I am a PC gamer at heart. I’ve stuck my toe into the consoles and portables pool, but somehow the water has always been warmer with a mouse in my hand. It’s probably a result of having a computer from a very young age, and always doing my gaming on that. I never had a SEGA or any of those middling consoles which have since been forgotten; I had the original Nintendo and my PC and that was it.
For the last few months, or perhaps longer, the internet seems to have been plagued with this insidious belief that “PC gaming is dead”. This isn’t so much being said outright, but rather talked around, like some kind of fact long since accepted. You hear writers talk of “a hope for PC gaming”, or even Razer using the marketing scheme “PC gaming is not dead”. I didn’t think it was Razer, and if it was I doubt that overpriced, under-spec’d laptop of yours would come bearing the kiss of life.
Not exactly what we had in mind, Razer.
So is it true? Is PC gaming on a slow decline towards death? Will I have to grudgingly bear an analog stick for the rest of my gaming days? Looking at the sales figures, I can’t quite figure out where this assumption comes from. Let’s have a look at some of the major releases.
Starcraft 2 sold a million copies on its first day (28 July 2010). Once digital download became available, that number jumped up to 1.5 million. Within the first month, 3 million copies were sold, and by December 2010 it had sold 4.5 million copies – the fastest selling strategy game of all time.RTS games have almost always been PC exclusives due to their nature, and enjoyed a boom in popularity several years ago, when PC gaming had not yet been declared “dying”. When it comes to sales, Starcraft 2 outclassed those easily.
Another PC exclusive are the MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games, known commonly to most people as DotA clones. League of Legends is one example, with over 1 million unique players logging in every single day. The League of Legends competition budget for their upcoming season is a cool seven million dollars. DOTA 2 hasn’t even been released in beta form yet, and yet a two minute game trailer garnered over two million views on YouTube in a single day, making the front page as the most watched video.
Then of course is everybody’s favourite citation, World of Warcraft, currently sitting on an impressive 12 million subscribers who enjoy hacking wild boars to death for several hours of their day.
See that sick blue sword? Yeah, that cost 12,000 boar skins.
Also, I’ll just leave this here: Steam.
It would be disingenuous for me to say that when it comes to multi-platform games, PCs aren’t getting overshadowed by consoles. The fact is that there is a majority of gamers choosing to play their games in front of their televisions, and developers can’t be blamed for choosing those people as their primary target. I’m not arguing consoles aren’t doing better, but I am arguing they’ll never replace PC gaming entirely.
The fact is, gaming on a PC just offers an entirely different experience. Whether or not that experience is better than on a console is all a matter of preference. Personally I find it hard to imagine playing my games on anything else. I like listening to music while I play, tabbing out of games to chat on IM applications and surf the web. Sometimes I play casual games while I watch a movie in one corner of my screen. It’s what I’ve grown up with, and I’m not alone.
One major problem people associate with PC gaming is piracy, but this is somewhat of a fallacy. Yes, piracy is a problem – but it’s not exclusive to the PC. The Xbox is plagued with its own piracy, as are handheld devices such as the Nintendo DS – one of the easiest platforms to pirate on. The best-selling game of 2011, by the way, is Pokemon for the Nintendo DS.
Are you surprised? Look how cute that thing is!
The problem with people’s views on piracy rests on the assumption that every pirate is a lost sale. The fact is a very small percentage of people who pirate a game would have actually purchased that game, had piracy not been an option. People frequently pirate games they aren’t particularly interested in, simply because it’s easy and free.
Starcraft 2 enjoyed the not-so-sought-after title of most torrented game, while also enjoying sales figures of close to five million. Some developers have even come right out and said piracy can often help sales, rather than hinder them. It’s been proven time and again that if you produce a great game, you’re going to get two things – enormous piracy numbers, and great sales. The presence of one does not deny the presence of the other.
Perhaps most of the “PC gaming is dead” stirrings are just the product of legions of console fanbois vowing the destruction of every platform they don’t play on. The larger number of consoles players would naturally mean that there is a greater bias against the PC platform. Not everyone engages in juvenile internet arguments, but everybody has their own bias – it’s natural. I am predominantly a PC gamer, so I can’t help but feel it is “better” than console gaming – yet I’m very aware of the fact that this is an opinion based entirely on personal preference.
I found myself watching the MLG stream recently, and I flicked over to the Call of Duty: Black Ops stream for a while, and watched some of the best in the world duke it out on PS3s. I’ve always found FPS on consoles to feel clumsy, silly and frankly inferior to a mouse and keyboard setup, yet I was amazed at the dexterity of the players on the stream – I have no doubt they could’ve kicked my ass even if I was on my beloved PC.
The point is that different gamers have different interests, and we should respect those interests – who cares what other people are playing on? We’re all just gamers, and I think that’s all that really matters.
PC gaming is dead? Really? << Comments and views
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