See Colon Slash: Bad Press

Welcome to ‘See Colon Slash’, my weekly column on Negative Gamer. As you might have guessed by the title, the series will be about looking at bleeding rectums. Oh, I got that wrong. It’s actually about PC gaming. If you don’t get the clever pun in the title, perhaps you’re a Linux or Mac user. In your case, the title of the column should be mentally shortened to simply “Slash”.

This week I’d like to pull back from the games on the PC screen and take a look at the aspects of being a PC gamer external to the actual gaming itself. As someone who enjoys the benefits of gaming upon one’s personal computer, I’m not going to be whining about the things people usually whine about when it comes to PC games; instead, I’m going to whine about the whiners who whine about the things that are whined about most often. If you understood that last sentence- congratulations, you are qualified to read on.

A classic thing to criticise PC gaming of is the obvious elitism among those who chose the computer to play games on. I’m not going to say this isn’t true, because it’s pretty obvious to see if you go to any forum or social site with a high population of PC gamers. Many users will claim the PC to be the greatest of all the gaming devices and all those who play first-person shooters with a controller are scum who should probably be cleansed from the Earth. It can be just as bad as console ‘fanboy’ behaviour, but with a heavy coat of self-importance.

However, I argue that this is a vocal minority, just as it is with ‘fanboys’ on the consoles. Many accuse PC gamers of being stuck-up elitists but I argue that most of us are just as open-minded as the next guy. Don’t tar us all with the same brush, I urge you. Having said that, however, playing an FPS with a controller? Really?

Another thing that I see a lot of people criticising is the cost of keeping your machine up to date. A fair point, as computers can be much more expensive than consoles. However, I think that the amount of things you can do with a PC other than gaming can’t be ignored. You’re most likely on a computer right now, proving that buying a computer is completely worth it so that you can read See Colon Slash with relative ease.

The cost of a computer is often way overblown. You absolutely do not need to upgrade by dishing out for new parts every year. This practice is for the rich and the obsessive. Even games being released for the PC now will run on a machine with just a Dual-core processor, 1Gb of RAM, and a 256mb graphics card. That really isn’t too much to ask as even computers not designed for gaming have these specifications. Obviously it’s possible to pay through the nose constantly for the latest hardware but it’s just not necessary. I know people running Borderlands, a game that came out yesterday, on 3+ year old machines. It’s just not as expensive as it is made out to be, especially if you’re clever with the way you buy PCs and parts.

Finally, I’ve seen a lot of people recently complaining about games running poorly on certain rigs and well on others. I find this to be extraordinarily silly. The developers can’t test the game on every computer in the world, can they? There’s more combinations of hardware in the world than is physically possible to test in a lifetime. How can the developer know whether the game will run on certain hardware? They have to release it, and let the players test it for them. Sometimes you just have to suck it up and realise that your machine just isn’t capable, or has an incompatible part which should probably be replaced for something more mainstream. It boggles my mind that people feel like the developers haven’t done their jobs if they don’t check the game on every combination of hardware.

So, there you have it. My complaints about the complaints of complainers. Usually this column is used to rant about the bad parts of PC gaming, but I felt like this week turning it into a rant about the bad parts of being a PC gamer in the real world. People think you’re going to be an elitist, they look down on you for supposedly spending endless amounts of money, and complain about something nobody can really control. Sometimes, it sucks to be in this crowd- but then again, at least I don’t play first-person shooters with a controller.