[General Discussion] Trend Index: What Americans are Playing

PCs often represent refinement of ideas to me at this point, which is largely why I enjoy them. Yes, a lot of folks are playing older games on them, but I feel like it has allowed people who create to bring so much more to the table. It represents itself with stuff like Gary's Mod and GGPO/2df where people can think of new ways to entertain and create and play. You get a better online fighting game experience through GGPO/2df than you can with most consoles, that's a niche that's filled without all the bullshit of patches and trying to sell a game to the folks managing the library of X-Box Live Arcade.

Consoles seem like such a one sided experience.

I can see why Consoles can generate the revenue that they do, but I don't find that particularly noteworthy or interesting outside of business statistics. There is certainly a point about what people are willing to invest in, but I don't think those standards really hold up to what gets accomplished on PCs.

Edit: OUTSPONDED BY PANG THANKS

Jam it back in, in the dark.

It's only been recently that fighting games on the PC stack up better than consoles, but that's mostly for competitive play and certain little elements an enthusiast probably looks for before a guy just looking to have a few rounds before moving on to the next thing. Nothing wrong with that. If you had the option of going to an arcade or assembling some pals to play together in person, then I would sooner recommend that. But GGPO and 2df have better implemented leaderboards, replays, and record keeping. Things similar to, say, the stat keeping Halo 3 gets.

But it's free.

I also agree that user generated content isn't really a selling point for the consumer regarding specific titles, it's more of a selling point of the platform. The potential to get that kind of stuff. It's how GGPO and 2df, for someone such as myself, became an option. That potential on PCs to get something genuinely awesome, a new idea or a refined idea for a video game, makes it worth having. User expansions, fan made games, and little quirks help make the medium worth investing in. Not because you make a return like creating something yourself (that probably sucks) for profit, but because you can usually get something back (entertainment) from someone else's efforts and, usually, it's free.

You're right that saying "The game has a great level editor, you should get it" to most people isn't anything worth wasting breath on. But having new skins or mods around certain games does, in fact, make things more interesting for certain types of games, because that's how full games like Counter Strike were created. And I think PC takes advantage of that potential because it isn't heavily regulated. There's a lot of crap regarding this stuff, but the things that are quality do get recognized and when they do get support, it's the players who get to reap the fun.

There's nowhere I can't reach.