ee SEARO

March 12, 2003

Cody Sawatsky
OP Contributor

There seems to be a prejudice—nay—a
cultural divide—that is largely overlooked
in everyday society. It sits just beneath the
surface of popular culture, like a modern
day apartheid, and the only ones who
know about it are those who are part of it.
My friends, I am talking of the great
divide of the online gaming world. Not
gaming divisions that you can see every-
day, console vs. console. This is deeper,
more meaningful, and altogether more
sinister. I am talking about the war that is
as old as Pong—it’s the war between the
PC and the Console. PCs are merely busi-
ness tools, while consoles have always
been made for games. Computers nowa-
days may be considered to primarily run
business applications, but this is all due to
perspective. A gamer will tell you authori-
tatively that the only reason you need a
2.5 gigahertz processor is to run Winamp
and the latest version of Unreal
Tournament at the same time.

To prove a point, the first program ever
run on a computer was Tic-Tac-Toe.
However, the downfall to computers is
that they generally cost around 100 times
more than their console counterparts, lack
stability, and require a great deal more
work for a less satisfying experience.

Some people may say that this cost dif-
ference ties back to the fact that comput-
ers are also used for office applications. As
gamers, we cannot recognize this fact, as
any office application can be run compa-
rably on a 486. Or, if you want plain-jane
office functionality, get a Mac. Since the
first Nintendo (NES) took off in the early
80s, the console has been picking up
speed, but has always been missing one
thing, one fundamental, underlying ele-
ment that all gamers have always felt the
need for—Mass Competition.

Starting with the first Doom, skyrocket-
ing in popularity with games like Diablo,
StarCraft and Command & Conquer, bal-
looning into a mega-business with games
like Quake2, Quake3, Unreal Tournament,
Half-Life (and all of the countless mods),
online gaming gave the PC that edge over
consoles that made every serious gamer
feel lost without one.

The console market may have lagged
behind, but it made progress, starting
with the highly underrated N64. What

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Confessions of a Console-Convert

did the N64 do that was so revolutionary
4-Controller Ports.

Ask many gamers, and they will tell you
eagerly of countless hours spent playing
Goldeneye, two-on-two. It was amazing,
and it didn’t take long to realize that this
was the beginning of the end for the PC-
gaming industry. Well, maybe not the
end, but it definitely marked a tremen-
dous shift in gaming, and more specifical-
ly, hardcore gaming preferences.

The only company to ignore the initial
rebirth of the console, this simple yet
mind-boggling innovation of putting four
controller ports on their console, has been
Sony. Their unwillingness to add con-
troller ports can be chalked up to them
wanting that $40 multi-tap.

Now consoles are able to undisputedly
deliver the best first-person fighting
games. Consoles offered far superior role-
playing games, unless you wanted online
playtime. The first-person shooting games
were good on the console, and initially,
that was where the PC won.

Shooting games were the PCs’ strong-
hold on the gaming world. For a long
time, consoles simply could not do a first-
person shooter. The controller simply did
not give enough—well, for lack of a better
word—control.

Another reason that PCs maintained
dominance was their ability to outper-
form a console by leaps and bounds in the
graphics department. The consoles of the
64-bit generation did not offer the graph-
ics that gamers were getting out of their
PCs. Also, the lower graphic frame rate
and level of detail that these consoles were
running all hindered the eye candy that
helps create a large part of the gamer’s
experience—not to mention that watch-
ing four screens on one TV was an awk-
ward experience.

So PC gaming still held the advantage.
But even then, gamers knew there had to
be a better way.

Due to the non-uniform nature of the
PC and constant driver upgrades, games
on a PC have to be regularly patched,
fixed, and debugged. These elements of
PC gaming require gamers to take time
away from their gaming, and occasionally
have to go as far as uninstalling and rein-
stalling software merely to update their

     
 
 

game.
It was around that time in the history of

gaming that I stopped playing PC games
altogether. Now don’t take this as a light
point. For me, this was a huge shift. At
that time, I had been hardcore PC gaming
for around four years. I have 180 issues of
PC Gamer in my room to prove it. It was
simply that I had become frustrated with
the entire system, especially the lag time
and difficulty in finding good servers. Not
to mention the people who play online—
they are also a treat. The piss-off of having
to struggle with typing out a message and
dodging bullets was futile—getting killed
while trying to chat and dodge has led
many a serious gamer to be called a
“laM3r” (That means “Lamer” in regular
English).

Crashing to the PC desktop was also a
recurring nightmare. I therefore, turned
100 percent to console gaming.

First, I researched all the systems that
were coming out, and settled on one that
would give me everything I wanted from
one system—the Xbox. The Xbox live on-
line gaming service is the thing that every
serious gamer had been waiting for. It
takes all the headaches out of playing
online games. It offers fast, reliable serv-
ice, with voice, so there isn’t any annoying
setup or fiddling with drivers—and it has
an integrated friends list—a directory
where you can track your on-line gaming
comrades-at-arms!

The PS2 online strategy makes the
developers responsible for online play, and
has absolutely no regulations placed on it,
making for an experience very similar to
that of the PC. Also, at the time of my
research, there wasn’t any word on
Gamecube’s online strategy.

In addition to the easy setup, the PS2
and Gamecube lack a hard drive. Where
would I store my saved files and promised
downloadable content? I would have to
buy a peripheral, and with every needed
peripheral the amount of games that
might be available becomes limited. This
is too much like the incompatibility prob-
lems of the PC.

Recently, a friend of mine took me to a
LAN Café, otherwise known as “the only
place to play Counter-Strike.”

It brought back all the good old days of

the other press

online gaming—I felt the old allure of PC
graphics and online game play. I arrived
home, longing for my own version of the
game. Counter-Strike is a mod for Half-
Life, and I already had that PC game—I
figured what the hell. Apparently I had
forgotten the ‘joys’ of PC Gaming. This
experience was about to remind me exact-
ly why I had switched to console gaming.
I knew I would have to download patches
for both Counter-Strike and Half-life. That
wasnt the problem. Installing the patches
wasn't the problem, although it was a has-
sle. In an effort to make patches easier to
install, Sierra, Half-Lifes publisher, has
added a program that is supposed to sim-
plify everything by searching for servers,
and downloading upgrades automatically.

Well, they forgot one thing—to make a
program that actually works—none of the
servers work, and their update program
doesn’t either. I had to go and find a mir-
ror site that had the patch available for
downloading. This resulted in three crash-
es, and a reboot—but I was undaunted!

When I finally got Counter-Strike work-
ing, there was a video conflict—splendid.

After a 30-minute fix I had made it into
the game. Hungering for some fast-paced,
anti-terrorist action, I eagerly clicked the
quick-game option that is supposed to
connect to the first available server—
apparently the quickest way to play is to
wait for a ten-minute log-on sequence.
(Xbox Live hooks you up to a game, and
worldwide players, in under ten seconds).

After wading through server screens and
password locked servers, I was finally able
to get into a game—only to be kicked
because of high ping (slow game
response).

The big attraction of console gaming
for many gamers is it’s easy. PC gaming is
inherently complicated and unreliable,
which is driving many gamers to the con-
sole. Personally, I don’t think that that is a
bad thing.

After that extremely frustrating experi-
ence with Counter-Strike, I'd had enough.
I walked into the other room, booted up
my Xbox, and was kicking ass in Ghost
Recon faster than you can say, “enemy
spotted.” ss