As identified by our personal Evan Lahti earlier this yr, PC gaming is mainstream now. Now not is it a distinct segment nook of the trade—PC is a critical rival to consoles, and among the largest hits lately have been PC-first video games, corresponding to Baldur’s Gate 3.
One factor was plain: PC gaming continues to be extraordinarily bizarre.
After many years of being instructed time and again that PC gaming had died, there’s an actual pleasure in seeing it flourish greater than ever earlier than. Being taken severely as a platform means extra main video games, with even PlayStation exclusives now reliably making their technique to PC, and extra help given to the PC expertise of these video games.
However there may be an anxiousness that comes with that too, particularly when you’ve been a PC gamer for a very long time. To a big extent, the core persona of PC gaming is being area of interest. Because it grows increasingly mainstream, attracting ever larger curiosity from main firms, there is a worry that what makes it unusual, distinctive, and distinctive will likely be sanded away. A ‘consoleification’ of the passion typically feels nigh.
But earlier in 2024, I had the pleasure of being a visitor on PCG’s official podcast, Chat Log—I used to be pulled in to debate Steam’s top wishlist charts, and what they are saying concerning the present state of PC gaming. Wanting down that checklist of 100 of essentially the most anticipated video games on the platform, one factor was plain: PC gaming continues to be extraordinarily bizarre.
Strange
The place console charts are dominated by primarily the most important releases, PC’s hottest storefront stays a wild west. On any given day, the highest 10 most wishlisted video games is sort of assured to incorporate:
- An especially janky survival sport
- An indie debut with an irresistible gimmick
- A really fiddly technique sport
- Hole Knight: Silksong… nonetheless
- The most recent over-anticipated multiplayer zombie sport
- One thing you’ve got by no means heard of, that no video games web site has ever lined, that is inexplicably unbelievably well-liked
Maintain scrolling down the highest 100, and you will find an unbelievable range of video games, spanning all types of strange genres and particular kinds, and all throughout the spectrum of scale, from indies made by one individual of their bed room to huge funds video games from large groups and each step in between. It is by no means simple to foretell what will likely be on the checklist—seemingly apparent upcoming video games will likely be nowhere to be discovered, whereas obscure titles from unknown studios or tiny tasks with no advertising rocket to the highest.
That is mirrored within the form of this yr. Once we look again on the largest tales and an important video games of 2024 for us as a web site, it is a motley checklist. That is the yr a survival game full of knock-off Pokémon found 25 million players in two months. One of the vital celebrated and talked-about video games was a poker roguelike. Stalker 2, a sandbox FPS developed actually beneath siege, lastly truly got here out, and was even jankier and more compelling than we might have hoped. A brand new Valve sport leaked, began constructing an lively playerbase earlier than the developer even admitted it existed, and have become some of the well-liked and hotly mentioned video games of the yr with out ever truly being launched.
Our Recreation of the Yr awards conversations had been surreal, as we debated the deserves of a game about a little Yorkshire lemon hanging out with Matt Berry versus one the place you and your pals attempt to survive in the depths of Half-Life’s Black Mesa. Vital time was dedicated to discussing a primarily text-based dungeon crawler the place you may battle quantum lampreys and make buddies with a psychic gorilla. We spent as a lot of our conferences attempting to nail down what genres video games might even be stated to belong to, so we might put names to classes, as we did evaluating their high quality.
All of which is to say: PC gaming is, one way or the other, each extra mainstream than ever, and weirder than ever, on the similar time. It is an eclectic native band propelled to superstardom, however nonetheless as fiercely devoted to trumpet-based acid folks as ever. (We preferred them earlier than they had been cool.)
It is nonetheless the place that pleases everyone not by internet hosting a handful of issues we’re all anticipated to love, however by creating area for 1,000,000 issues that cowl each doable weird curiosity. No matter your kink is, it is on Steam someplace, with its personal new improvements and a diehard group ten occasions larger than you anticipated. Even the large console-first releases, now extra frequent than ever on PC, simply really feel like a part of that tapestry as an alternative of supplanting it—one other class amongst many to get pleasure from.
And every so often, out of that soup of strangeness, a style thought lifeless will abruptly rise from the ashes to turn out to be the factor everybody’s speaking about once more—when you predicted that in 2023 the factor everybody can be enthusiastic about can be an isometric RPG, you are a stronger psychic than I. Different occasions one thing completely new will blindside us with an concept abruptly apparent on reflection. After all, a dungeon crawler based around arcade claw machines, why did not I consider that?
For many years, PC gaming retained its distinctive id within the face of mounting adversity. It was by no means going to be erased by mounting success. And thank God for that—this excellent passion of ours continues to be a haven for the unusual and surprising, and day by day on this job is a brand new and baffling shock. Lengthy might it keep that means—we should always rejoice it turning into extra accessible and extra well-liked than ever, however that does not imply we won’t maintain PC gaming bizarre.
