History of Computing

Back in the day PC gaming and home consoles might as well have been different planets. When general purpose processors were still pretty terrible at general computing, it made sense to buy a purpose built machine for playing games. These days though, personal computers are far more capable devices. With the advent of discrete GPUs, PC gaming went from undesirable, to the way to experience the best possible version of games. With this incredible amount of processing power comes a proportional increase in cost. Without the economics of scale that modern gaming consoles can offer, it is far more expensive to manufacture independent components for a PC. Exacerba ting this issue is the rise of cryptocurrency mining, which has driven the cost of GPUs sky high, making them prohibitively expensive for the average gamer. ow off ouch my wallet This of course, is probably the biggest and most obvious drawback to PC gaming: the cost. While it is fairly inexpensive to get a PC that can m...

Whenever a tragedy occurs, there will be people who are quick to deflect blame away from the obvious. In the case of mass shootings, the punching bag appears to be video games. Time and again we hear how the people committing these terrible acts play Call of Duty or Counter Strike. As far back as the Columbine massacre, people have accused video games of inciting these acts. To me this just seems like blatant ignorance. Instead of pointing out how a mass shooter owned GTA V, wouldn't it be better to examine his mental state? I guess what I'm trying to say is that even the demographic that most often commits these crimes also happens to buy video games does not mean the two events are at all related. It's disappointing that the media has chosen to demonize video games over non-existent problems when more serious issues do exist. For example, addiction is a very real problem in modern gaming. In reading 8, I discussed how mobile games often included blatant slot machi...

I think I would say that I'm a pretty big fan of competitive games. I'm certainly someone who enjoys playing them, regardless of how good I actually am at them. I always find it interesting to talk with different people about what games they consider valid eSports. Ironically enough, the discussion tends to get tricky when it comes to whether or not sports games can be eSports. I tend to fall in with the more traditionalist camp, but I can certainly understand why some people think otherwise. That being said, I think everyone can agree that watching people play games competitively is an increasingly popular activity. Similar to watching sports, people are now more and more watching people compete in their favorite video game. It's a fascinating trend to observe. Why are people so into this? Will it stop being stigmatized? Should we consider them real athletes? Are they real sports? There are a lot of questions swirling around right now and very few answers to be had. Pe...

Real talk, I've never been to a proper arcade. It's something I've never really had a chance to properly experience. Thankfully our generous overlord decided we would take a class field trip to one... whats in the cups? Obviously that didn't actually happen but we did go to Strikes and Spares , which had some arcade games, I guess? It's interesting how arcades have gone from such defining aspect of our culture to a thing most people have never been to in the span of a few decades. It's just seems so odd to me to think that such places could almost completely vanish from the collective consciousness of the American public so quickly. Despite this nearly total disappearance, arcades are not without merit. Although it's a fair enough criticism that arcade games are often designed with profit more in mind than fun, there is still a unique charm to them. Before we go any further I think it would be wrong of me not to point out that America is not the...