Elitist Gamer Culture

There has long been a division between those who play videogames on consoles and those who play on PC. This division has been further exacerbated by the impending release of Crysis 3. Kevin referred to the first Crysis installment in a lecture a wee while ago, saying that it was specifically marketed as being better than 90% of the computers available at the time, with those who could actually play it being members of a highly elitist club.

Crysis 3 was an attempted to mend this division, being the first Crysis game that is available on consoles, rather than just high-end PCs, opening the game up to a far larger audience. However, in order to do this, producers have had to severely limit components of the game.  (have a look here for an interview with Mike Read, one of the producers: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10861438). With a game that is supposed to be at the forefront of gaming technology, this got people mad.

However, is it really a bad thing? Surely this has gone some way to repairing the ties between console-ites and and PC-ists? Are we not all gamers who can band together in our gaming glory?

Well, it seems we aren’t going to see this repairing of ties as Crysis production team have returned to their old ways. They have effectively made two different versions of the game, one lesser-version for consoles and a super-high tech one for PCs, promising to “melt down PCs” (have a look here for a cool interview with the producers: http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/08/17/crytek-ceo-on-crysis-3-this-time-we-promise-to-melt-down-pcs/). It seems this division in gamer culture will remain for the significant future, at least among Crysis players.