PC gaming seems to be forever under threat, and the shrinking of the PC Gaming Alliance seems to support that idea - but don't worry just yet...
As PC gamers, we really don’t have to look too far to see the potential crises that continually threaten to tarnish the love we have for our glorious platform. The rise in a multiplatform development mentality has led to PC ports that play second fiddle to the supposed importance of higher SKU count of console counterparts. Every developer that refuses to release mod tools for their games continues to stifle the once thriving mod community and we’re all too well versed on the shoddy state of dedicated servers in many new-release titles.
So back in 2008, when PC gaming was taking some hits across the board, there was a new hope in the form of the PC Gaming Alliance. Hell, just typing the name inspires pride and confidence that it’s more than just the consumer side of the fence crying out to be noticed and to have our beloved platform taken seriously. ‘PC Gaming Alliance’ evokes imagery of a small group of determined freedom fighters, standing up to the evil empire otherwise known as the neo-game development approach that often sees us treated like second-class gamers. But there are only so many Star Wars references a single paragraph can hold.
Earlier in the year, the sad news came through that the Alliance had lost two big names. Microsoft and NVIDIA stepped away, while AMD demoted itself to a ‘contributors’ role. Since then, Razer, Dell and Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation (Sony DADC for short) have also stepped down from their promoter thrones. That reduced the list of promoters to just three: Epic Games, Capcom and Intel. Interestingly, all promoters in this list have an affiliation with platforms that extend beyond PC exclusivity. Hmm.
But as disheartening as the news of such notable names reducing their role in the PC Gaming Alliance may sound at face value, it’s really not that bad.
The announcement that Microsoft and NVIDIA had bowed out of the Alliance came through in February and, since then, developers and publishers have started to give the PC some long overdue love; developers/publishers that aren’t a part of the PC Gaming Alliance, let alone in the ranks of its promoters. Love them or hate them, Homefront and Duke Nukem Forever spring to mind as examples of multiplatform titles that are best served on PC as they got the better end of the development stick when it came to determining which platform got the most love.
DICE has made it clear for a while now that the PC is the lead platform for the highly anticipated Battlefield 3, Crytek are finally poised to release the DirectX 11 patch for Crysis 2 and there are reliable rumours that F.E.A.R. 3 looks and handles best on the PC. Then, of course, there’s The Witcher 2 that had a PC exclusive release first before they even started talking about the Xbox 360 port of the game.
While the PC Gaming Alliance may not be the powerhouse of potentiality that it was at its inception, the industry is starting to remember and respect its PC gaming roots and is slowly working on balancing out much of the love that has been apparently lost for us over the years.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012