major loss.
• Look forward to more triple-A titles being even more of the same, because with increased costs publishers are going to be even more reluctant to take chances on new IPs.

As ever, I’m probably exaggerating a bit. Technology gets cheaper as time goes on, it’s a statistical fact. But in order to offer something new and amazing, it’s going to cost money. Or you could do what Ninetndo are doing and stick an iPad touch-screen in the middle of your controller in a pathetic attempt to “innovate”.

Besides, I know it’s not a problem for those in the Facebook post, but they obviously haven’t considered that some people can’t afford to buy and constantly upgrade and maintain PCs? Rich f*cks.

Oh, and by the way, a lot of the used game market comes from the fact that people are trading in games to buy the new ones. Without that rich source of cash? Good luck enjoying your new games, because they won’t come otherwise.

This is getting a bit long-winded.

True dat, literary device. I’ll wrap up.

I don’t want the inconvenience of constantly upgrading, I’m happy with the five year cycle and the imposed technological limitations that come with consoles. I feel happy in a comfort zone knowing that I won’t have to worry about boxing up my current game collection and looking to change console and game format for another few years, because that sort of thing can be heartbreaking⁷.

I criticised Mac users for not wanting to get their hands dirty if their technology breaks. Hypocritically, this is exactly how I feel about what I play my games on – I just want to have a good time, and I just want it to work. So the reason I like PCs (in that it’s a device you tinker with) is the reason why I don’t like PC gaming and love consoles.

As for the current business model, I’m not set on digital download yet. I still like owning things, and I still get a small buzz from stripping the shrink-wrap off my newly purchased game. I don’t get the same buzz watching a download bar tick up to 100%. I especially don’t like the idea of a console that’s exclusively digital download, and consoles that don’t even download but stream games on the Cloud just confuse me. It strikes me as renting something rather than owning something, and I like having things because I’m materialistic. I’m defined by the shit I’ve got all around me⁸.

I’m quite intimidated by the rumours of Valve working on a games console, possibly called the Steambox⁹, mostly because I’m sure it’ll be awesome and will quell all my materialistic notions. I can’t help but feel the whole “Portal 2 on PS3″ thing was Valve testing the waters and trying out convergence of systems. Valve basically run the digital download market at the moment, but EA have made a hash of trying to release a competitor in their Origin marketplace, and there are lesser digital download sites. I don’t like the idea of a marketplace being dominated by one company, irrespective of how good their intentions are.

Overall, I just hate the snobbery of PC elitists. What’s the smegging point in bragging or “waiting for next gen” when all you’re going to do is play f*cking Team Fortress 2 over and over again anyway?

Oh, what’s that, Cracked.com? You’ve just put up an article that pulls this blog post’s trousers down and kicks it in the nuts? And what’s that, GamesRadar? Next generation is just around the corner, making most of my points moot? Thanks for that.

Bugger it, I’m going to dig out my copy of Sonic 3 (& Knuckles) and go back to living in denial. Feel free to login with your Facebook profile below and troll the comments with counterpoints!

Postscript (22/06/2013)

Here’s some relevant links you might find interesting:

• David Mitchell on “Problems and Challenges” – he’s talking about digital killing off the print news industry, but it applies fairly well to all digital vs. traditional situations.
• The excellent Jim Sterling on why consoles are slowly becoming redundant in comparison to PCs – I agree 100% that the day consoles cease to be a convenient way to play games, it’ll be time to just buy a PC (yes, I admit that we’re basically at that point now. Shut up.).
• John Carmack of id Software on why next gen won’t be a massive leap – courtesy of GamesRadar.
• A hilarious video about some console gamers becoming some of the dreaded PC Gaming Master Race – courtesy of Dorkly.

Postscript (24/05/15)

With the benefit of being three years ahead of the past version of me who wrote this, I can now confirm three things:

1. The XBone and the PS4 are both basically low-end PCs.
2. DRM is here and it is here to stay, meaning that DRM is no longer specifically a “PC thing”.
3. The Valve “Steambox” is actually a series of completely different “console” computers produced by different manufacturers, all at fairly expensive pricing. Valve appears to have completely misjudged who their target audience are – console gamers won’t know which version to buy and won’t want to part with the cash, and PC gamers will just invest in their own cheaper hardware choices.

Case in point, before moving house I downloaded Grim Fandango Remastered with the intention of enjoying it during the two or three weeks without internet in the new flat. However, despite being a single player offline game I still couldn’t play it on account of the game requiring an internet connection to verify whether the game was a legitimate purchase from the digital store!

At this point I may very well be considering a PC as my next console, if that makes sense.

Post by Sean Patrick Payne+ | June 4, 2012 at 9:08 pm | Opinion Pieces, Technology, Video Games | 4 comments

Tags: Apple, Battlefield Heroes, digital download vs physical copy, DRM sucks, elitism, GAME, next gen, PC elitists, PC vs console, trolls