I don’t know when it happened exactly, but at some point in the last gen I slowly started gravitating towards consoles and away from the PC.  I have a feeling a lot of other old school PC gamers did as well.  Fewer and fewer exclusives were coming out for the PC and when something good did come out it was riddled with bugs or crippling DRM.  Sometimes patches would come out and fix these issues but more often than not publishers would just cut their losses and move on.  And thus the jadedness set in; it’s tough being a PC gamer sometimes, because playing on a console is just plain easier.  Luckily there are a few companies that are still distributing quality goods on the PC and Valve is one of them, especially now that their Steam platform has really matured.

In the past year over Steam alone I have bought The Movies, Savage 2, The Witcher, Left 4 Dead, World of Goo, Titan Quest, X3, Mount and Blade, Dawn of War 2, Empire: Total War, Zeno Clash, and Fary Cry 2.  That’s 12 PC titles in 12 months, which is more PC games that I’ve purchased in a year since the 90s, and again that is just over Steam.  Other companies have started their own gaming services that have also really matured in the past year, probably the biggest of

Fancy Logos!

which is Stardock’s Impulse service.  Right now I’m mainly sticking to Impulse for Stardock published games (since those aren’t available over Steam and since I already have a ton of Steam games) but they have really done digital distribution right.  I tend to always get faster download speeds from Impulse compared to Steam and patching games does not have any of the issues that Steam sometimes seems to have.  So far from Impulse I’ve purchased Galactic Civilization 2 (plus expansions), Sins of a Solar Empire, and just recently Demigod, and every experience with the software has been great.

Now Steam and Impulse are great services for new games (and sometimes older games too) but what if you’re a PC gamer from years ago and you are in the mood for an old classic that you can’t find anymore?  Well luckily CD Projekt (of The Witcher fame) has got you covered.  Launched last year their Good Old Games platform (or GOG for short) is currently carrying over 120 games all for either 6 or 10 bucks, and all are completely DRM free.  So far I’ve only bought Battle Chess, Descent 3, and Frespace 2 through the service, but that is only becuase I’m already buying so many PC Games through Impulse and Steam.

All of a sudden it’s easy to be a PC gamer again; platforms that basically have no DRM, patches that don’t mess up your system, and easy digital distribution have really made me wonder if the glory days of PC gaming are coming back.  Of course, just because it’s easy to distribute PC games doesn’t mean that new games benefiting from these services are any good, but luckily there are a few developers who seem to be stepping up to the plate in that regard as well.  (That’s another article but I’ll give you a taster: Relic, Valve, and Blizzard.)

For the first time in years my console gaming is slowly starting to take a back seat to my PC gaming… hmm, maybe I’m not as jaded as I thought?

As Technology continues to improve, grow, change and permeate our lives, capitalist pig-dogs continue to do everything they can to squeeze every cent out of it. Seriously, though. Most of my gaming over the past three years has been spent doing so without any physical media of the games I’ve been playing. And it’s scary to think that I don’t actually own those games at all. It’s not just games, either. I never really minded DRM, realizing that it’s a necessary evil, until this week, when I came up against some serious barriers to using content because of DRM.

I have a subscription to Netflix, one that I greatly enjoy, because I don’t have cable television. When I went into this geek thing, I went full-bore. I game or spend my time on the internet, rather than watching TV. However, there are still some great things that I enjoy watching from time to time. Netflix is a great solution to that.

My wife and I have been enjoying watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus over Netflix for the past couple of weeks, streaming to our Xbox 360. Well, the Xbox 360 is a wholly unreliable piece of hardware, and I like to tinker, so I decided to replace it as our Netflix player with a Home Theater PC (and because I’m on my forth Xbox 360).

Forging together the awesome powers of Ubuntu and Boxee, I was very happy to see Hulu, running full frame upscaled to 1080p in less than two hours. Then I tried Netflix.

Netflix doesn’t run on Linux because Neflix doesn’t want Linux users to be able to use their service without the DRM that the Windows and Mac players are laden with. So, because I want to use the biggest feature of a service that I pay about $18/month for, I have to use Windows or Mac. Well, that’s an inconvenience to say the least. I’m not going to pirate anything. I just want my British Comedy!

Also this week, I bought an iPod Touch. This purchase will surely destroy me. It’s truly awesome to see all of these great applications and games available for so cheaply. The Wifi scanner app I bought for $2.99 alone was enough to justify the purchase for me. Sadly, at the end of the year, when I want to upgrade to an iPhone, I’ll lose all of my purchases, because they are tied to a single device.

I’m just starting to get a little sour on paying for things in this “Digital Age” without any sort of show of good faith from these large corporations. If I have trouble with a game on a disc, I can return it and get face-to-face customer service. If I have trouble with a game I bought from Microsoft, Apple, Sony or Nintendo, I get a call-center in India. Hell, Sony’s downloadable games all have End-User License Agreements that must be agreed to that claim that at any moment, without notice or reason, and with no refund, your purchases can be invalidated. As they say in the Cayman Isles, I have spent mad bank on XBLA, and I have no illusions that my vast Xbox purchases will be playable on future systems.

I just want to play games and watch TV without cluttering up my house and know that I won’t be stymied by Digital Rights Management. I have no problem with companies combating piracy, but it’s becoming clear that in their eyes, everybody is a pirate. They should really be concerned about ninjas.