A Commentary on Platforms

The gaming community as a whole hate each other. Most of this is due to the fact that a vast majority of them are teenagers or college kids, and hating their peers still comes naturally to them.  If you're a PS3 gamer, the Xbox350 gamers think you are trash.  If you're a PC gamer, the console gamers think you should be put our of your misery.  If you're a console gamer, the die hard PC gamers think you're stupid for using something with inferior capabilities.  The wars rage on and on and on.

This is why I found The Escapist's March Madness mock up on game developers very interesting.  If I had to categorize myself, I would definitely consider myself a PC gamer.  That's where 99% of my gaming time and money is spent.  I have a Wii, and I have a PS3 (and I had a PS2).  I'm not ignorant to other games, and if something comes out that is platform exclusive and it's good, I will play it.  No problem.  In my opinion, I *do* think that all video games should be made for all available major platforms.  But I realize that it would take lots of time and money to accomplish this and sometimes a game developer want to keep it simple and make the best game they can make only once, or they go where the most money is.  That's fine.

Anyway, I'm getting completely off-topic.  Back to this March Madness contest between all the major game developers.  Here's what I find interesting:  There are so many critics of PC gaming out there, including some game designers who once created only PC games and now refuse to even look at making a game for that platform.  They talk down the PC so much, saying it's so inferior to consoles.

Now, I realize this contest that the escapist is doing is quite unofficial, but look at the final four.  They are all PC game developers.

Bioware:  Sure, the Mass Effect and Dragon Age games were made also for the consoles, but they got simultaneous PC releases and the game wasn't just cheaply "ported".  The KOTOR games were at first PC exclusive.  The TOR MMO will be PC exclusive.  They're a PC game developer at their core.

Zynga:  The developer of all those Facebook games you're so addicted to.

Valve:  Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead...

Blizzard:  Warcarft, Diablo, Starcraft

There's your final 4.  All the major console game developers have been eliminated in good fashion.

I approve.

On a side note, this summer (July 30th to be exact) will mark the 5th anniversary of my blog.  It would be cool if I could manage to make that day be my 1000th entry, but in order to do that I would have to do 2.8099173 posts per day from this day forward.  Yeah, that's not going to happen.