How We Got Here - Game Design Theory - page 87

Patching has always been a feature of PC games. This tuned play-
ers into some fundamental concepts of game design (e.g., bal-
ance), which console gamers may have taken for granted.
I've often said that console games only have to be good enough to
keep you playing while sitting on a super comfortable couch and
portable games only have to be good enough to keep you playing
while you're stuck on the bus. PC games, on the other hand, have
to be good enough to keep you playing while sitting upright at a
machine that could be doing a million other interesting things
besides playing a game.
As viewed through my lens, PC games tend to be better games.
In particular, single-player games such as Civilization , Master of
Magic , and X-Com: UFO Defense always have randomized con-
tent, whereas console games almost never do.
Of course, PC gamers have their own problems and biases, and by
no means am I saying that PC gamers are completely enlightened about
game design. But I think that they're generally less lost than the gamers
in the console world. Regardless, if PC games or the culture surround-
ing them is any better, it's not better by a large enough margin to help
the rest of digital gamers move towards a better future. If anything, the
worlds of PC and console gamers have moved closer together in the past
few years. While this has had some good effects, one side effect is that
the culture of PC gaming has changed into something that looks a lot
more like the modern console culture.
Other Notable Areas
There's a ton of stuff to cover, and not all of it fits neatly into a subject
heading. In this section I'll quickly touch upon a few other areas.
Arcades
Video games had their first major successes with arcades, and these ar-
cades would remain a major force in digital gaming until the late 1990s.
Arcades were a gathering place, and between the social element and the
fact that arcades generally had higher levels of graphics technology than
home consoles, they were extremely cool . Most children of the 1970s or
1980s will always have nostalgic feelings about arcades.
Unfortunately, the temptation to exploit players for more quarters
quickly became a major problem for these kinds of games. With the no-
table exception of fighting games (which were almost always competitive
in nature), most arcade games were designed to be quarter-eaters, most