Why I Left the PC February 20, 2014

I got my first PC in late 1996. It was a Pentium machine clocked at 133mHz with 16MB of RAM running Windows 95. The store my dad bought the computer from included a CD-ROM with the computer which had over one hundred different DOS shareware demos. Every game demo you could imagine as staples of the gaming industry was on that disc. Wolfenstein 3D, Commander Keen, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis were just some of the games I could start playing, and my computer, while a dinosaur by today’s standards, could run all these demos without the slightest hitch. When I loaded up the first shareware demo, the computer’s speakers began to roar. The last time I had played a video game was on the original NES and as the flight simulator loaded up, it looked hundreds of times better than any game I had ever seen before. On that day, I became a PC Gamer. Ten years later, that ended.

Throughout the late 90s, the PC had so much more that it could offer gamers than the consoles of the day could. It had better graphics hardware, a wider variety of control options, and online capabilities. But to me, the single thing that made the PC the best gaming platform was its ability to improve itself through the form of patches and mods. PC game developers could release new features, fix bugs, and support user modifications with just a simple download.

The tide had begun turning against the PC starting around the launch of the original Playstation. While it was clear that the PC could deliver a better gaming experience than the consoles of the day could, it was clear that the consoles would compete by offering some amazing exclusive games that would never see a release on the PC. By the time the PS2, Xbox and GameCube launched, publishers turned nearly all their focus to developing games on those consoles. Even LucasArts, who had one of the biggest catalogs of PC games, was no longer porting games to the PC. PC games were still being developed, and any game’s PC version would clearly offer the superior gaming experience over the console version, fewer games were coming to the platform. Unless the game was pushing technology past something the consoles could do or was a best selling game, it wouldn’t come to the PC.

But a lack of key exclusive titles was not enough to turn me away from the PC, it was the decisions made by the game publishers. To them, the PC was a pit, at least, that’s how it seemed like they felt. Valve released Half-Life 2, one of the best games ever made, in 2004. In every copy of Half-Life 2 was a program called Steam, and it would run every time Half-Life 2 did. The Steam program required online access to function, but once you gave it the game’s CD-Key, it would keep Half-Life 2 up to date, keep an online friend’s list of all the Half-Life and Counter Strike players, making it easier for you to join friend’s games, and provided one of the PC’s first online digital marketplaces. Many PC players were against its existence, but it offered me a lot of really useful benefits, so I had no issue with it. Little did I know that other publishers would see the success of the Steam platform and its acceptance by players like myself, and, not knowing or caring about all the benefits that Steam offered players, actively engaged in anti-consumer practices to protect their own bottom lines.

In 2007, publishers started to ship PC games which, like other games that shipped with Steam, required online activation to play. However, unlike Steam, they offered absolutely no benefits whatsoever to customers who bought games that required online activation, not even automatic game patching. In fact some of the games it shipped with, like the original Bioshock, had no multiplayer component. So, why did it have to be included? The worst part of this development was that the publishers limited the amount of times you could perform an online activation! The internet went into an uproar by this point. PCs can break or get computer viruses very suddenly and unexpectedly, forcing players to perform system wipes, costing them an activation in the process. Meanwhile, while Steam wasn’t going anywhere, there was no way to tell how long the activation servers that verified these games would continue to run, or if they would go down due to heavy use. The concerns turned out to be fully justified. Even legitimate PC game reviewers encountered problems with these limited activations.

Forced online activations became the norm by 2008. Games including Mirror’s Edge, Red Alert 3 and Dead Space all required online activation. I was most sad to see Red Alert 3 would be DRM locked, I was actually planing to buy that game, but I knew all it would take would be three system wipes and I would have to rebuy it.

Meanwhile the newest consoles were looking more and more attractive by comparison. With the wide adoption of HDTVs, the game consoles could offer high definition gaming in surround sound, perfect for gamers interested in setting up a home theater system in their home. Also, with the wider adoption of high speed internet, console games could be patched, giving consoles one of the biggest advantages the PC held over it. Unified console marketplaces also made it possible to deliver downloadable content, digital games and even feature films!

The tide against the PC had turned and I knew that if I wanted to stay a gamer, I could no longer be loyal to just one platform. Some of the best games I’ve played in the past ten years were console exclusives. I never thought I would make that statement.

The PC still claims dominance in graphical fidelity but with its cost, complexity, and the restrictive self imposed procedures publishers are forcing on their customers, it is getting harder and harder to justify those slightly less jagged edges or extra frames per second during gameplay.

I will miss the PC. But I’m a gamer.