Being a picky gamer, is it related to country?

[RepresentingWrath]

Before you throw your bricks at me... hear me out. The fact is, gaming developed and formed very weirdly, it is uneven. AND, one of the reasons for this is that games we were exposed to were heavily curated. Not by some kind of shadow government, but by technology and price limitations.

Example. Here, consoles were rare, even 'cheap' and 'old' ones, they were usually cracked clones while the games were pirated. But! That's not all, at one point consoles became so expensive, they were completely replaced by PCs. Old PCs used for work and 'studying' actually were able to run a lot of games, and a lot of brats did just that, me included. PC clubs sprang up because it was relatively cheap to buy a bunch of PCs compared to a bunch of consoles.

So, obviously a huge chunk of gaming culture is missed here. Halo, Zelda, Sonic, Mario, Pokemons, and many more games or game series that were(some still are) console exclusives don't have any fans here. At the same time, I think the fact people here played mostly on PC and didn't mind piracy, it expanded our preferences rather than limit. Yes, there might not be a lot of Halo fans, but there are a lot of FPS fans. Yes, Zelda doesn't have presence here, but there are a lot of action adventures fans, and so on.

Meanwhile somewehre in US for example, consoles were much more prevalent, piracy(I assume) was less, and so their gaming was way more curated by publishers and console limitations. Being in a situation like this shapes your perception of gaming and your preefernces which in turn can make you more picky later on. I'm exaggerating here, but I just want to illustrate a point. If you have only ever played Zelda, Sonic, Mario, and Pokemon for your whole life, you are probably less likely to expand to other genres and like them... Or not?

What do you all think? Personally I don't have a strong opinion on this, it was a random though I had while cracking open a cold one(energy drink). I am more interested in reading what you all think.

 

[expentio]

I know that Vietnam has a pretty strong AoE 1 league. That might speak more for a limiting factor in poorer countries, if this game was never replaced by a newer RTS.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I know that Vietnam has a pretty strong AoE 1 league. That might speak more for a limiting factor in poorer countries, if this game was never replaced by a newer RTS.

Interesting.

 

[RainyLiquid]

I only play Gachas.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I only play Gachas.

My condolences.

 

[RainyLiquid]

My condolences.

I'd rather take financial aid.

 

[melchi]

There is what 40 - 50 years of digital game history? At some point it is just trolling to paywall things. They had us make our own version of the light cycle game from tron in high school programing class. I think technically that might be infringing on a certain company's IP. Can you even get a ROM of some of the 80s arcade games?

I've played all the mainstream games and still enjoy the indy stuff. Sometimes dropping blocks, or dueling cards is more fun than the million dollar latest thing. And if it comes with weird censorship like "winny the pooh" is profane then why even try?

 

[RepresentingWrath]

There is what 40 - 50 years of digital game history? At some point it is just trolling to paywall things. They had us make our own version of the light cycle game from tron in high school programing class. I think technically that might be infringing on a certain company's IP. Can you even get a ROM of some of the 80s arcade games?

I've played all the mainstream games and still enjoy the indy stuff. Sometimes dropping blocks, or dueling cards is more fun than the million dollar latest thing. And if it comes with weird censorship like "winny the pooh" is profane then why even try?

 

[Kenjona]

FYI: Halo, Zelda, Sonic, Mario, Pokémon are/were also on PC; maybe not originally but they were either ported over fairly quickly by others or went over to expand the market for them and have been for decades.
As someone who grew up with PC's for gaming instead of gaming consoles. I never felt the lack. While I did have the Nintendo NES and my family did have the Atari Console. I was more into games that were available on PC, like Elite, Autoduel and Kings Quest.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

FYI: Halo, Zelda, Sonic, Mario, Pokémon are/were also on PC; maybe not originally but they were either ported over fairly quickly by others or went over to expand the market for them and have been for decades.

Well, with Emulators you can play anything on PC.

 

[Kenjona]

Well, with Emulators you can play anything on PC.

Exactly and it did not take long for that to happen.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Exactly and it did not take long for that to happen.

Bruv you missed the point. Forget it.

 

[LilRora]

It is definitely shaped by environment both for individual people and collectively, and those are heavily interconnected. I have literally never played on a console until I went over to a cousin in North America on a holiday, and I honestly don't remember if I've ever heard anyone talk about consoles at school. It was a relatively remote city. A lot more people played on PC and maybe on phones. Because of this, I've never played any popular console-exclusive, neither old or new, and while this is a lot of speculation, I think this has heavily shaped even my taste in games. My interactions with games were with cheap arcade games first, like Pac-Man and a lot of niche stuff I don't even remember names of, then various games (mostly strategies) my parents played, like Age of Empires, Tzar, Stronghold Crusader, Heroes of Might and Magic, Baldur's Gate 2.

 

[Kenjona]

Bruv you missed the point. Forget it.

Not really. I am only adding my two cents into the conversation with my slant on what you said. Even back in the 80's in Japan, Philippines, Italy, Korea and other places I lived a lot of stuff got ported over to the PC; illegally of course. But that made the PC dominate even more. You could tell the adults that the PC was for work or school and get pirated copies of everything out there. Consoles were for people with excess cash, PCs were for people who had to justify expenses back then. More likely most who had consoles also had computers.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

It is definitely shaped by environment both for individual people and collectively, and those are heavily interconnected. I have literally never played on a console until I went over to a cousin in North America on a holiday, and I honestly don't remember if I've ever heard anyone talk about consoles at school. It was a relatively remote city. A lot more people played on PC and maybe on phones. Because of this, I've never played any popular console-exclusive, neither old or new, and while this is a lot of speculation, I think this has heavily shaped my taste in games. My interactions with games were with cheap arcade games first, like Pac-Man and a lot of niche stuff I don't even remember names of, then various games (mostly strategies) my parents played, like Age of Empires, Tzar, Stronghold Crusader, Heroes of Might and Magic, Baldur's Gate 2.

HOMM mentioned! ??? Also, fun observation. Do you avoid games that are associated with consoles? You know, games like palworld that are heavily inspired by pokemon, or God of War that got a port but was a console exclusive for a long time?

 

[LilRora]

HOMM mentioned! ??? Also, fun observation. Do you avoid games that are associated with consoles? You know, games like palworld that are heavily inspired by pokemon, or God of War that got a port but was a console exclusive for a long time?

I'll be honest, I don't even know which are ported and which aren't. I just never paid much attention to the big titles, and given I don't play on console I don't know the smaller titles either. So it's not that I avoid them, more that I just don't really care. I can tell you I haven't played Palworld nor God of War. I considered the former, but I didn't buy it in the end.

 

[Bartun]

Here, it was pretty much the same. My dad bought us an Atari, but the games were pirated (pirated cartridges were a thing back in the day)

He bought us a PC in 1995, and my brother smuggled Doom and Descent on diskettes and managed to make them run. I never got a console until 2008, when my brother bought an Xbox 360, but even then, I stuck with the PC. So yeah, I'm rather partial to PC. ?

 

[Nhatduongg]

Probably because of where I'm from but I'd never buy a console. I'd much rather have a beast PC because it's just much more versatile (and stronger too).

 

[istryj]

In the post-Soviet countries, people pirated everything, but consoles have never been as popular as PCs. Maybe my view is biased by the people I hang out with, but console players always felt like outsiders. Personally, I’d gladly trade all my console gaming experience for the PC games of that era. I couldn’t care less about the supposed joy of playing anything on consoles, but it still bugs me that I only got to play "Wasteland" after the internet came along.

 

[ShrimpShady]

Here, consoles were rare, even 'cheap' and 'old' ones, they were usually cracked clones while the games were pirated.

Straight up what it was like here too , except that it was the PS2 that dominated for a really long time.

PC gaming's way more popular now, but this is a recent phenomenon. When I was growing up, a lot of kids didn't own consoles or even had the internet, so they'd go to rental places and play the most obscure PS2 bullshit that ends up being a core memory. The kids who did own a PS2, on the other hand (like yours truly), also had the privilege of the games being super cheap. Combine that with a lack of internet, you end up with a bunch of random ass games in between all the actual classics like GTA and God of War.

I'm not sure if that made me any more or less picky about games though

But overall, I see that nowadays, Indonesian gamers are way more interested in jumping on whatever's hot and new because we have internet now. And ROGs.

(Another interesting fact is that no one owned an Xbox. No one talked about Halo or whatever. Nintendo also didn't have much of a presence before the Switch (unless you were one of the kids living in a gated community and with a good relationship with your parents, in which case they'd buy you a Wii))