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Console Vs. PC Gaming; Or The Superiority of The Aristocratic Couch Gamer
I recently acquired an Xbox One from my cousin as he found no use for it when he skipped town and left it here. Having already been a member of Xbox Game Pass and taking advantage of it on my gamng PC, I was pleased to find the experience on the Xbox One was even better. This led me to consider the key differences between PC Gaming and Console Gaming. As I've been a lifelong gamer I've been engaged in both throughout my time and seen console and graphics card generations come and go. The graphical superiority of the PC Master Race has been well established. The ability to mod games, to pirate games, to play online for free and the game variety of PC gaming is unparalelled. PC gaming has always been and always will be the superior option for the hardcore gamer.
However, as i've gotten along in my years the reasons I play video games has changed. As a small child the N64 gave me an exhilerating immersive experience playing as Link in Ocarina of Time. I felt like I was Link, his battles were my battles, his victories were as exciting to me as if they were my own, the fear of adult link in the fallen Hyrule was as palpable as the fear of the monster under my bed, and I would fight the imaginary giant Dodongo outside with my stick sword when I wasn't playing the game. My cousin showed me how to play Stronghold on PC, and I was a medieval lord commanding armies of knights. In early childhood the immersion and excitement of the game alone was more than sufficient to extract immense joy and forget about the world around me. As I grew older, I played games for different reasons. In middle school I became competitive playing Halo 3 and CoD4. My friends and I would get off school and hop on the Xbox 360 and plug in our janky Xbox Headset to talk shit and say abbhorent things in the lobby. We would compete to see who could get the highest kill counts, who could have the longest kill streak, who was the king of the FPS among our friend group. The competition was infectious, and we were all hooked. As an adolescent video games were all about being the best and trolling the lobby, and who was the funniest shit talker. And as I grew older video games took a backseat to the rest of life, getting an after school job and spending time with girls all of a sudden became more appealing than sitting alone in front of the tv talking to strangers over voice chat. By college videogames became a purely social endeavor, playing smash bros in the community room of the dorm, or checking out the crazy new game, GTAV at my friends apartment. There were much more pressing things in life than videogames and I stopped playing all together outisde of these occassions. The value proposition of video games, escaping the real world for the virutal, became null to me.
As an adult, I've found gaming to be wholly unfulfilling. I boot up a single player RPG on my expensive gaming PC and find I simply don't care about the narrative, I don't care about the characters, I'm not immersed. I play the newest FPS and no one speaks in the lobby, the gameplay loop dulls my mind and my kil streak doesn't matter at all to me. Seeking the dopamine rush that came so easily as a child and adolescent, I find only mind numbing amusement as an adult.
Finally, this leads me to my ultimate point. I sit at work at a desk all day, I do not want to come home and sit at a desk for my entertainment and relaxation. I need the couch, I must relax on the couch. As a man of leisure, the PC Gaming experience is insufficient.
What is the point of gaming? My family has been gaming for generations, before the dawn of video games, we played cards (and still do.) Poker, Rummy, Bourre, Texas Hold 'Em, Blackjack and Peedro were the games before the pixelated digital fantasy generators gave us any game we could dream up and contain within our LED dybbuk box. Of course gambling has it's obvious appeal of risking ones own money for the thrill of winning other's money, however the novice gambler may be too caught up in the excitement to appreciate the subtleties of card games. When a large family like mine has nothing better to do every night than play cards, the skill level increases dramatically and the excitement gives way to an appreciation of the leisure and good company of the card game. No longer is it merely about winning the money of the other players, but it becomes a social outlet and chance to kick back, drink a beer and let the cards fall where they may. The leisure of card games may not be a one to one comparison of the leisure of video games, however one can engage both with the same approach.
Why do we game in the first place? Many view it as pure escapism, to escape from the stress and banality of every day life and see ourselves in characters having more exciting experiences than we could ever hope to have. This pure escapism is exemplified by the PC gamer, the solitude and isolation are condusive to the most immersive escape video games offer. The PC gamers primary concern with the best performance and highest graphical fidelity point to this main goal of complete escapism. The couch gamer has a simpler view of things, the video game is not an end in and of itself, not the gateway to worlds more desirable, it's another means to the ends of leisure. Relaxing on the couch at the end of the day, enjoying good company and booting up a console will always be preferable to secluding oneself in a dimly lit room to worship at the alter of self indulgence.
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