It’s been under consideration for the last four years or so. Really even longer than that. When I built my first gaming PC, back in 1999, I asked myself a few months later why I would ever have a need to play on console ever again. In truth, I only kept my original PlayStation around because I had a buddy who would come by from time-to-time to play some rounds of Tekken Tag Tournament. But then the Sega Dreamcast came out a few months later, I fell in nostalgia-love with it, and it was a short slippery slope from there to becoming a multiplatform gamer, playing across the Dremcast, XBox, and PlayStation 2.
3 years ago, I got deep into Star Citizen, as I wanted someone on the podcast to take a deep investigative look into the culture and the community model and determine what was really going on with the game from an insider’s perspective. Then Destiny 2 embraced its existence as an MMO, I found paths to other persistent progression games, and I discovered a need I had to become involved with games for more than the 40-hour long-form narrative of a single one-and-done.
I needed more time on PC. Then add VR, Stadia, and my old staples of driving sims, flight sims, and space sims, games that ask of you more than that 40 hour commitment…all of these experiences are at home and at their best on PC. My gaming world was becoming too crowded. Had been for a very long time. Since that inflection point back in 1999. I needed more time on PC.
These past few weeks, it’s been time for the 2-year PC ecosystem overhaul. Last done in 2020, it was once again the point at which I needed to upgrade sometime this calendar year to bring into existence a new primary and secondary gaming PC (because I believe in redundancy and failover) built on current tech. Through a calamity of travails, I wound up at a place where a Lemony Snicket series of random occurrences led me. One of the PCs I’d procured failed, and in having it built, I had to do a ton of research on parts. So much that I realized that I was only an inch away from returning to doing a DIY build; I’d fallen off from doing from-the-ground-up-builds during the pandemic and he chip shortage. It was easier in the supply-constrained time to have a company do the base-build (case, power supply, motherboard, CPU, cooling solution), test it, ship it to me, and then I would just add-in scavenged RAM, storage, any optical drives, and a GPU. But I found many of the previous hard-to-get parts were now in good supply, and in briefly experiencing the wonder of liquid cooling, I felt a DIY build would much less of a PITA than it had been in my air-cooling days.
The other thing that converged here was that I had a failed livestream because I could not get capture cards working. Capture cards which had played nice with that streaming PC just the week before while doing a podcast. I did the math and realized that too large a chunk of my 7 year livestreaming career had been time spent futzing with capture cards. I started reading more about other streamer’s experiences in both dual and single-streaming PC setups; valid ones. Not the ones who poo-pooed dedicated streaming PCs because of cost or eschewed capture cards because of money in lieu of a no-cost solutions such as NDI (which in no way matches the graphical fidelity of a capture card). I thought about the simplicity of single-PC streaming setups and the fact that my rigs have had the compute to handle gaming and streaming for a very long time. I also thought about the nit of the re-config I have to do when using a dual-PC and capture card setup to livestream PC games…having to route to HDMI (I normally just use DP), and step the game display down to 1080p 60Hz is a pain. Was a pain.
Without any more need for dedicated streaming PCs, and with soulful investment in DIY builds, the demand to extract more return out of the PCs in the studio just hit the tipover point. Gaming on my PS5, Nintendo Switch, and XBox Series S, and their forebears, has always been a distraction. Every time I am on one of those COTs boxes, I was always nagged by the worry of how I was not clocking time on one of my own custom builds. Putting time into playing on an application-specific appliance…the same one that another 139,999,999 people have versus one that I’d spec’d and built myself…that solution just hit a point where the opportunity cost was out-weighing the benefits.
I do not begrudge anyone who plays on console. My decision and choice is not an indictment of console-gaming/ But rather a decision to invest fully in the platform that brings me the most joy. I enjoyed my time on those console platforms for many decades. This is about personal choice; like going vegetarian. I’m not saying everyone else has to, I’m saying I feel better when I do. And in the turn for the last two weeks…during which I bought a new primary gaming PC and built the backup, and then transitioned and re-arranged configurations of some legacy boxes that I run in the lab, achieving better optimization of my best GPUs in the same boxes with my best CPUs, I’ve felt better about my gaming. I’ve been more attentive. I’ve been more surgical about what I choose to play, I’ve gotten back into recording sessions when I am not live and posting clips to social media outlets. I don’t talk about what I enjoy playing. I just put that joy on display and people can draw whatever conclusions from it they want. My conversational points on the podcast and prep has gotten more focused. Overall, I have felt more grounded and organic in my approach to gaming. More like I am in my own skin. It’s a pivot that has been under consideration for two decades. And I am glad I have finally made the turn.
Since I originally drafted this, my PS5 and all of its accessories are gone. My XBox Series S? Traded in. My Nintendo Switch. Upstairs for other people to use. I won’t say that the social media dialogue on gaming has had nothing to do with this choice. It was not the impetus, but getting out of and away from it is certainly a benefit that I’ve acknowledged. Whenever I scroll Twitter, it’s the same tired dialogue and console-warring amongst people who do not understand software development, finances and business and economics in general, and often have not participated in a wide-enough breadth of the art to really have a credible, salient opinion. I’ll be glad to be out of an ecosystem of conversations that overly focus on brands; a biodome where any praising of a game is coupled with a pejorative against another title, corporation, platform, or whatever narrative someone is trying to achieve .
After 32 years, I think I am done with my commentary on games. I think the future is just me building PCs and enjoying the experiences that I can through them. Combining my love for PC building with my love for games.
Rounding Off Infinity 