Gaming on your computer nowadays seems like a given, especially with the popularity of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games and online experiences like World of Warcraft and League of Legends. Despite its current state, not long-ago PC gaming was very different, and the genre popularities weren’t exactly the same. Through the years we’ve seen many games and gameplay styles flourish and others die down. Like every trend though many of these genres tend to come and go with the waves of players seeking out new experiences and new games making it to the top of the charts. So, let’s take a look at a few ways PC gaming has changed over the years since its inception.
PC gaming has evolved a lot in the past decades but before we get to where it is now, let’s go back to a time when gaming PCs weren’t even a concept and if you wanted to play games you had to try very hard. A few decades back, all PCs came into their iconic grey plastic cases, and often the most exciting you could do on them was make excel sheets or type up documents on word. Of course, we saw the birth of small factory games like pinball machines and minesweepers. Some other more iconic games quickly follow though, with iconic meme games like Ski Free and its abominable snowman and of course the grandfather of what games have become nowadays, Doom. John Romero’s classic game took the world by storm in 1993 and has to this day maintained its notoriety and relevance.
Doom is a great example to use when talking about how PC gaming has progressed over the years. Not only hardware but also culturally and gaming-wise. Doom came out in the midst of the resurgence of the satanic panic of the early 1990s. People called out John Romero for his demonic work as people were having very negative reactions to video games, trying to use them as a scapegoat for the increasing gun violence in the United States. Doom not only fought and beat these accusations, but it also made it easier for other violent games to come out into the industry and also for video games to be seen as a respectable media. Doom has definitely opened the road for video games to reach a status closer to movies and tv shows and be respected as a media in our popular culture.
So, when it came to video games on PC, we’ve slowly seen a part of the PC industry develop its market and marketing aimed directly towards gamers and gaming. There was a game crash in the early 80s which led a lot of people to start working on their own projects at home. The trend of bedroom coders made pc gaming more popular and democratized video game development, starting a bigger industry and culture of PC gaming in the 1990s. Tales of game developers starting their studio is or games in their garage have permeated the PC gaming culture so much you can see it even in games like Game Developer Simulator. This can be still done nowadays, especially in the mod development community. Games like Fallout New Vegas released in 2010 and The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim released in 2011 still have massive and incredibly active modding communities mostly made up of young coders working on their projects at home.
PC gaming companies such as Razer began operating in the mid-2000s when the idea of building a machine only for gaming became more and more popular. Especially with the gain in popularity of massively online multiplayer games. A lot of trends popped up from this, such as the development of gaming assisting tools or call-of-duty wall hacks, PC only Star Wars battlefront hacks, and more. While these aren’t exactly positives, they just went to show the power and possibilities available to you when gaming on PC. Personal computers gave a lot of power to gamers to make their games their own and modify them as they saw fit to better their own gaming experience.
Nowadays all these trends seem pretty standard as PC gaming has been somewhat dominating the gaming industry for a few years. Not only is the hardware getting more and more powerful, but gamers also who play on PC often get to outclass their peers on consoles when it comes to graphical fidelity and general performances. On top of it, we are seeing a downfall of the concept of exclusivity as most Playstation titles are finally hitting PC-only digital stores. Platforms like Steam have been offering games at low prices since 2009 now, making it impossible for consoles to compete with the immense library of games available to pĉ gamers as well as the price they can pay to have access to many titles which often aren’t available physically anymore.
