When was this supposed golden age of PC gaming?

[da66en]

Those like the poster above me who claim that consoles might have a "dumber audience" do not represent the majority of us, so please don't generalize.

I never said all console gamers are dumber...

But look at this way...

During the 'golden' age of PC gaming, I spent WEEKS tweaking my config.sys and autoexec.bat to squeeze more out of my 640K, XMS, EMS and Extended memory so I can play Ultima 7 and Wing Commander with better performance. Could you then expect that kind of person to look for more engaging gameplay, and not 'dumbed down' gameplay?

The average console gamer who inserts their Halo and Madden and presses the start button did not experience this.

This shows the difference between the average gamer intelligence between gamers of today and the golden age of PC gaming.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it means that more people are playing games. But it was nice during the 'golden' age of PC gaming that PC gamers could expect games being made for them - now we are just getting dumbed down console games ported to a PC.

To me, it says that you're crazy for wanting to play games you have to spend weeks messing with to play with marginally better performance instead of just playing a game on a console that plays as it should as just by virtue of all the consoles being basically the same.

Actually, that's a lie, I'm just being controversial. I have nothing against PC gamers. I just dislike the implication that as a gamer who just inserts a game into a console and presses play I'm on average more likely to be less intelligent than someone who has the time to waste weeks fiddling with PC settings to get better performance.

It was worth the weeks of tweaking, for Ultima 7.

Again, I am not saying all console gamers represent a dumbed down gaming community - if this were true we would not have seen games like Mass Effect.

But if people cannot see how casual gaming, Halo, Madden, etc have dumbed down the gaming community, then there really should be no discourse or debate in this thread and we should just lock it.

[MrPopo]

Actually, that's a lie, I'm just being controversial. I have nothing against PC gamers. I just dislike the implication that as a gamer who just inserts a game into a console and presses play I'm on average more likely to be less intelligent than someone who has the time to waste weeks fiddling with PC settings to get better performance.

You do have to admit that a minor barrier of entry does a fantastic job of weeding out the lowest of the range. Look at the condition of Xbox Live voice chat vs. voice chat in any PC game: it takes just enough effort to get PC voice chat going that it cuts out the people who's vocabulary doesn't go past four letter words.

[irixith]

I don't believe it is dumbing down the gaming community. Made things easier, sure, and who doesn't like easy? Popping in a disc and waiting for it to boot is way better than tweaking your config.sys and autoexect.bat files!

What those that started gaming around the PS1 days and afterwards missed was a little extra learning, that's all. If you were lucky enough to have a modem and BBS access before the internet blew up, you may have been able to get in contact with people that could help you, but chances are you had to figure stuff out on your own. A lot of knowledge I gained throughout the 80s is invaluable today, and I never would have got it any other way. I sat there like the others for hours, figuring out exactly what to put in my SET BLASTER = line get sound to work in certain games. Squeezing every last kilobyte out of free memory to get some of those big beasts for the time loaded. Sure, I learned an awful lot of things, but it certainly didn't contribute to my enjoyment of the games I was trying to play. All that would do in today's gaming community would be weed out some of the chafe from the online arena. You know who I'm talking about. (..and online in the PC space still isn't always easy even today. I watched a group of people on IRC try for almost 5 hours to get a Borderlands game going over Gamespy. Verdict? It didn't happen.)

That much (being able to plug and play) is a positive evolution, not a negative one. The content of todays "AAA" (god I hate that term) titles vs yesteryears, that's a completely different story.

[ZeroAX]

But if people cannot see how casual gaming, Halo, Madden, etc have dumbed down the gaming community, then there really should be no discourse or debate in this thread and we should just lock it.

....oooor



and let others talk