Turns out games consoles have come a long while I was off mucking about with computers.
I’m 32 years old, and have been gaming since I could hold a joystick. Yet up until the start of this year, I’d never owned a games console. It was computers all the way for me: ZX Spectrum, Commodore Amiga, IBM 486, Pentium.
I don’t mind admitting that as a member of the computing aristocracy I felt more than a hint of superiority over the consoling classes. The computer games I played were sophisticated. Games like Lords of Midnight, Hired Guns, X-Com, Civilization, Tie Fighter, Fallout, Jagged Alliance, etc. Whether the result of hardware limitations, controller inadequacies or simple market forces, such titles were just not available on the consoles of the time. And my computers were so much more than mere gaming machines. They taught me about coding, hardware and operating systems. Even when I really didn’t want to know about them.
So what prompted the change? In a single word, time. But in three words:
Schedule. While the Spectrum and Amiga wowed me with their slick Arcade chops as much as their more thoughtful moments, my favourite PC games were all epics, in which to lose myself for weeks, even months. And not in small, manageable chunks either. Individual gaming sessions were equally epic, taking precedence over school work, sleep and food. But these days the real world takes priority, and gaming has to fit around life. While computers have a thriving “casual gaming” market, consoles are generally a bit better focussed on providing bite-sized portions of gaming fun.
Hassle. In the past I have derived a great deal of satisfaction from tinkering with hardware and software configurations to get a game to run, or to network machines for multiplayer hi-jinks. But, linked to time being at a premium, my patience isn’t what it once was… If a game requires any overhead before I’m playing, be it software set-up, familiarisation with complex controls or even a particularly steep initial learning curve, it simply doesn’t get played. I no longer have that time to invest. Sure, modern computer gaming is far more user-friendly than the early PC days, but it can never compete with a dedicated games machine.
Accessibility. During the Spectrum and Amiga years, gaming was a very social experience, with a group of mates gathered round the keyboard, but it became more a solitary pursuit for me from the first PC onwards. These days, my limited leisure time isn’t just my own – it’s shared with a girl. Luckily, said girl likes a bit of gaming too. Still, this has meant a shift of gaming from the solitary desk to the communal sofa, which rules out the use of a mouse and keyboard. Gamepads and little plastic guitars are a lot more amenable to living-room use.
In many ways, buying a console feels like a return to the Spectrum and Amiga. Those early computers were well-defined platforms, which avoided a lot of the compatibility and conflict problems associated with the infinite hardware/software combinations of PCs. And they were largely immune to the PC’s constant upgrade cycle. Developers pushed the existing hardware to its very limits, eeking more and more out of the same machine. With modern computers it often feels like developers have just got lazy – yeah, they could optimize their code a bit more… but it’s easier to just up the minimum requirements a shade.
Console gaming isn’t perfect. I hate first-person shooters on a pad, give me a mouse and WASD any day. But by and large, I’m happy to have stepped into this new world. Don’t get me wrong, there are still so many PC games which I’m itching to play. Maybe I’ll get to them next week when I should have a bit more time…
