City 16

UK gaming site TheSixthAxis has published a guest writer piece, Consoles Vs PC, arguing that some PC gamers are elitist. I’d like to argue that some sweeping generalisations are tired and inaccurate.

Lets deal with the main purpose of the article straight off: Yes, some PC gamers are elitist. So what? Specifying a trait exhibited by some members of a massive community of people is neither helpful, revelatory, nor the basis of a post. For instance: some Led Zeppelin fans make good lasagna; some console gamers are both immature and borderline illiterate. For example, as a beta tester for SCEE I often have cause to visit the European Playstation forums and, in a misguided attempt to engage the community, started a PC gaming thread. To quote one post to the thread:

EPIC GEEK FEST! sorry, i’m just not a fan of PC Gamers, they mostly seem really nerdy and those sort of poeple [sic] who take deep breathes [sic] after saying something. and talk really loads [sic] with enthusiasm and lie all the time about stuff. and think there no [sic] EVERYTHING.

I’d be offended if I could even decipher what he was trying to say. The point, though, is that I have no desire to go on about the attitude of console gamers because it would be a pointless generalisation that bore little in relation to the attitude of the majority.

Back to the original article and it appears that the writer’s main problem with the PC elitists is how they always keep banging on about how much better a mouse and keyboard is for FPSs than a control pad. That this is his only criticism of the attitude of PC gamers seems strange given that I can think of three or four ways that some PC gamers can be elitist that have nothing to do with control systems. The control system argument is a somewhat flawed criticism for the simple fact that it is largely true. Developers themselves seem pretty convinced of this as evidenced by the fact that they will generally implement aim-assist in the console versions of their shooters. They also tend to avoid online shooters that have cross platform play between the PC and a console, because of the assumed advantage it gives PC players.

None of this actually comes close to my main problem. My main problem is this: Don’t criticise PC gamers of being elitist by being elitist toward PC gamers through use of the same old repetitive clichés that don’t stand up to even the most basic scrutiny.

If they want to play a brand new game, they need to buy that, as well as have a half-decent graphics card and the likes.  We don’t need that, all we need is the relevant console, so they must be very bitter about having to upgrade all the time, and it’s not cheap either.

Actually the majority of PC gaming is done on pretty basic machines thanks to the indie and casual gaming scenes, as well as the two most popular games in all of gaming-land: World of Warcraft and The Sims 2. Even if you don’t take that into account his statement simply isn’t true. My current PC is 18 months old, and the graphics card in it was released 3 years ago. It is still more than capable of playing all modern releases on the highest settings and when that stops being the case I’ll still have the ‘high’ and ‘medium’ settings to look forward to. One of the advantages with an open platform is that it requires developers to tailor their games to suit a range of graphical settings. Can you live with slightly lower detail shadowing? Do you really need to have full anisotropic filtering? No? Congratulations, you’ve just bought yourself another couple of years of life out of your graphics card. This is unlike when a new generation of consoles are released and you’re forced to upgrade or miss out on the majority of new releases.

Also, [consoles] give you a standardised control input system, which is fantastic; developers can map functions and moves to pre-defined buttons and combinations, and it just feels better holding a hand-sized controller, instead of a flat keyboard and a cheap mouse from Tesco’s.

I don’t even understand the point he’s trying to make about mapping functions, as this is something I’ve done on both console and PC games. As for the cheap mouse jibe, my mouse came with my computer for free and was designed by someone who understood ergonomics so I fail to see the problem.

This is probably starting to sound like the rantings of PC gaming fanboy but, owning all but one of the current generation of platforms, I probably do the majority of my gaming on consoles. Had I seen an article bemoaning how bad consoles were compared to the PC I’d probably be writing this article from the opposite perspective because, at any level, fanboyism is a tiresome fanatical allegiance to something that is, essentially, nothing more than a personal preference.