Now I'm a 20 year old gamer of all kinds. I have had console and handheld systems over the years and I am priveldged to own some real gems in the gaming world that are masterpieces of their time. However there is one system that keeps me coming back, and there is one system that truely drives my love for computerised gaming.
That system is the PC. The PC was one of my first introductions to the world of gaming (alongside the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES) way back in the year of 1992. The earliest game I can remember playing was actually Wolfenstein 3d. Of course back then I barely understood any of the background behind it, but all I knew was it was fun shooting bad guys and thats all that mattered. From there my PC gaming habits developed.
I moved onto more complicated games and games from different genres. I played many classic FPS titles as they were released over the year, I discovered and fell in love with the strategy genre and heavily enjoyed my time spent playing the first two Warcraft titles as well as Command and Conquer. I also had alot of fun playing simulation games including the much-loved Simcity 2000 as well as some other titles such as Lucasart's legendary X-Wing and Tie Fighter series of games.
During my time discovering the world of PC gaming, equal time was dedicated to playing console and handheld titles. Some of these games were highly enjoyable but still there was something that kept me coming back to the PC for my gaming needs. Its taken almost 15 years of playing through and enjoying gaming on the PC to finally come to a conclusion.
The reason why I love PC gaming so much and why I am proud to consider it my primary gaming platform is because of the much more indepth gameplay it can potentially provide. Combined with unsurpassed visuals and the fewer amount of technical limitations compared to its console brothers the PC still remains the platform to have when it comes to the most intricate of games.
A key example of this is strategy games. There is a reason these games have remained king on PC. Its simply because the PC as we know it today provides everything you could possibly need. You have a high resolution display that can show alot of detailed and important information (a recent example being Sins of a Solar Empire's empire tree). You have 2 incredibly versatile and accurate methods of input in the form of a mouse and keyboard, the former providing pinpoint accuracy when directing units physically or making use of an onscreen GUI while the latter provides you with many shortcuts that helps the game run as smoothly as possible while still remaining intricate and indepth. You then have the sheer computational power needed in many of these titles (particularly the real-time ones) to be able to simulate the conflict onscreen in front of you as well.
All of this combined really allows a game designer to go nuts with the design of the game, who could design the gameplay that is indepth and is not heavily limited by technical limitations of all kinds.
The best PC games overall are the ones with the best gameplay design, and some of the best PC (which can be considered the best games out of any platform) games of all time are the ones that offer an experience that can't be replicated on any other platform because of the reasons I mentioned above.
On an endnote, I am not denying that the PC gaming industry is going through some changes. More and more game titles are not PC exclusive and this is mainly because of heartless piracy and increasing development costs. My point of this article is to try and prove that the PC is and always has been a viable and unique platform for game development and hasn't stopped providing the assets to make that so.