It seems with the growing power and popularity of gaming consoles, PC gaming has taken a backseat to development for games. By backseat I mean in the trunk, tied up and gagged. A vast majority of games released for the PC are usually console games modified to work on a computer. The problem with this is that these ported games usually don’t utilize the full potential of the medium on which they are being played.
Historically, PC games are more advanced than their console counterparts. Consoles like the NES and SNES were popular and had many fun titles to play. But if you wanted to play something more advanced than Super Mario World, you needed a computer. Computer games would include complex flight simulators, heavily detailed first person shooters, and addicting online real-time-strategy games.
Game developers seem to be moving away from the computer as a viable medium lately to placate the ‘safe’ market of Xbox, Playstation, and Wii consoles. They make quickly rushed titles with little or no quality assurance and mass produce these games just to offset the cost of production for the profit from sales. Granted, companies are obviously in business to make money, but computer games have always been a place to experiment with new technologies. Without computer gaming conventions, Xbox and Playstation would never have had online play, or at least not in the incarnation they do now.
PC gaming is expensive, sure. You need the hardware to play these games and it can be quite costly if you want some super gaming rig. Companies need to stop ignoring this medium, however, and start experimenting again. Stop trying to design games for safe overly-saturated markets (do we really need another first person shooter or ‘Gears of War’ knockoff?) and start trying to think up something new, inventive, and fun to play.
