+++
title = "The Rock Paper Shotgun 100 and PC gaming"
author = ["Michał Sapka"]
date = 2024-11-17T22:14:00+01:00
categories = ["blog"]
draft = false
weight = 2001
image_dir = "blog/images"
image_max_width = 600
Abstract = "on PC gaming and it's demise"
Listening = "Michael Land - Curse of Monkey Island OST"
+++

Recently, the web page Rock Paper Shotgun published [a list of best 100 PC games.](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-rps-100-2024)
And what a list that is.
100 games from close to 45 years of PC history.

However, I consider it to be a complete misunderstanding of what made PC gaming different.

Currently, the biggest differentiating factor is the presence of thriving indie scene.
Ignoring it, all the mainstream games, are released everywhere.
And they are the same games, running on the same engines, having the same boring designs, having the same control scheme.
Yes, you can use keyboard with a PC, but you can pretend that it doesn't exist - gamepad _will_ be supported.
What I'm saying is that there is no difference between PC and console gaming in 2024.

20, 30, 40 years ago, it wasn't the case.
Not only were there a lot more systems ([Amiga! Commodore 64! Saturn! BBC Micro!](http://retro.ruben.com)) than survived till today, but they all had their strengths and weaknesses.
Consoles were action-focused.
NES games were fast.
PC, for a long time, was catching up.
It was far behind of what Amiga was capable of.

However, at some point in the 90s, those gray boxes exploded as gaming machines.
This is where imagination ran wild, where a game from a year before looked ancient.
But most importantly, different genres rules the PC marked.

First, it was the adventure game.
We had Sierra, with it's Quest series, Phantasmagorias, Gabriel Knights and son.
We had Lucasarts, Tex Murphy, 3 Skulls of the Toltec, Flight of the Amazon Queen, or Discworlds.
PC inherited those genres from older computers, where text-based adventures were _the thing_.
This is where the children of Zork found their new homes.

Then we moved to RPGs, a genre for which I was too young for.
Gold box games, Dungeon Master, Wizardy, Might and Magic, and so on - just to limit ourselves the early ones.
Later, there was no competition of Fallouts, Baldurs, or Diablos.

Then RTS were everywhere.
C&C, Warcraft, KKND, Polanie, Total Annihilation, Age of Empires...

Yes, most of those games moved to consoles, or came from other _computers_ but they were designed with a computer person in mind.
Someone sitting in a dark room with a notepad, ready to draw a map.
Someone who was ready to click all things on other things for the entire evening.
Someone ready to do the same thing, all over again - build base, exterminate enemies, build another base.

Those games are almost absent from RPS's list.
Those were not action-oriented games.
They evolved into such, but action was not at their core.

But things changed dramatically.
No other company changed the gaming landscape as much as ID Software.
There were 3d games before, but none were Wolfenstein.
Duke was great, but it never got the never-ending popularity of Quake.
It may have been a better game, but it was not as fast.

For a long time, PC became the FPS machines.
There was no better platform for it, and there was not better input device than keyboard.
Console may have had better platformers, but it was the PC where angry, stinky teens shot rockets up each other's asses.
This changed, as I stated at the begging.

Meanwhile, RPS list names mostly games which DNA is rooted in modern unification of gaming as best PC games.
Yakuza?
Witcher?
Resident Evil?
Nier?
God of War?
Those are as different from what PC gaming was it gets.
They may be great, but they are action oriented spins on the old ideas.
They don't represent what PC gaming was and can be.

In fact, the only few games from the list that are _trully_ PC are Crusader Kings, Factorio, Dwarf Fortess, Monkey Island, Fallout, and Deus Ex.
They were designed for PC, they are complex and slow - up to fault.
They not only _allow_ playing on keyboard and mouse, but mandate it.

Yes, Doom and Quake were a PC games primary, but only because consoles of the time were unable to process data fast enough.
If they were, they would be a great place for them.

And where the hell is Nethack!?