Why PC Gaming is Still a Bittersweet Pill

Cost of new souped up gaming rig – Rs. 45,000Cost of brand new much awaited game to play on your rig – Rs. 1,200Cost of standing up your girlfriend to play much awaited game – One girlfriendFrustration of not being able to play the game thanks to a crappy port – Limitless

If you can even remotely associate with this exaggerated little sentiment, you my friend are a jaded PC gamer and like all of us jaded PC gamers have been getting the shaft from developers, many of which have had their humble beginnings on the PC.

I’ve touched on this topic quite a few times by now and I can’t stress it enough when I say that the biggest problem facing PC gaming today is lack of Quality Assurance on that platform. As an enthusiast you spend a whole lot of time, money and energy making sure your rig is up to the mark ready to play the latest games at launch in all their graphical glory. But what do you get in return? A stupid broken game that has to be patched on Day 1, anal DRM issues that ironically affect legit customers more than pirates and a PC port that is not scalable at all reducing your prized possession to a quivering little bitch.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

The reason I feel violated as a PC gamer in recent times is primarily because of DICE, the guys behind Battlefield Bad Company 2. Now these are the guys who’ve made it big by selling PC games so when they decide to port over one of their franchises to the PC you would expect a nice well made product that’ll make you proud to be a PC gamer. But sadly what we get is something so broken that can’t even be played online in peace. You have frequent disconnection issues, problems connecting to servers and an insane amount of game crashes. And how do they deal with the problem? By posting one line on Twitter acknowledging the problem that magically redeems themselves in the minds of irate customers because hey, at least they acknowledged the problem right?

What’s worse is that they play the entire PC community so well people forget for a minute that this is a game unplayable at launch released at full price. Making matters funnier (or sadder) is that these irritated customers actually defend DICE saying that this is nothing new as all battlefield games are unplayable at launch. Someone give the PR guys at DICE a round of applause. Not only have they taken your money but they’ve given you a sub-par product and are laughing in your face – all the way to the bank.

But you know what DICE you can’t break my spirit because I still prefer my mouse and keyboard to the controller for my first person shooters. I prefer playing with grownups instead of American Idol rejects over Xbox Live. I like the fact that I can tweak visual settings to the last T. I like the fact that my expensive hardware grants me higher visual quality. I like the fact that I can make use of user generated content like mods to enhance gameplay.

And that DICE is why I’ll keep taking this crap till the day I die like a true PC gamer.