The PC is dead, guess you will be leaving now.

User Rating:  / 0

Details

Category: Giskard's Blog

Last Updated on Sunday, 29 January 2012 23:18

Written by Giskard

Hits: 1081

When older platforms started to disappear because of the PC, lots of news saying The Amiga, Atari or what ever is not dead started to appear, all saying look at all these pathetic games we can look forward and that was supposed to make us believe it was not actually happening. Of course new games made for older hardware pushed that hardware to its limits and lead to some very good late games for a dying platform too, it was not all bad.

This time games like Battlefield 3 with horrible website for a menu system is being used as a reason for the PC being alive and well by some sites. Either way its the same old death cries I always hear when things are changing, people get scared, they start grasping as straws, hoping for good news and usually their worst fears come to pass. 

But the PC not like the Amiga or Atari, it is not owned by any single company, so even if microsoft went under, the PC would not die, it would continue with a different OS or hardware just as it always has done. In fact if MS went under, it may actually improve things on the PC. 

The PC is the best placed platform for the future because its very design means it can change dramatically and still be a PC.

So yes the PC you know today is dying, the PC we have grown to know these past 15 years is dying. But given those have been some of the most boring stagnant gaming years in history thanks to Microsoft and a few large publishers deciding what main stream crap had to be made if anybody wanted their games published. I say good riddens, the only way is up from here. 

The Internet Peasants that joined us when the net got cheaper and ended up on facebook using tablets or mobiles are the ones leaving us. These people didnt even know how to switch the PC on, so an App based tablet is about their speed.  

Then we have the console kiddies, the ones that got a PC whilst the PC games were good and publishers dumped all our games down for because a full blown PC game made them cry for mommy and so had to be simplified.

Now the consoles are getting the majority of the attention, they are returning to their consoles, their PCs are a lower priority, they are getting older, they do not run the newer PC games and they post on our forums that they cannot afford to upgrade their PCs so they got a game on the console. Those are the people that are leaving us, they always prefered consoles, never understood why PC users hated them and never realised they where actually the reason us geeks had to give up what we liked on our own dam platform in the first place.

 So yes the PC is dying, guess you peasants will be leaving now, the doors over there, good bye....   

The future of the PC once again belongs to the people who care about it the most... and thats not a bad thing.  We have been held back for too long, treated to the same boring crap because the majority of PC users were peasants and anything too complicated was beyond them. Now they are leaving and taking that crap back to the consoles with them, we are going to be the majority again, it will be our tastes that are supported once more.

A "dumping up" of our games will be the result because PC users want it. This is the way of things, a cycle computers go through every few years as new trends take hold and fade.

The other thing to remember is, the PC cannot go bust because our granny started using a tablet or our little brother got a console instead of a PC. But can change in nature to support those left behind better than we have been supported for over a decade thanks to those Publishers that mainstreamed our world and operating system makers that dumped down the tools we use in our world.

Yet our future is a little different from our past, for starters, instead of our friends needing a £1500 PC to join us geeks and having to keep up with the latest expensive tech which was the major issues of the past and always left people behind. They can do it on a £500 laptop now. Which is sort of like a Trainer PC for Noobies, just replace it every 2 years to keep up that way.

It is as close to being a console as the PC gets and still be a PC. 

Again a good thing because cheap is good for the masses. 

The real geeks may need my expensive PC to do what we do, but our friends do not. That is a massive improvement over how things used to be, it makes the PC far more accessible to wanna be geeks on low budgets.  

The people that made the PC a success had to spend a lot on their PCs, those who make it a success in the future will be 70% laptop owners taking advantage of the the work full blow PC users are producing on our powerhouses. 

No need to be jealous, such things are only needed to create the work not to enjoy it. 

 The computer geeks of the 80s and 90s that made the PC the platform worth having have grown up and been joined by others, we are now greater in number than we ever was before the peasants arrived. Some of those peasants are now geeks them selves and stand with us today. This time around its going to be bigger, better and more interactive because of the internet and the digital age. 

 Things that were only young or not yet dreamt of back in the day of the PC geeks before cheap internet arrived and the peasants ruined things. 

The companies that sold us the same shooter and RPG under 200 different names and kept things static for 15 years have jumped ship and are leaving, some worry this spells the end because the hype machine made it sound like they were the only game in town, the truth is,  the controls that demanded indie companies stick to making nice safe and easy to sell games are gone thanks to companies like Steam and the digital age. Once again more risky, more original games are starting to appear from these smaller indie developers trying to get our attention.

The more the big publishers that robbed us of our world these past 15 years focus on the consoles, the more of our world we will get back thanks to those indie companies. The day of original classics appearing a few times a year is returning and the day of Modern Warfare 65 hyped todeath just prior to release in order to sell millions on the PC before anybody finds out its crap is slowly disappearing because the peasants that demanded that crap are leaving and getting tablets and consoles.

 And I say let them leave, they have held us back with their mundane demands for far too long and stolen our geeky little world from us with their mainsteam crap.

Variety is the spice of live, not an endless list of the same SAFE games.  

The peasants are reasons for Microsoft dumping down our operating systems and hiding the things we used all the time away to stop them destroying the world with an accidental Alt Control Delete. 

The days when we said "press Escape" and shouted BANG you broke it stopped being funny a long time ago. Because...lets be honest, they are really like that. Our world changed because they were dangers to them selves and us. Now they are leaving.... and that cheering is coming from me because I am sick to death of fixing their companies and living with dumped down Operating systems and games for their benefit.

When was the last time you had a flight slim like Falcon to enjoy ?

A really really good flight sim made to be complicated and realistic because us geeks could handle it.  

The sort of people that gave us Civilization 1, Fallout 1, Elder Scrolls Arena, various flight sims only did so because they were small and independent and free from the demands of big publishers. Well folks, the digital age just made EA and Ubisoft obsolete on the PC, the propriety systems like the Xbox are the only places left for them to control because they still use disks that require a controlled distribution system. The PC no longer needs disks, no longer needs regional controls, it as evolved beyond them and our world has changed with it.

When the big publishers finally forget about us, our world is not going to die like it would have done 10 or 20 years ago, they no longer matter, disks no longer matter. The internet is all we need now. This is a brand new age with brand new rules and I for one am loving it.  

 No wonder they favour consoles over PCs, our world is like poison to them these days. We are out of their grasp and running free. Perhaps you can see why Ubisoft and EA hate Steam so much. Steam is their Anti Christ and a god to indie companies seeking a less restrictive distribution deal.  

The computer gaming world started with a few independents making games, those games became classics and those indie companies became rich publishers, they brought out the smaller companies and became publishers like EA, Ubisoft and Activision.

After that they started to control everything, dominating the gaming world, anything that looked good got brought out and killed off. Future games from those up and company devs, just never appeared. They decided what we would be playing this year and ensuring anything that got made was always a nice and safe title for them to make. They never took any of the risks with new content that they once took as young indie companies. They knew they would always get their money back from anything they made providing they played it safe, so gaming got boring. 

Hype became a tool to promote the crap out of bad games so even bad games always sold by the million on release day before anybody realised they were crap and could complain. EULAs ensured we lost our right to return games we did not like so there was no refunds if we got suckered in to buying those crappy games by a slick advertising campaign.   

Today they are too focused on the consoles to worry about the world of the PC and they are taking all that crap and none sense with them. Leaving the indie companies with a much better chance of success than we ever saw before. 

Games like Fallout, TES Arena, Civilization, Dungeon Keeper, Settlers and thousands of others were made by independents and got our attention. The big guys just brought them out and took them over after the fact. 

Those classic original games we all liked, all came from small independent developers NOT big publishers. Those Big publishers just took them over and forgot about them, turned a developer in to something other than what its fans wanted from it, or worse failed to consider what the fans of the original wanted from a sequel because it was more profitable to reinvent the game and exploit its original name instead of making a new game for a new audiance.

This is why Maxis have not made any more games like Sim Ant or Sim Earth but have instead focused on The Sims, which is a long way sort of what Maxis used to make and should be making today for its original fans. Instead Maxis abandoned its original fans the day EA brought them out.

It is why Sid Meiers now makes Civilization games for console users NOT Civ fans like my self that have been there since day 1 and supported Microprose and now Fraxis the whole time. 

Thats what happens when the games industry starts playing it safe and no longer takes risks with new ideas or forgets who liked the original games and starts changing those games to appeal to a different audience instead of making a new game for that audience and allowing us to keep out originals as is. 

Smaller developers want to take risks to get our attention, they are already making highly original games, some work, some do not. Back in 2010 one indie company got our attention and won our game of the year with Mount and Blade Warbands. One of the best games we know about and already a classic in its own right.

That is not a game you will ever see made by any large publisher. There is nothing like it available anywhere else, it is an original, and a dam fine game and its a PC indie game. 

Everything from space games, to strategy games, to RPGs are all being made by smaller developers who do not have the backing for a multi million dollar advertising campaign. That means those who think such a massive hyped up campaigns is needed to add value to the PC are not seeing the PC for what it is.

The PCs value is not measured by how many crappy Battlefield 3 advertisements are made, but by those who use the PC.  

The true is, it is the small unknown companies are were the original titles of tomorrow are coming from and you cannot make those titles on a console without a keyboard. Those can only be made on a real computer and it takes a geek to do it. The people forming those companies are us Geeks, the people that eventually lead the big publishers started out as geeks just like us.

The PC is the birthing chamber of all your Modern Warfare, Elder Scrolls, Battlefield games, right here in PC land. On one of the few remaining real computers capable of making games these days.

Without the PC, there are no games, not even console games, it all starts here in somebodies bedroom with a cheap PC and a desire to be creative. The people that make things happen, that is us real computer users, the geeks, the ones the publishers love to ignore because its less profitable to support us than it is to support consoles and peasants.

But they forget, to companies like Bethesda and EA, 16 million in first day sales on the PC may not be anywhere near the 100+ million on the consoles, it is pocket money to them.

But to me, a geek, sitting here in the kitchen writing this and thinking about my next project, that 16 million is looking pretty dam good and I could use it to establish a company to rival either of those developers/publishers and perhaps one day buy them out, get rid of their games and lay off their staff to remove a threat to my company.

The digital age and companies like Steam mean its very cheap for me to make and sell my games directly to you. I am not limited by what a publisher like EA will publish or will not publish or their pressures to get the job finished early.

Those big companies are right to fear the PC and what may spawn here from us geeks. 

As for the PC dying, I would say the PC is perfectly safe in the hands of us Geeks. Once the Internet Peasants leave and take their Modern Warfare crap and over baring large publishers with them, we will be just fine. 

The PC is one of the few platforms left anybody can write games on, and despite what the scaredy cats believe, its value is not measured by how many multi million dollar advertising campaigns the major publishes create for it.

But on what the billions of PC users do on it. 

• < Prev
• Next >