Steam and the State of PC Gaming in 2014

[ptdebate1]

I was planning to weigh in on one of the existing PC gaming threads, but many of them were either derailed, closed, or both.

Without getting polemical, I'd like to discuss PC gaming as it exists in 2014, and a few reasons I have for spending a lot of my time and gaming budget on this particular hobby. A lot of the discussion in older threads centered around the relative 1) inconvenience, 2) price, 3) frequency of necessary upgrades inherent to the platform. 

I believe that Steam's system of content delivery has made PC gaming considerably less of a headache than it used to be. Patches are downloaded and installed automatically, almost imperceptibly. No more hunting for this or that update or patch on the internet. Frequent sales allow you to get yesterday's AAA titles at the price of a mobile game. Stable servers allow for consistently solid online play.

I would even argue that the pace of change in 3d graphics technology has slowed since the 7th generation rolled around, mitigating the necessity for upgrades in hardware. The slowed change in the console market (which you can witness in the lack of a major difference between, say, Xbox 360 and Xbox One games) is mirrored in the PC market as well. Skyrim on PC still looks like it could have come out yesterday. GTA IV on PC is just a few user-generated mods away from looking nearly as good as Watch Dogs. A high-end Intel CPU from 2008 can still hold its own with the latest ultra high-end video cards (like, say, the $1500 r9 295x2).

Of course, it was a straw man to begin with to call out the PC platform for frequent, expensive upgrades. You could certainly keep your specs exactly the same and pretend the thing is a game console, only replacing it with an entirely new box every 6 years rather than repurposing old parts (as most PC users do) to keep your machine "current" as long as possible. I have a PowerBook G4 from 2002 that plays Baldur's Gate 2 and Halo:CE quite fetchingly despite its age. Would you say I needed to upgrade that in some way to keep it "current"? Of course not. It serves its originally intended purpose well, and will continue to do so until the logic board dies. At the end of the day, gaming PCs are just boxes that play games--just like consoles. They require a little bit more practice, a little bit more time, and a little bit more investment upfront to make proper use of, but have always and will always provide a stellar gaming experience.

It's really one of those situations where you get out what you put in. You want a console that sits under your TV while you lounge on the couch? No problem! If space is a consideration, all you need is a compact case, mobile rather than desktop components, and an Xbox 360 controller. Set Steam to open into Big Picture upon boot and voila! 

The best version of almost every current game is on the PC platform--why not give it some of your consideration? And I am emphatically not saying anyone should switch exclusively to PC. I'm simply saying that it's unwise these days to ignore the platform entirely if you are a person who enjoys gaming--that is, who enjoys games themselves more than they enjoy hardware.

[Vexer1]

PC is pretty good for what is is, my current PC is a custom-built Asus model, I got it back in 2007 and it still works well today, I was able to run fairly recent games like Dead Island, Dead Space 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction on high settings without any noticeable slowdown.

[ptdebate1]

[QUOTE=Vexer]PC is pretty good for what is is, my current PC is a custom-built Asus model, I got it back in 2007 and it still works well today, I was able to run fairly recent games like Dead Island, Dead Space 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction on high settings without any noticeable slowdown.[/QUOTE]

ASUS makes good stuff--my motherboard is by them. Their hardware has some of the lowest failure rates in the entire industry (nearly beating Apple).

[velcrozombie1]

This is my first year with a decent gaming computer: I built one for about $550 (including Windows 7 and a 23-inch monitor) rather than getting the much weaker laptop I originally planned on. While it is by no means top of the line (no liquid cooling or anything like that) it can play most games on Ultra settings.

I'm definitely more excited overall with my computer than my consoles at the moment, and Steam (plus GOG) is the biggest reason. Over the past 7 months I've managed to buy 50 or so games for $120 or so, never spending more than $10 for a game and getting both many newer games and a lot of classics that never appeared on consoles before (System Shock 2, the Thief series, Planetscape: Torment, I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream, etc). The fact that I can easily hook the whole thing up to my flatscreen TV and use a 360 controller for many of the games I bought makes it even better.