Two-A said:
What games are you playing? I can name a few "PC Games" that aren't tabletop-esque (Skyrim comes to mind). Besides, I think you are missing the point he was trying to make. During the PS2 era the majority of games were RPGs, 3d platformers and action adventure games; genres that are rarely marketed to the PC crowd. Nowadays, most console games are shooters and sandboxes. And there is more of an effort to port games from console to PC and vice-versa.
I'm not denying that certain games can ignore these paradigms. Multiplatform games can be made, desperate developers can try to transport their favorite genre to the platform where they hope more money, etc.
But due to historical origin, console and PC audiences have entirely different expectations.
The idea behind the first consoles was, to bring the button-smashing fun of the arcade, to the living-room TV. Their input system, the "controller", is entirely based on moving a character around in a virtual space, while killing enemies with another button. And being hooked up to the TV gave it a sense of passive entertainment, just lay back on the couch and enjoy the spectacle.
Meanwhile, many of the early PC games, from Civilization to Elder Scrolls, were transporting older tabletop RPG and strategy traditions to the computer, while many of the new genre games, such as Sim City, or Elite, were still built to be less "instant fun", and more "economical simulation", what Yahtzee once described as "dad games", for people who are already used to dealing with calculations and menus and thinking, while sitting in an office chair and leaning towards a monitor.
The mouse and keyboard controls themselves are more appropriate for clicking on menus, scrolling through large maps, and generally controlling coplex systems such as spaceships, armies, OLD-school RPG inventories, even in an FPS, they are used for more tactics and "simulation". Note, that Yahtzee also counted Minecraft, and DayZ as "dad games".
Games like Elder Scrolls V, Mass Effect, or Fallout 3, are decent examples of a mix between PC and console values, with their control and combat simplified compared to old-school RPGs, but complicated compared to console action games, but they will inherently be on the fringe of both paradigms.
That's what kickstarter games like Project Eternity and Shaker are all about: Not nostalgia, or retro-elitism, but the feeling that these modern games are no longer being made for us.
Even when new genres, such as facebook games, are created without the influence of consoles, they will naturally be founded on traditional PC values. Farmville might be very casual, but in it's core mechanics, it is another "dad game".
