Words By Greywolfe
I am part of what is known as the “PC Master Race.” That is, I don’t like or want a console. There are many technical reasons for this: I can do a whole lot more with my PC. I can update my PC to have better specifications over the years. I can play a whole host of games from as far back as 1978. So the list of reasons I remain part of the “PC Master Race” is pretty long, but I remember the arguments from way back – back when there were a number of computer alternatives: the ZX Spectrum, the Amiga, the Commodore 64. I remember the heated debates around which were better and I always remember thinking they were pretty silly arguments.
Sure, each one had different specifications under the hood: they all boasted different colour palettes and different sound chips and different access methods, [some used tape while others used disks] but in the end, these distinctions didn’t really matter to me. What mattered was playing games.
Fast forward forty years: we’re still having the same arguments, and they’re still silly.
![Exclusivity is all about the fact that you need to choose the console that has the [handful] of games that are exclusive that you care about. It's a monumentally silly practise. Just like picking a fork in the road, once you go down one path, you can never go another [not without a serious investment of cash, anyway.]](http://www.twinstiq.com/uploads/4/7/1/6/47165935/1828834_orig.png)
Pick left for Xbox One exclusives! Pick right for Playstation Exclusives!
Exclusivity Sucks
About the only reason to care about which platform you’re investing in anymore are the exclusives. And boy, let me tell you, exclusivity is a silly practise. Especially in the modern era. Why? Because three [!] of the four “current generation” of platforms are all PC’s on the inside. (PS, Xbox and of course the PC itself)
But even way back when, exclusivity was still a problem. Though, because of the wildly different technical aspects of creating games back then – the ZX Spectrum version could never look as good as the Amiga version – this was somewhat forgivable, but just right now? All exclusivity is doing is making some publisher happy.
Well, and the console makers. They’re most certainly happy for you to pick sides, because we’re a consumerist culture and brands [alongside money] matter the most.
60 fps! 120 hours of gameplay! 50 million spells!
Specifications Are Largely Irrelevant
One of the more problematic eras of modern gaming is that they’re trying to sell incredibly silly bullet points as a reason to buy a game. “Our game runs at 60fps!” You know what? I don’t care. As long as your game is a good game, I will pick it up. Please sell me on the gameplay, instead.
What I am getting at is that the chips and electronics inside a console and/or PC are largely irrelevant. In the end, they all allow you to play games, so fighting about which is “better” becomes an inconsequential war of “he said, she said.”
As I said in the introduction: we had these arguments way back when computing was reasonably young, and while I don’t want to say that it was entirely justified, you could have made a technical case for one being “better” than another, based on specifications alone, but what mattered most to any given gamer was the library of games on a given system.
I would argue, in fact, that this should be your primary reason for deciding to buy a console or PC. Look at the library, think about what you’re likely to play, remember that we’re all gamers and go forth to buy your platform of choice.
Joystick? Mouse? Trackpad? It doesn't matter. It matters that you're playing games.
Everyone Is A Gamer
What should matter more to everyone concerned is that we’re all gamers, here. We all share the same hobby and we should be united in that. Does your buddy “just prefer” the Xbox One? That’s fine. As long as he’s happy and you can hang out together and play games together, that should be all that you care about.
Let me let you in on a little secret. I have an intense dislike for Steam. I dislike that Valve has managed to capture the hearts and minds of the PC faithful and that those folks have invested so much money into their Steam library.
This is a topic for another day, but the reason I dislike Steam has a lot to do with the fact that Steam is basically a Digital Rights Management tool. Sure, Steam does a lot of things right – making it easier to connect to your friends, making it simpler to stream gaming footage to interested parties [so long as they have a Steam account, of course ;)] and it has helped pull some games into the limelight that wouldn’t necessarily have come to our attention, [Garry’s mod springs immediately to mind.] but it’s still DRM.
If it weren’t for that, I would certainly enjoy the fruits of the Valve tree, but even here, Valve is missing a huge, huge boat. I vastly prefer GOG. GOG used to be predominantly a service catering to people who wanted to buy older games, but have subsequently gotten more and more modern titles – as such, they’ve rebranded and are now focussed on more timely releases.
Valve – and all the other walled garden systems: Origin, UPlay, Xbox Live, the Playstation Network – all of these are disconnected from each other, missing a vital point: gamers want to hang out with each other and play games with one another.
Forgetting for a moment that there’s a vast divide between controller based gaming and keyboard based gaming, wouldn’t it be great if we could just all share the same amorphous space known as gaming?
Clearly, the walled garden systems [something we were very wary of on the internet in the 80’s and 90’s] are there to protect the publisher behind the walled garden, but it would be great if I could just use one username and password and see all my Xbox friends alongside my Playstation friends.
Conclusion
Hurling invective at one another for buying a particular console or computer isn’t going to move us forward as a collective. Instead, I think we should celebrate when someone buys their console of choice, knowing that they’re going to get many hours of entertainment out of that purchase.
After all, we’re all gamers here.
Pictures courtesy of Pixabay
Pixabay
