I'm aware this editorial will probably be flushed away by the deluge of "I bot GTA4 lulz" blogs but I'm compelled to post it today nevertheless. I just read a news item about how some bigwig at Crytek has stated future games will not be PC exclusive, like Crysis, but on consoles as well. He blames this on piracy and the fact that console titles sell "4-5 times more". It's telling that this occurs at the time of arguably the year's biggest console release, GTA4, which is claimed will gross more than the box office takings of eight billion movies. I'll skip over the obvious implications for PC gaming, suffice to say the future looks bright for sloppy console ports.
Crysis, and its technical demands, are perhaps partly to blame here. I use that term loosely, for everyone's always whining about graphics and when mind-blowing ones are supplied, they switch to whining about them being unplayable. I personally have held off buying Crysis but that's mainly because I'm on a 6600GT and I prefer to make my toast in the toaster and not in the PC case. So there, I'm to "blame" too. What bothered me was some of the ignorant responses to the news article. One user went so far as to state that when someone blows 700 dollars on PC upgrades, it's annoying to have to pay another 50 to play the game. He even used the word "justified" when referring to piracy. Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. This modern mindset of being "owed" something really bothers me. "I deserve this." Why? Because you paid X bucks to a completely different company? If I blow my retirement fund on a [hawt] sports car, I'm not anticipating Shell will let me fill it with gas for free. It's high time people started being responsible about what they deserve and stopped seeing the world as one big vortex centred on themselves.
PC culture is partly to blame. What do you see in countless signatures? The specs of the user's "rig". I'm not one to have a nergasm upon seeing that someone has a quad core cpu, sigs irritate me more than anything, but it's symptomatic of the focus of the pc gaming scene. It's not about your collection, what you're playing, it's what kind of hardware you've shelled out for. Console gamers don't have to put up with that crap because no one's going to bother with: My Rig: Wii.
It's expensive to keep up with the latest gear. But one reason prices can stay that high is because there are enough people who play along and buy all that crap. PS3 was expensive, but too expensive as it wasn't selling, so down came the price tag. Is that possible with PC Hardware? Who knows...
My main point is, if PC gamers are going to (rightfully) complain about their format fading out, they should be doing something about it. It's not enough to harp on about consoles stealing exclusives, nor blame the companies for releasing demanding games. Start doing something more than hitting your favourite torrent sites as soon as the latest game comes out or posting bad reviews of Halo 3.
Try out some older games so that you realize that graphics aren't everything and can accept games on their gameplay merits rather than how good the reflections are.
Stop pirating. It's very simple. I won't judge the reasons, but if you (or your parents) can afford that sort of hardware, you sure can afford a game or two (that deserves it). The only way to save PC gaming is to vote with money on what games should be made. Otherwise, the future is a bleak post-apocalyptic world full of Cooking Mama games and ps3 ports. It's started already. If you think PC games are expensive, then wait for the price to go down. The message'll be "it sold xyz units when the price went down to this." Guess what kind of message downloading and playing it instead sends? You're seeing it all around you.
Support your favourite games. Developers deserve it.