When was this supposed golden age of PC gaming?

[Ack]

I'd argue that the Golden Age starts with Maniac Mansion and ends with Halo's console release.

First of all, there are several genres that were significant on PCs which only caught on with consoles on a limited basis, such as the point-and-click adventure game. As Emwearz said in his post, he feels the golden age died with Monkey Island 3, which is a good place to note where the point-and-click faded away. It's seen a resurgence in recent years from small independent developers, but we're not seeing the AAA titles we saw from companies like Lucasarts, even if some of the new games are quite good. But with powerhouse games like Myst (though it was original released on Mac, it is one of the highest selling PC games of all time) or Monkey Island, the 1990s was definitely a golden age for the genre.

The RTS also experienced some of its best years in this timeframe, though I'd say they really hit their stride in the late 1990s with games like Warcraft II, Total Annihilation, Age of Empires, and Starcraft. There have been quality RTS games released after this period, but many are sequels to the four I mentioned.

And then there's the FPS. Wolfenstein and Doom were a revolution, not only in terms of video game violence, but in terms of designer recognition. Level designers were suddenly the rock stars of the PC world. I mentioned in another thread how great I thought Unreal was, and I still do, partly because every level advertised who had made it. Part of what made being an FPS fan so cool was getting to see what types of creations these guys could come up with(and modders too). I think the overall complexity of game development has really hurt this, but this trend started to end on its own in the late 1990s as games like Half-Life started going for a more "story-driven" or continuous layout.

The FPS also serves as the hallmark genre for another trend: multiplayer. FPS have been including deathmatch since Maze War, though they didn't call it that until the 1990s. Console FPS tried to catch up, but despite the popularity of 007 GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, its Halo where it really takes off. But even today you can't do certain things in console multiplayer to my knowledge that you can do in PC multiplayer, such as having 64-man matches (or higher). But I haven't paid much attention to that this generation, so it's possible something can do it.

Also, as more games become marketed towards the console side of things, I've noticed less and less focus on the mod communities of games. In many cases I will opt for the PC version of a game solely to see what the mod community can do. But modding is no longer a focus like it used to be in Half-Life, Quake, Doom, etc. Where are the Team Fortresses and Action Half-Lifes of yesteryear? The custom maps? The new game styles? Modding's not dead, but the console counterparts of games keeps a lot of folks from caring.

[MrPopo]

Another thing you tend to see with FPS's on the console is that they remove some of the complexity to accomodate the console controler's small number of buttons as well as to avoid overwhelming the console gamer (I'll skip the obvious smaller levels). No where is this more apparent than in the transition between Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Invisible War. Had IW been released soley as a PC sequel I could imagine that they would have removed some of the complexity from DX; that's standard streamlining, figuring out what people liked in the old game and what they thought was cumbersome. The augmentation system probably would have looked the same as it eventually did, for example. But the inventory management, the lack of location damage, and the removal of skill points all strike me as attempts to make the game more accessable for the console gamers, not because people didn't like that in the original game.

[YoshiEgg25]

The golden age of PC gaming started in 1982 and ended in 1994.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

I'd say it started with the Commodore 64, when it ended is pretty subjective but most people will say it ended around 2001-2003.

[Ivo]

When I said it started with 486 / Pentium processor, I was thinking of "PCs" as excluding "home computers" such as the C64 and the Amiga.

I think the C64 compared decently with consoles of the same time period, and the Amiga similarly was more advanced in some cases and less advanced in others (and had the same processor as the Megadrive / Genesis, just as an example). But with 486 and Pentiums and after I think it is fair to say there was a start of a period where PCs were significantly more powerful than anything on the console side - FPSs made this particularly obvious.

[J T]

Why do I think you're talking about me? I assume you've seen the discussion between Mr. Healthy and I in the games beaten 2011 thread?

Though that thread is kind of what prompted this one, I have been thinking this for awhile, largely because of what I see on other forums and blogs such as gog's forum, Rock Paper Shotgun, and others.

I guess I just don't feel like consoles are to blame. Valve removed twitch gaming aspects to Portal 2 because their data from Portal 1 (based on PC gamers) told them that people were stopping and never finishing the game at those points. Since the core of the game is about solving puzzles, that makes sense; though I personally like when my puzzle game requires both logical reasoning and manual dexterity. The main thing keeping PC games from moving forward now in terms of graphics is the small market of people with PCs powerful enough to handle them. I also think the slower adaptation to more powerful PCs is because of the plateauing of the curve for improvement in graphics. Graphics jumped remarkably in the early days of video games because they were so primitive. Now there just isn’t room for those same kinds of leaps’n’bounds improvements.

With a game like Unreal, I think that it is a great example of a game that allows a lot skill growth and tricky maneuvering, but I think that you can only have so many high competitive games on any system because they gain a devout following, but also leave others with less skill out to dry. I don't think those games have gone away either, as evidenced by games like Team Fortress 2. I also think that increased realism and motion capture animation have prevented games from allowing you to do crazy things like rocket jumps and the like, simply because you can't work in the realistic animation to some of the crazy maneuvers that were allowed in games from eras with simpler graphics.

When I look at 90s PC gaming, I was very excited at the time by games like Doom and Myst and the rise (and fall) of FMV games, but it just seems like consoles have caught up to PCs rather than held them back over time. At the time, consoles had their own strengths. The 16bit era of consoles in the early 90s had some of the greatest side scrollers of all time and the 64 bit era of consoles in the late 90s had some of the best 3D action games and RPGs of all time. There were even great console FPS games back then such as Goldeneye, which still holds its own even amidst Quake and Unreal, which were happening in the years around that time. In general, I actually prefer the graphics of the N64 to a lot of the PC graphics of the same time.

The main difference to me is in controls. The default for PCs is keyboard + mouse and the default for consoles is the d-pad controller, or analog stick controller. A mouse is superior for precision pointing and aiming, which is what makes PC well suited for RTS, point & click adventures, and FPS games. The d-pad is best for rolling motions and quick movements, and the analog stick is best for precise directional movements. This is why consoles excel at platformers, fighting games, racers, and action games.

[Xeogred]

Another thing you tend to see with FPS's on the console is that they remove some of the complexity to accomodate the console controler's small number of buttons as well as to avoid overwhelming the console gamer (I'll skip the obvious smaller levels). No where is this more apparent than in the transition between Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Invisible War. Had IW been released soley as a PC sequel I could imagine that they would have removed some of the complexity from DX; that's standard streamlining, figuring out what people liked in the old game and what they thought was cumbersome. The augmentation system probably would have looked the same as it eventually did, for example. But the inventory management, the lack of location damage, and the removal of skill points all strike me as attempts to make the game more accessable for the console gamers, not because people didn't like that in the original game.

Well, they weren't exactly attempts, the game was straight up designed for consoles over the PC this time around. Here's an interesting interview with designer Harvey Smith and original DX designer Warren Spector. To summarize it in their own words "We fucked up."


I don't have much to say on the topic at hand since I think others have summed it up pretty well, the 90's up to the early 2000's is probably what I'd consider the golden age of PC gaming as well.

I also said it when Ack brought it up in some other thread, but I can't respect the single level designers enough myself when it comes to Doom, Quake, Unreal maps, etc. Unfortunately, that's just the changing industry... with teams requiring like 50+ people thesedays, it's just a totally different beast.

I think you guys should all watch this, the history of Volition. It was incredibly insightful (I didn't even know it was them that made the Descent games) and going back to what I'm saying above, it clearly demonstrates how they're just one of the many companies that started off with just a few guys in a single room sharing computers, their "meetings" would be everyone turning around from their screens, up to where they are now with 100+ people on the team and how that's changed everything. It was very interesting and you guys might like this:
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/ ... ition.aspx

I'd love to see more documentaries of companies like that.

[Hatta]

Don't forget about RPGs. The PC has always been ahead of consoles in RPGs. Ultima, Wizardry, Might and Magic all debuted on the Apple II. Golden Age games like Ultima IIV or Fallout have yet to be matched on any console. SSI's strategy RPGs(e.g. pool of radiance) predate and outclass console alternatives. FPS RPG hybrids like Ultima Underworld or Dungeon Master appeared on PCs first too.

Sure, all of these games had console ports, but they were designed for home computers and are best on home computers.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

2) Much cheaper development costs, meant more unique games. You'd find that PC gamers had very different childhood memories, from console players. Console gamers would all play the same killer up (super mario bros, sonic, streets of rage, final fantasy, metal gear solid, zelda, ect), while most pc gamers, would find this one strange game, no one else played as a kid, which they would have loved.

I wanted to comment on this as I very much agree. I've got a big group of PC only friends and we all have such different memories of games as children. There are a few constants like Diablo and Doom, but, for the most part we all played different things. It's actually really cool to learn about these obscure games nobody else knew about. While console gamers almost always have a fairly similar library with a few hidden gems here and there.

I'm not an elitist (well maybe a little), but, the mouse and keyboard is the ultimate game controller ever in my opinion. The mouse works great for driving games but I haven't seen it used in years which is unfortunate.

[Pulsar_t]

There simply isn't a golden age for PCs, so I disagree with all the posts above. However, there's a perceived slump which I'd like to call evolution. Rather than having endless commands in the form of keys, context menus and other forms of input have become the norm. Graphically-speaking the PC was seldom ahead of the game. Crysis was an unoptimised tech demo, and Quake was made possible on consoles. The Voodoo bubble ultimately burst and was hardly ground-breaking.

Sims and RTS are still around, as well as adventure games, albeit becoming niche markets. People tend to read too much into things. There's no grand plan against PCs, it's the evolution of the market. I laugh sardonically at the 'us vs them' mentality that game-players tend to abuse, but I also admit the PC made possible quite a few things that were rather difficult to achieve with the greedy licensing models of traditional consoles.