As our own Evan Lahti pointed out earlier this year, PC gaming is now mainstream. No longer a niche industry: the PC is a serious rival to consoles, and some of the biggest hits in recent years have been PC games, such as Baldur’s Gate 3.
One thing is undeniable: PC gaming is still incredibly strange.
After decades of continuously reporting that PC gaming was dead, there’s a real excitement to see it more than ever. Being taken seriously as a platform means more primary games, even with PlayStation exclusives now reliably reliably on PC, and more provided to PC reveling in those games.
But there is an anxiety that comes with that too, especially if you’ve been a PC gamer for a long time. To a large extent, the core personality of PC gaming is being niche. As it grows more and more mainstream, attracting ever greater interest from major companies, there’s a fear that what makes it strange, unique, and distinctive will be sanded away. A ‘consoleification’ of the hobby sometimes feels nigh.
Yet earlier in 2024, I had the pleasure of being a guest on PCG’s official podcast, Chat Log—I was pulled in to discuss Steam’s top wishlist charts, and what they say about the current state of PC gaming. Looking down that list of 100 of the most anticipated games on the platform, one thing was undeniable: PC gaming is still extremely weird.
Where console charts are dominated by mainly the biggest releases, PC’s most popular storefront remains a wild west. On any given day, the top 10 most wishlisted games is almost guaranteed to include:
Continue scrolling through the one hundred sensible hundred and you’ll notice an incredible diversity of games, covering all sorts of weird genres and express styles, and the spectrum of scale, indie games created through a user in their room with a wholesale gaming budget for large groups and every step in between. It’s never easy to expect what will appear on the list: no apparent games will be found, while obscure titles from unknown studios or small projects without marketing skyrocket.
That’s reflected in the shape of this year. When we look back at the biggest stories and the most important games of 2024 for us as a site, it’s a motley list. This is the year a survival game full of knock-off Pokémon found 25 million players in two months. One of the most celebrated and talked-about games was a poker roguelike. Stalker 2, a sandbox FPS developed literally under siege, finally actually came out, and was even jankier and more compelling than we could have hoped. A new Valve game leaked, started building an active playerbase before the developer even admitted it existed, and became one of the most popular and hotly discussed games of the year without ever actually being released.
Our conversations about the Game of the Year awards were surreal, as we debated the merits of a game about a little Yorkshire lemon dating Matt Berry rather than a game where you and your friends go through in the depths of the middle. The Black Table of Life. Se has spent a lot of time discussing a commonly text-based dungeon crawler in which you can combat quantum lampreys and befriend a psychic gorilla. We spend the maximum of our meetings checking the output to find out what genres even the games might belong to, so we can call out the categories, while also evaluating their quality.
All this to say: PC gaming is, in one way or another, more non-unusual than ever and stranger than ever, at the same time. It’s an eclectic local organization propelled to superstar rank, but still fiercely committed to acid people on the trumpet. (We enjoyed them before they were fresh. )
It’s still the position that appeals to each and every one, not by organizing a handful of things we all want, but by creating an area for a million things that with two and every weird interest imaginable. Whatever its kink, it’s in steam somewhere, with its own new inventions and a pure, durable net that’s ten times larger than expected. Even the larger console versions, now more ununusual than ever on PC, seem to be a component of this tapestry rather than supplanting it, some other category among many to enjoy.
And each and every day, out of this soup of weirdness, a genre that the concept was dead will suddenly rise from the ashes to once again support what everyone is talking about, if predicted that in 2023, it that each and every one would be passionate about it would be an isometric role-playing game. Array, you’re half tougher than me. Other times, anything completely new will blind us with a concept that is suddenly obvious in retrospect. Sure, a dungeon crawler founded on claw arcade machines, why didn’t I think of that?
For decades, PC gaming has retained its unique identity in the face of increasing adversity. It was never going to be erased by developing success. And thank you for that: our glorious pastime is a safe haven for the strange and the unexpected, and every day in these paintings is a new and confusing surprise. Let’s hope it stays that way: we deserve to celebrate that it’s more available and popular than ever, but that doesn’t mean we can’t continue playing weird PC games.
Formerly the editor of PC Gamer magazine (and the dearly departed GamesMaster), Robin combines years of experience in games journalism with a lifelong love of PC gaming. First hypnotised by the light of the monitor as he muddled through Simon the Sorcerer on his uncle’s machine, he’s been a devotee ever since, devouring any RPG or strategy game to stumble into his path. Now he’s channelling that devotion into filling this lovely website with features, news, reviews, and all of his hottest takes.
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