Hello – my name is Jason Schreier, and I am now officially a PC gaming snob.
I wasn’t always like this. I grew up playing a ton of PC games, but then mainly switched to consoles at the turn of the century, relying on the PS2, then Xbox 360, then PS4 for the bulk of my gaming. Then, in January 2018, I built a PC. Now I’m having a hard time going back.
See, I used to be one of those video game players who said things such as “oh, consoles are just so easy” and “I don’t care about graphics”, but then I played a bunch of Assassin’s Creed Origins at 1440p and I think I live in Ancient Egypt now. When you’ve climbed the pyramids at 60+ frames-per-second, it’s hard to go back to your PlayStation for very long.
It isn’t even just about the graphics. I spent the bulk of a long weekend with a 2D role-playing game, using an emulator to play through Lunar: Silver Star Story (a game I’ve already bought twice, on PS1 and PSP, so have no qualms emulating). While Nintendo and Sony fail to deliver consistent, reliable access to their backlogs, the PC already has it all.
Checking out Assassin’s Creed Syndicate for the first time? Sure. Revisiting The Curse of Monkey Island and finding that it still holds up? Hell yes. Being able to play just about any game that’s ever come out, with better performance and more convenience than any other machine I own? I guess that’s just PC gaming.
I’ve become the type of person who stops playing a new Destiny 2 expansion on PS4 because the framerate keeps dropping below 30, the type of person who actively watches that beautiful green number in the bottom right just to make sure that it’s as high as possible.
I’ve become the type of person who regularly reads “PC building” forums and has to resist the urge to chime in and offer advice to everyone.
I’ve become the type of person who now does almost 100 per cent of his gaming from a computer chair instead of a couch.
I’ve become the type of person who refuses to play games such as Monster Hunter: World until the PC version comes out.
I’ve become a snob. An elitist. A Kirk Hamilton. The type of gamer who scoffs at his consoles and no longer has patience for low-framerate ports. It’s all very strange. But I also think I kind of like it?
Comments
24 responses to “Uh Oh, I Have Become A PC Gaming Snob”
Building PCs was fun back in High School in the 90s, I find it all too much of an effort since then. I waver back and forth between playing games on PC and Console, usually specific genres on specific machines. However, for every decent port of a console game to PC there is, theres a few bad or broken ones where the gaming public has to step up to get it working properly.
Unfortunately, emulators are pretty hit and miss. Usually fine when it comes to Ye Olde 2D era of gaming, but for games in 3D you can run into all kinds of weird issues, some games just refusing to work properly or at all. Thats the point where I bought an original Xbox last year to play some old games which refused to run properly on any of the PC emulators, and a Wii U to play Wii games since Dolphin couldn’t handle the ones I wanted to play.
Same thing happened to me. Happy to use a console for action games and PC for strategy until this generation. Then I bought the last of us on ps4 and played around with the 30/60 frames settings…what a difference 60fps makes.
So what did developers do for consoles? Prioritise resolution over frame rates.
Combine the fact that games on pc are not tied to a specific generation of hardware, greater modding scene, and cheaper games due to more market competition and most of my gaming is now on pc.
The only issue now is optimisation and staggered release dates.
Welcome to the club… But you’re not a PC Gaming Snob, you’ve joined the PC Master Race. Embrace your 4K (or at minimum 1080p/60fps) glory and let is shine over all those console player peasants.
I never understood the PC gaming is difficult mentality. Maybe I’m lucky but I barely have any sort of software or hardware issues.
Had issues with some games that were just bad ports, but it’s not like I’ve never experienced on consoles either.
I agree for the most part but there’s more things that can go wrong with a PC than a console – and a lot of the time it’s on the software side, and yes a lot of the time it’s with ports, but those tend to be the most popular games. If you’ve got little time or patience for when things do go wrong, it’s easy to see how it’s ‘too hard’ compared with just dropping a disc in and getting the same experience as everyone else out of the box.
Been PC gaming since the early 90s and it’s only getting easier, but when things do go wrong, it’s still a pain in the arse.
It’s just what console only gamers say to make themselves feel better about playing on systems with barely any games.
I spent basically ages 11-20 doing most of my gaming time on PCs (self builds, all that jazz) but during university got all cool and decided to get a Mac. I ended up buying Mac after Mac and haven’t owned a Windows system since, so my gaming became 100% console based. In the last year or two though I’ve gradually yearned more and more to try dipping back into PC gaming. I think sometime in the next 12-18 months I’ll take the leap, but money is an issue as always.
I somehow suspect that if I do it, I’ll end up loving it.
and you complain about money issues *shakes head*
I’ve switched back and forth, usually for a few years at a time (mostly prompted by catastrophic hardware failures). I can’t imagine ever going back to purely console now that Sony/MS both charge a subscription fee to play online.
I’ve been playing on my PC & Consoles on a daily basis for years. But personally I will always prefer the couch experience of consoles because I already spend 6 days a week at work in front of a computer & I find it refreshing to break away from the confines of the desktop.
Eh, done the whole custom-built PC thing and being able to play at rock-solid hi-res+framerate is nice, but I don’t see why it should stop me from mainly sticking to console or impact my enjoyment of it. I mean even playing modern consoles doesn’t stop me from being able to enjoy classic consoles, I guess this isn’t any different. Also yeah, sitting on the lounge in front of a TV is much more comfortable than at a desk.
Im the opposite, nice visuals and proper 4k are nothing compared to the upkeep, finetunning and shakiness of pc. Games on consoles just work. They always work. Sure each game may have bugs, but you hit go and they just do their thing.
Its been like three years now, I seriously dont miss pc.
Consoles can be just as annoying as PCs. Remember when every 3rd/4th PS3 firmware update released was bricking consoles?
PC’s are literally plug-and-play these days, hell I was running SLI and Surround with a 7680×1440 resolution over three screens for 4 years, before ultrawides were a thing and games came with official support for that kinda thing. That’s basically getting on your knees and begging for a hard time! But I never had a problem. Either you were unlucky or just suck, is what I’m saying.
I dunno, you’ve been lucky then. My xbone is sriously fucked these days. Games not installing, games not uninstalling (!). Messages like : x game has taken too long to start. Ffs. Just ridiculous. Waited a week for destiny 2 to start working again and it wouldn’t so I had to reinstall it!! That does not sound like a console to me.
Not only limited to myself either…two other people I know have had problems installing games and even getting their xbone s to start the initial install to actually use the damn thing!
Upon further digging online, I found that Microsoft barely recognises the problem which is just b.s.
It makes me so angry to see this is what a console is in 2018.
ewww really? I am on PS4 pro I occasionally have a crash on some games, or problem uploading something. The worse I have had in four years is a game breaking but predictable bug in Witcher 3, that went on for months, which they have thankfully fixed, so maybe now I can finally finish it.
I have an Xbox that I only use for some co-op play and have had game breaking bugs or patches that require uninstalling the game, downloading again then reinstalling. And like @chachi I have had the game failed to run messages.
I was a mostly console boy during the PS3 age and slowly turned to PC more. Once the ps4 and xbox1 were released I started to see not much difference between the 2 any more on terms of ease.
Yeh that’s exactly right man, I know I must be in the minority, but it’s really quite pathetic. At least my switch works like a console should. On the flipside, online is sub standard. But I really don’t use my consoles for much else than playing games, so it doesn’t bother me as much as most. 2018 man, what a time to be a gamer!
As an aside, having to boot games using a keyboard or praying I’ve got the cassette tape at the right point to play something on the c64 all those years ago suddenly doesn’t seem so terrible to me. Thats…something.
Welcome to the club. Consoles go in the bin by the door.
Well nothing beats the pinpoint accuracy of a mouse (for me atleast) and the hardware upgrades, no such thing as ‘generations’ just upgrades. its like a free market instead of closed to one gap.
i enjoy ps4 but tbh i dont think anything could ever topple the power of pc gaming.
I have both a console and a high end PC and enjoy both.
While i have crappy internet though most of my gaming is on console since i can still buy physical copies of games. PC is seeing a huge shift away from Physical and waiting a week to download a 50GB game is not something i want to do.
and your console doesn’t download 50gb patches?
Not yet. Most of the games ive bought havent had those big patches.
Plus on xbox anyway if a game has a patch i can pop the console offline and continue to play the game without the patch and then patch it when i want.
On steam once a game has a patch you cant play it untill the patch has been downloaded.
Heh, I went “what! Jason ‘console J-RPG’ Schreier is saying that?”
Jason: “I used my state of the art PC to emulate Lunar.”
Me: “ahhh”.