Monday morning and I am at work - procrastinating as always. I stumble around the web and do my best to avoid having to deal with daily metrics at work. I succeed at this for quite some time until I find this:
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This pissed me off.
I will approach this flow chart systematically by listing points on PC gaming and points on console gaming. In the end we’ll see how this correlates to “liking video games”.
PC Gaming
Dell XPS Series
Machine in use: Dell XPS series gaming computer (I never treated a computer as caringly as this one)
Points on PC Gaming:
- Sit at a desk using more or less comfortable office chair.
- Screen size limited to what fits on a regular office desk.
- Limited to a few variations on sitting positions because of mouse handling.
- Mouse and Keyboard controls give superior reaction speed in FPS games.
- Problematic game installations due to hardware incompatibility.
- Reduced quality due to need to upgrade hardware (every 6 months)
- PunkBuster kicks me offline constantly. Reinstall, mess with ports. Rinse repeat.
- VOIP causing trouble. 2 hour delay on a constant basis before all the guys could play together.
- Given a certain lack of moral values, PC games can be very cheap to come by.
- Game crashes and other OS based interruptions are common depending on software and hardware of given system.
- A lot of PC games allow for user generated content.
- The PC gaming industry is suffering from significant release/update delays in comparison to consoles. This is rumored to be related to ease of use of respective development platforms and tools.
- Gaming experience varies from gamer to gamer depending on his financial situation and ability to upgrade/purchase sufficient hardware.
- PC gaming tends to be a solo experience unless LAN parties can be organized. Online friends do not count and currently you can’t really play a game with a friend by hooking up a second mouse and keyboard to the same computer.
- PC gaming is sometimes tedious to get into. Sit down. Start computer. Wait for Windoze. Install game. Download updates for hours (World of Warcraft WTF?). Start game. Configure ports. Start game again. et cetera.
Console Gaming
Xbox 360
Machine in use: Xbox 360 (HDMI)
Points on console gaming:
- Sit in living room, on couch, very comfortable.
- Screen size limited to the size of LCD/Plasma TV I can afford (currently 37 inch).
- Possible to play in prone, sitting or any other position.
- Console controller gives slower reaction in FPS compared to Mouse and Keyboard
- No installation required.
- Top quality of game performance out of the box.
- No upgrades neccessary.
- No game interruptions due to security software or other filtering processes
- No communication issues with gaming partners
- Console games are expensive. Immoral cheap option possible, but complex to implement
- Console games rarely allow for user generated content, save for Halo 3 to a limited extent.
- Console gaming industry apparently enjoys higher priority on release and update frequency.
- Gaming experience the same for everyone in terms of quality.
- Console gaming can be and often is a very social event in which real people in your immediate vicinity can participate.
- Console gaming is quick to get into. Sit down. Push button. Play game.
First thoughts
Both systems have their ups and downs and often it will come down to whether you absolutely need a mouse to play a game or whether you can adapt to change and learn how to use a console controller properly.
Both systems can offer very cheap (or free) alternatives to acquire games but require jumping a few moral hurdles.
Pricey investments
Computers tend to require a lot more financial investment to keep newer games from running on lower performance levels. Currently consoles still offer the cheaper solution by incorporating GPUs that make pretty much every game a high quality experience for quite some time to come. This will not be the case forever but most people would rather buy a new console after a few years and live in peace for the next few years than having to upgrade their PC once to twice a year. Remember that not always a new graphics card will suffice for your PC. Next is RAM, then a new CPU and perhaps that will also require a new motherboard. Anyone who denies this to be a fact, is lying. It happens. And at least twice a year I hear the same question in the office “New game? Can my graphics card do it?”. However, if you have the money you can keep on upgrading your computer ad nauseam. I have spent 4000 USD on my PC when I first bought it. In under a year it was already unable to perform along with the newest games. At least not the way I wanted it - on the highest graphics settings. This irked me.
In the end it is all down to preference. No system really rules over the other. There are pros and cons to both sides. So now that we have gotten the physical and circumstantial issues out of the way, let us focus on the actual presumption of the above flow chart.
How does my social involvement with other people define which console system best suits me? How does a PS3 only apply to people without friends? How do internet friends only apply to Xbox 360 users? No matter which way I try to twist the possible explanation, it all makes very little sense. Does it all correlate to the rather underdeveloped online community functions of PSN? Does it have to do with the “Friends List” on Xbox Live which, by the way, hardly influences with whom I can play on Xbox Live. Does it have to do with the Wii remote control? The chart makes no sense at all. But all this is just nitpicking at an already flawed idea. I may be reading way too deep into the sincerity of the flow chart. It’s just a joke, right? Perhaps it is.
We can therefore leave that entire part of the flow chart behind us and focus on the actual idiocy of the image:
Do you like video games? Yes? Then go for a PC.
Look at the points on PC gaming again and let me know how any of that should qualify a love for video gaming. The author of the chart effectively says that if you love video games, then you also love mice and keyboards, you like to sit at a desk, you hate big screens, you love to spend a lot of money on upgrading your computer, you love to troubleshoot your system instead of playing the game and enjoy waiting longer for releases. If you go “WOOT!” over all of this, THEN you are a video game enthusiast.
Wouldn’t someone who loves video games just want to play video games? Isn’t that precisely what consoles are made for?
I can’t believe I actually wrote a huge rant about an obviously silly chart as this.
Remember Tempest? It was one of the most action packed, fastest and challenging arcade games of it’s time. With Missile Command you had to be fast but with Tempest, you had to be even faster. The sheer bombardment of shapes and the vertigo inducing effect of the tunnel was just mind blowing back then. No level in Tempest was really like the one before and the pressure just kept building up. People would gather around you if you reached a certain level and that’s when you had to start proving yourself. Would you make it into the highscore top 10? If you made it and you were cool enough, you’d just smash an AAA into the highscore list and walk off like John Wayne, smiling smugly and going for some more coins.
Oh my goodness. Huge hype. 
Do you remember how you had you blow hard into a Nintendo game cartridge to clean the copper contacts and make the game work when you turned on the console? Well, the Nintendo wasn’t the first console to require this rather mundane troubleshooting style. The Atari had it first. My first video gaming console happened to be an Atari 2600. I fondly remember playing Donkey Kong, Missile Command, Space Invaders and the Pac Man series.
