I'm so setting that as my desktop background!

That's one reason I love consoles, when I can actually get together with friends or family in person and play a game :)

Increasingly games are online, but there are plenty enough to keep friends busy. For everything else, there's just networking, and a once in a while LAN party (for consoles or computer).

Remember Bomberman? Those were the days.
Act Zero didn't happen!

For good measure ;)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/mutatedzombierat/PCMasterRace.png

(For humor, nothing more) I love all platforms :)

This gets my irony of the day award.

I don't think it's very smart to abandon a platform just because some people playing it are assholes. You'll find just as many assholes on consoles.

On the other hand, you wouldn't be missing much if you went to consoles. Not having to deal with shitty ports, expensive hardware upgrades, system requirements, driver issues, hackers in most online games and draconian DRM is a good deal.

Games are supposed to be about fun, so if you're having trouble getting to the fun through the morass of a community then maybe it IS best to step away - at least for a while.

Have fun gaming, and I assume we'll see you back after a while.

Yes, because PC elitists have never ever said the same about consoles, right? In fact, just a few days ago i was discussing with an elitist jerk here on GOG who was trying to convince me that consoles were dead (he ran out of arguments, though).

Yeah, PC gamers have never dismissed console gamers, right?

This is the same elitist BS that keeps being repeated over and over again by the elitists like you and Crosmando without any factual proof. The fact that PC games got "dumbed down" (i hate this expression, but anyway i'll use it), has nothing to do with consoles. It has to do with the direction the whole industry is going: developers and publishers are trying to make games more accessible, be it on PCs, be it on consoles. In fact, even console games got "dumbed down" over the years. Take a look at DmC, for example, it's MUCH easier than previous games in the series and you can't get the same crazy big combos you could before. What about Splinter Cell, for example, which was a stealth game designed for the first Xbox that seems to be all about the action now? MGS suffered from the same problem with MGS4. And what should we say about old survival horrors like Resident Evil and Silent Hill? Both got "dumbed down" to cater to a bigger audience. It has nothing to do with consoles, it has to do with developers making games more accessible.

If you take a look at some genres that are still PC-only, you'll find out that they were also "dumbed down". You can't compare Everquest and Ultima Online to the MMOs we have today like WOW or SWTOR, for example. And that has nothing to do with consoles.

Consoles are just a scapegoat for elitist jerks. The fact that games are getting more simplified to cater to a bigger audience is just a trend of the industry as whole. The whole "PC games are getting dumbed down because of consoles" is just a pretty lie made up by elitist jerks so they could vent their frustration in something tangible. It's much easier to blame consoles or "dirty console peasants" than blaming an industry trend.

So OP was stating that most of the PC crowd is a toxic and elitist community, and I had to butt in to state that console players are equally as toxic. Somehow, you seem to take offense to that and so the flaming cycle never ends.

And yes again to this, like I mentioned above. And that PC piracy stereotype hasn't ceased since. Also it doesn't seem matter that most PC gamers hate the fact that developers/publishers and some ignorants love bringing up the bullshit that you need a $5000 computer to play games. Remember LucasArts back then? An "elitist" would be happily harping that he HAS a $5000 computer to play PC games while console gamers don't. Any self respectable PC gamer will know that a average computer will be more than enough to play any game. Trust me when I say I hate the PC elitists when they post about their expensive hardware since they mute almost all my arguments that a $800-$1000 computer is more than enough to play games well.

I will agree with you that it's also an industry trend going mainstream (and yes I hate the newer FPS gameplay of Resident Evil) but I won't deny that it has nothing to do with consoles and their parent companies.
Some games that were due for release for PC never even saw the light of day until a few years later, remember Alan Wake? We only got that a few years later because M$ wanted to play the console exclusive game with Sony. If games back in the 360/PS3 peak era actually came to the PC, they(some of them) ended up being lazy, shoddy ports needing extensive modding/configuration to get in place. PC version Dragon Age Origins was delayed 6 months just to coincide with the console versions. Some games simply showed "Press Start to Begin", don't implement proper keyboard/mouse controls, implement nausea inducing FOV settings that can't be changed, recognise only the X360 controller, etc and they expect us to pay full price for game. If we don't get the game, and the unsurprisingly low sales for PC version gets released on any gaming website, we simply get blamed for being pirates. And that comes to you as elitism? You also can't deny the fact that some if not most multiplat games then cater to console technical limitations like RAM before release.
Not sure about you but trying to defend your preferred gaming platform or lifestyle is very different from being an elitist.

You can't be serious if you think vanilla/early WoW is dumbed-down in regards to Everquest. Also in-depth complex games have always existed on the PC regardless of time or the industry going mainstream, companies like Paradox never stopped actively making complex strategy games whether PC gaming was doing well or not back then. Indie developers like Jeff Vogel haven't stopped making turn-based RPG games. And now we have Kickstarters bringing back the good old classics.

And like I said, surf a gaming forum now and you can see console players blaming mobile games/market for the "decline" of console games. Very much like how PC gamers blamed consoles for the decline back in the 2007-2009 era. And the OP thinks it's just the PC community that is toxic.

I wouldn't talk about "dumbing down due to console" (since that would mean my console-gaming friends are dumb. Quite disrepectful, I'd say), but some PC license suffered from the console ports. Not BECAUSE of the consoles and console gamers, but because publishers are lazy bastards that won't make a proper interface for the PC port and simply copy/paste the console UI (which doesn't work. At all!) A famous example would be Skyrim. I love this game, but the interface (and especially the inventory) is simply scandalous.
Explains some of the animosity between PC and console gamers : A PC license becoming console-first license means the PC specificities will be completely overlooked, and the PC version will thus be inferior. Not cool. So many of us don't WANT our iconic license to get on consoles.

Simply because publishers are lazy bums.

What precludes you from gathering your PCs together into some sort of local network and play together as well? :)

Have you read my post right above yours? If you haven't, do it now. I said that there are just as many assholes on consoles as there are on PCs.

I explicitly mentioned that there are "bad apples" on both sides. Your post was targeted exclusively at console gamers, which is why i answred.

By reading your post, i was under the impression you were defending that PC elitism was a myth.

And how exactly are consoles responsible for lazy devs not bothering to make a decent port? Blame the devs and the publishers who didn't bother to properly make a PC port. In fact, even the PS3 fell victim to lazy ports. Since the Xbox 360 was the main development platform at the last generation, some ports for the PS3 ended up being awful. Just look at Bayonetta for the PS3, for example, which was universally criticized for its technical issues and low frames per second. Or Orange Box on the PS3, which didn't even look like the same game the Xbox 360 got. Same goes for GTA IV (which sucked both on the PS3 and the PC). There are many examples ou there. Should we blame Microsoft for developers/publishers not doing their job well? I don't think that makes sense.

And i think you shouldn't care that much about what some trolls on gaming sites say. So, yeah, some people label PC gamers as pirates, so what? It's just trolling, don't worry about it. The fact that piracy is bigger on the PC doesn't mean that every PC gamer is a pirate.

Yes, this i do agree with. Sometimes they do have to deal with technical limitations, which doesn't mean that the game will be "dumbed down" as a result. There's a difference between adapting to technical limitations and making a gameplay design choice to cater to a bigger audience.

There's a huge difference between defending your preferred platform and being an elitist. You don't have to be irrational to defend your preferred gaming platform. You don't have to act like an irrational human being to defend to platform you like, nor do you have to make up suff or blame consoles and console gamers for everything that's wrong with the gaming industry. It's fine to defend your platform, as long as you remain civil and use rational arguments.

I honestly can't say much about Everquest because i haven't played it that much. I never got into it for some reason. But i can speak for Ultima Online, which i did play for quite some time back then. And you seriously can't compare WoW or any other recent "themepark" MMO to UO. WoW "holds your hand" with quests so you don't go into high level areas (even though you can move freely), when you finish a set of quests then you get to move to a new area and then you repeat the process until you reach level cap (which is why this type of MMO is called a themepark MMO). UO was a sandbox MMO, you could be whatever you wanted to be, you could cook stuff, make clothes, armors, weapons, you had to mine, gather food, plant stuff, among other activities. Basically, you could do whatever you wanted. And death actually meant something, because once you died you dropped all your items.

Thank you for proving my point. No need to blame consoles or "consoletards" for "dumbing down" your favorite games, then. The complex PC exclusive games are still being made.

To be very honest i have never seen that, but i don't visit console forums that often.
I completely agree with you. Lazy publishers are the ones to blame, not consoles.

I hate PC elitism too but I recently built a gaming PC for my next gen gaming platform, not because of elitism but it seemed more appealing as a gaming platform. All I have to say is don't let those snobs get to ya man, they are just arguing over the big toys we call gaming platforms, don't quit something you enjoy because of idiots. Enjoy it for what you like about it personally, not what others say about the matter.

OP's post was targeted exclusively at PC gamers, which is why I replied.
I'm all for defending PC gaming and seeing its growth even if it means siding with Steam which I dislike. And yes I don't see idiotic PC expensive hardware elitists helping with PC gaming when what we're trying to say is completely opposite of what they're trying to boast.

Oh yes I have, and those are the ones I argue with most of the time.

I AM blaming them, I have always blamed publishers before especially companies like EA. And I hate publishers if you seen my posts around here.
But why shouldn't I blame M$ for playing the exclusive game with Sony and canceling the Alan Wake's PC release then? And Sony isn't exactly a saint either:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/08/22/dear-esther-devs-rapture-no-longer-coming-to-pc/
Also the crap they pulled with one of my favourite games of all time, Grim Fandango, getting a PS4 remastered release with no PC release statement as yet. Sorry but I have no interest in playing in their crappy exclusive tug of war and will find it offensive if they detriment the PC releases.

I care yes. And I probably shouldn't spend so much time replying to trolls back then but I did it anyways. Some actually aren't trolls and truly believe what they say, I replied to them nonetheless. I don't really care now anyways, but I still do reply from time to time. I'm not a person that lets something that's so wrong go unhindered.

Subjective. I wonder how games like Deus Ex: Invisible War will turn out if things went the other way. And KOTOR is generally considered a classic epic game, but it wasn't what I was expecting from Bioware then. Truth be told I was expecting KOTOR to be as big and long as Baldur's Gate 2 in third person or be like Gothic, instead we got tubular corridored worlds for planets, a pretty short gameplay time and pretty simple combat. It was a good game with a decent story but a disappointment to me nonetheless.

Vanilla WoW was inaccessible as nuts at one point. Basically certain classes were pigeonholed into one role before they can even be considered for raiding status like when Druids and Palys could only be healers before going for raids. Most guilds are pretty stern about this simply because other specs were useless for raids. And yes, you can have crafting professions tailoring, leatherworking, blacksmithing, enchanting, you also had gathering professions like like fishing, cooking, mining etc.
I guess at the heart of WoW after getting your max level are your raids and faction world PvPs. The harder raids in WoW can drive some people crazy. Spending 2 weeks in guild raiding daily at the same boss for a few hours everyday is particularly testing but we made it through. Faction PvPs are grand but I guess every MMO has that. Seeing close to a hundred people on either side duking it out in the enemy's capital city is darn epic provided the server doesn't crash. And of course, world lore events which almost always cause the server to go down.

Pretty much. However, my favourite games on PC fall into a big category, both past and present. And some have been completely destroyed by companies like EA and M$.

You need to check forums like Neogaf from time to time and they're considered civil already.