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Reading 03: PC Master Race


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. Exacerbating 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 match console performance, to push the limits of what's capable on modern hardware costs a pretty penny. Back in high school, I built a computer that was pretty high end for the time. All told, I spent around $2000 on the computer, including peripherals and a windows license. Obviously this isn't representative of how much a gaming PC costs today, nearly 4 years later, but the point remains, the hobby isn't cheap. Beyond that, other drawbacks to PC gaming are the input method and social scene. If you're friends are all on Xbox Live or PSN, it's obviously going to be hard to decide to switch platforms and be unable to play with them.

I think that the benefits of PC gaming can outweigh all of this though. The biggest benefit to me is choice. You have your choice of input (mouse+keyboard or a controller) choice of where to buy games, choice of components, and so-on. Almost every aspect of playing a game on PC is customizable, down to the game itself. This tremendous amount of choice is at once empowering and overwhelming for some. For many people, all the tweaking and setup required to get things just right isn't worth their time. They would rather pop a disc in the machine and start playing right away. I've recently come to recognize the value in both systems. When I was in high school it felt like I had all the time in the world to fiddle with settings and configure my setup  just the way I wanted it to be. In college, with my time at more of a premium, I've come to appreciate the simplicity of games just working right out of the box without needing special workarounds or patches.

As for what games work best on each platform, I'm going to reduce this down to controller vs keyboard and mouse. Anything that requires precision aiming works better with a mouse in my opinion. SO any sort of game with shooting works best. Games that need a lot of buttons like MMOs and RPGs can also work better with a keyboard. On the other hand, precise movement in space is far easier with an analog stick. Platformers, racing games, and sports games work best with a controller. Additionally, any game purpose made for its platform obviously works best there and any other incarnations will involve some sort of compromise.

Gaming is a hobby unfortunately divided by platform. Ultimately where you choose to play shouldn't affect the overall experience of playing the game. While this is often the case these days, hopefully in the future gaming will become a more open and inclusive hobby.

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