Citizen Game

Death Perception

Let’s talk about death.

It’s a term banded around rather casually on the internet, especially with reference to parts of the games industry. One moment it’s the death of a series, another genre or even consoles and platforms. If the many voices of the internet are to be believed, gaming currently sits upon the foundation of a massive graveyard of those that have fallen previously. PC Gaming is often claimed by many ridiculous voices to be dying, its oncoming rigor mortis apparently accelerated by any number of factors. If it’s not the shrinking shelf space, it’s the lack of physical boxed products. If it’s not the dodgy console ports it’s the lacklustre retail sales. Reason after reason seems to come up, giving these voices extra ammunition to throw into their pessimistic argument. From an outsider’s perspective, it looks pretty bleak. But – and you may say this lead in is rather obvious – it’s not. And I don’t think the PC has the problem of facing death. If anything, the problem is simply one of perception.

First off, console ports. While it’s true the platform has seen its share of very dodgy ports – step forward Resident Evil 4 and Grand Theft Auto 4 among others – in recent times these conversions have managed to get better and better. For the most part, these kinds of ports have proven that, when it comes to certain aspects like price, they could be considered the best version of the game available. An oft cited argument is the requirement of a control pad in order to enjoy a ported game properly, but surely this isn’t so much of a weakness but a testament to the platform’s diversity and ability to be able to offer such variation?

Whereas the shelf space issue seems pretty serious, looking at the available titles on the download market from places such as Impulse, Steam and D2D reveals a range of titles old and new. Quite remarkably, none of the consoles offer true backward compatibility as far back as the PC does, with community made projects such as DOSBox allowing players to experience content from before some of them were even born. And of course, claims of the death of certain genres such as Adventure are constantly proven highly exaggerated by developers both commercial and indie releasing games that both fit and transcend into new genres entirely.

The PC port of GTA 4 was arguably the better version. Cheaper too.

As Citizen Game sees something of a rebirth, so too should our perceptions as gamers. Of course the platform isn’t anywhere near dead or dying, but perhaps the root of the problem is the lack of any sort of icon of leadership or identity. Nintendo, for example, is a very well defined brand – backed up by the likes of Mario and Zelda and a plethora of family games. It has the biggest selling console for a reason, marketing itself as broadly and appealing to as many as possible with family friendly icons. Iconography for both Microsoft and Sony are fairly similar to one another, with a very macho and futuristic aura around some of their mascots (hello Marcus Fenix and Solid Snake) to snare male teens and a marketing approach that tries to sell their respective consoles as all encompassing entertainment solutions.

The PC on the other hand has none of these things, which I think is both to its credit and its detriment. A few years ago we may have been defined by our strategy titles, our many MMO’s or at a stretch even by Gordon Freeman. But in the last few years PC gaming has simply grown more diverse, more varied and much, much harder to encapsulate as a piece of marketing. The thing about PC Gaming is that it’s strong as ever – if anything we as players might have to work harder to get those not in the know to take notice of the strengths of our platform. It’s the only platform that offers equal footing to both the small indie developers and the big commercial ones without having to go through some sort of external verification. It’s the only platform on which the products truly live or die based on the strength of the communities and people involved, and none of the advances in consoles today would have been possible without the PC to show them how to do it properly in the first place.

It’s all a matter of perception. What’s yours?

Ben Borthwick