How did you guys get into PC gaming ?

[Random Gamer]

Got a few Game/Watch from my parents when I was a kid (stuff like Octopus and Donkey Kong).

Then upgraded to Commodore 64 a few years later. Some basic stuff obviously and some better, Winter Games, Saboteur, Zaxxon, Barbarian, Ghots'n'GOblins, Test Drive. Then a classmate gave me a copy of Sid Meier's Pirates! a few weeks before our exams - still wondering if it was an evil plot - and that was it, I was doomed and spent a shitton of hours on it.

Played SimCity on the college's computers in very early 1990s, then got a Mac a couple years later - again, got my hands on Pirates, and after some time on Civilization, which doomed me further, as well as other shareware games, like Zork, Lemmings, Exile, Realmz, Spectre, Wolfenstein, Syndicate, Populous.

Eventually shifted to PC in 2000, because there definitely was way more games on it.

Never had a console - except an oldie handed down the family line which had Pong on it

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

For me it was Half-Life that got me truly into the world of PC gaming. I'd done some basic computer gaming on my old 286, of course, but when I read all the glowing reviews of Gordon Freeman's first outing, I decided I had to give it a try myself, and installed the game on the vanilla Hewlett-Packard computer I'd gotten as a gift from someone... only to find that my system had no video card and ran the game at 2 SPF (yes, that's seconds-per-frame) at 320x280. Thus did I begin my trek into the world of upgrading and maintaining a proper gaming computer.

 

[Muspelheim]

We had a computer in our household, and it played games, basically. We updated now and then and I kept playing on the old PCs. I think it was the flight sims that really hooked me. I clocked hours in Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator, when I didn't play RTS games, like Age of Empires 1 & 2. All of the games I had were in English, which I didn't know at the time. I figured out how to play them with trial and error.

When Europa Universalis and Operation Flashpoint came out, I fell in love with those, and that was it. It's been PC ever since.

I've tried consoles since, but I've always felt rather limited on console, somehow. It's fun and easy, but there isn't much you can DO other than play. The games are nice, but the kind of game that really gets me interested just isn't the type that gets a console release.

 

[distortedreality]

C64 -> Amiga 500 -> Amiga 1200 -> DOS -> Windows.

At the same time, went from an Atari, to a NES, then SNES, the N64, PS1, PS2, PS3 (my uncle had the Sega market cornered from the MS2 through to the Dreamcast, so spent a lot of time there as well).

I remember a lot more Amiga games than early DOS/Windows games.

Remember being totally blown away with Myst.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I think I had my first computer to us starting at age 5 so... Since 1996? Monster Truck Madness was fun.

 

[Brother Shaw]

Got my own laptop for college. Downloaded DC Universe Online, 2 years later, I made a name for myself in the competitive PvP, but by then it was too late. Developers and others they listened to over knowledgeable players ruined it. First PC game so, it'll always have a place in my heart. Met some good gamers there, including The Enquirer.

Looking forward to other games at least. Especially Smite.

 

[VoidOfOne]

Don Mattrick.

"If you want to play offline, we have the console for you: the XBox 360."

Or... I could just go to my PC and play games online or offline without paying extra. So there.

Then again, I played back in the days of Tyrian and Warcraft 2. Don't helped me solidify my decision.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

Don Mattrick.

"If you want to play offline, we have the console for you: the XBox 360."

Or... I could just go to my PC and play games online or offline without paying extra. So there.

Then again, I played back in the days of Tyrian and Warcraft 2. Don't helped me solidify my decision.

Similar story, I've been a console exclusive gamer since I was five. No hate for the PC, it's just that building your own PC if you've never done it before, or even setting optimization options when you don't know what they mean (heck, some of them I *still* don't) makes it look like a high barrier of entry.
Anyway.
The Xbox One was being announced to have a lot of features that made it look more like a chore to own than a luxury entertainment device so I thought "I should probably make the switch."
Got a pre-built gaming rig for about $400, wasn't bad minus the really poor graphics card, which I replaced myself and she was alright after that.
A few months ago I thought "I'm gonna build my own rig." Got some specs off of LogicalIncrements, barely knew what they meant but I knew, at least through testimony, that a rig I could build for $500 was going to be a good step better than what I was already running.
And she is, by a lot. I'm not running Crisis or any other trial-by-fire PC games, but I can turn any PC game I own to high settings with no worry. All wrapped up in the most basic-looking case ever. Seriously, it looks like the computer you have at work but inside, she's a powerhouse, for my purposes anyway.

 

[Salsajoe]

My dad owned Red Alert 2, and 1 at some point iirc. Later on my brother in law was downloading all sorts of vidya from the great interwebs, and I just got more and more interested in it over the years until I finally had some kind of money which I then used to get me my first PC.

 

[wings012]

Excluding fixed-led display two button game gizmo things, the first thing I had access to that played games was a PC.

And that was that.

I had a PS2 later on but it's not like console and PC gaming have to be mutually exclusive. Just kept playing whatever games I wanted to play on devices I had.

 

[Dalisclock]

Someone show me the Secret of Monkey Island as a kid. From there I discovered the other lucasarts games and my love of PC games blossomed from there. I actually gave up consoles altogether, missing several console generations until recently when I picked up a PS3 that was backwards compatible. So now I'm playing through the PS1, PS2 and PS3 games I missed that I'm interested in.

But PC is still my mainstay.

 

[Kyrian007]

I started in the Arcades and the 2600. Apple IIe had Carmen Sandiego, Sabotage, and some precursor to a football manager type game I liked. Got the Nintendo then, and might have ended up a console guy... until I saw X-Wing at a friend's house. Done. Nothing that good on console at the time... and little now better than that. I've had the odd console over the years, but PC is superior in so many ways. Cheaper, better exclusives, more choice... The only drawback is a couple of terrible ports here and there.

 

[Phasmal]

I got into PC Gaming really really slowly, to be honest.
We didn't get a computer until I was about 7, so I'd been playing on the Megadrive for years before that, so I already liked games.
But I started with games like Creatures, which I absolutely adored. Most of my games on the PC were traditionally girly to begin with, like Barbie Riding Club and I had a few cheapo Disney games that came on discs and just had a bunch of mini games in them. I think I also had a Lion King typing game.

But when I got a bit older and had my own computer I also discovered Grant Theft Auto, and my stepdad got me an emulated version of Pokemon Blue (I never had a Gameboy), and then gaming on PC was officially a thing for me. I had pretty much all of the orignal Sims expansions and I went mad for Age of Mythology when that came out.
But these were all things that didn't really require much hardware at the time, and the ones that did my computer would just barely run them.

Then when I was about 17 my first boyfriend was into World of Warcraft (which honestly prior to meeting him I thought WoW was a tabletop game, so I was really confused)- and so I started playing WoW too, and realised- holy shit did my laptop utterly suck.
10-man raiding was just about possible, 25-man was absolutely impossible. During intense moments my computer looked like a PowerPoint presentation.
I stuck with the crappy laptop for a few years, and even managed to play fairly well on it. After me and my first boyfriend broke up, I didn't really play much PC games.
With my current boyfriend, after I moved in with him and saw his computer didn't run like absolute arse, I decided I wanted a good computer too. So I saved up and had a friend build me a computer.
Ah, that computer was amazing.
That computer caught fire.

So yeah I spent soooo much money rebuilding this computer, but it's pretty good. It can run FF14 at max graphics rather smoothly, and that's all I want for now.
I don't consider myself `a PC gamer` because I never game exclusively on one thing. I don't really know where that divide came from, I don't really know that many people who just game on ONE thing. If I'm not on my PC, I'm on my PS4, if I'm not on those, I'm sitting watching TV while on my 3DS.

 

[Mike 'Rekkie' Roper]

My step dad encouraged me to play PC games in 2008. Shadowbane [developed by Ubisoft] was the first RPG MMO I played where politics, drama and panick would be hurled and spat at you like a toddler on a sugar rush after a packet of Haribos soaked in cocaine. Ubisoft shut Shadowbane down years ago. A few of the original developers remade the client and called it SBEmu. The beginning of PC gaming for me was fucking brilliant.

I've met some amazing people from game studios too. I played Worms WMD with developer Kevin & the PR Bethany from Team 17, play DOTA 2 with Kemal Sadikoglu from time to time, that's a crazy story for another time! Get on well with Zoink Games and I'm excited to see more on their new 3D game still in development.

PC gaming for me now isn't enjoying the games I play but obsessing over how they're made and what's next in the pipeline.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I've never really had a PC good enough to play modern games so at any time I'm always several years behind. That being said though, the advent of things like GOG and Steam have helped to at least catch up. When I was a kid, I had access to a few friend's computers so I was able to play things like Wolfenstein and Duke Nukem 3D. Growing up, I shifted focus to consoles up until a few years ago when I gained access to a computer that was powerful enough to let me play...Beneath a Steel Sky. I've been catching up though; Hotline Miami was freaking awesome, Nidhogg, Risk of Rain, Papers, Please...I still have to restrict myself to less graphic-intensive games but I'm not complaining about the fact that I have to play games like Gunpoint, Luftrauser and, Starbound.

 

[Strelok]

After the first death of consoles, in 1983, the games were all garbage, we needed a computer to do other things with so we got a Commodore 64. I still bought consoles long after release, or really good ones like N64 between PC builds. Then later PS2 and PS3 along side my PCs. Now I see no value in either XBone or PS4, I had a Wii that collected dust for years so forget the Wii-U. I am not interested in console hostages exclusives sorry, PC does not need to hold games ransom to stay relevant, and exclusives cost developers more sales than devs can wring out of Sony/Microsoft for a game to remain "exclusive", good evidence is how XBone is hemorrhaging exclusives now. So anyway I will be skipping the final console generation, PC is really all I need now.

 

[Saulkar]

My uncle introduced me to Commodore 64s and DOS machines back in the mid nineties while I was a toddler. That is it really, games are an extension of my fascination with computers

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

My dad ended up with several of the early 1980's old BASIC computers, which eventually found their way to the living room at my house as I started to pick up the ability to read. Those ranged from a Commodore 64 to an Atari 800XL and even a MSX, with a smattering of a few others. At somepoint early, just before I started kindergarten I ended up getting an Apple IIE for free at the same time my dad got a Headstart Explorer XT clone. This was partially what lead to my household pawning it's NES at the time, leading to years of the closest thing I had to a console being a Gameboy. When my dad got an early pentium, sending the Headstart Explorer to my growing collection of hand me down computers. Shortly there after my dad got certified as a computer tech and each new computer that graced our household meant the old one got an upgrade and was handed down to me. Though between me getting a the Pentium, when my dad got a K6-2 machine and my actually getting the K6-2, with a massive memory upgrade and Windows 98SE, I managed to pick up a Tandy 8088 and a 486 each for 5 dollars at yard sales. The Duron came into our house I got the K6-2 the same year I finally got a PlayStation. During that same period I managed to pick up a few other used computers like various Amigas and a Mac at thrift stores and yard/garage sales. By 2002 I'd gotten a Playstation 2, finally having a current console during it's lifespan from there I still managed to play more on the PC. By 2004 I got my first brand new PC a lovely scratch built Athlon machine I built myself with my dad's guidance, while he built a nearly identical one in a different case, both sporting oem versions of XP. So the Duron got passed on to my Mom, allowing it mostly to gather dust in our crowded computer room.

Basically I got into PC gaming through the grace of hand me downs and cheap finds at thrift stores and garage/yard sales.

Captcha: success story ... Oh Captcha you cheeky sod.

 

[Flammablezeus]

More games, cheaper games, more control options, ability to mod games to fix them or add longevity, console commands (again, usually just to fix things,) can use monitor or TV rather than being forced to use TV unless I get a special adapter that doesn't even work properly (looking at you 360) and last but certainly not least: I'm not forced to pay an arbitrary subscription just to play a multiplayer match now and then. As soon as I started realising even some of these things, it simply seemed like the most logical choice.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

I had my first exposure to PC gaming when I was about 9 years old. All we had at home was an old 286, so instead I discovered playing Doom and such at a friend's house, who had one of the early Pentiums. Up until that point I was a console gamer.

We didn't get a gaming-capable PC at our house until 1999 (a Pentium 3 with a Nvidia TNT2), but this led to a 8 year long long romance with PC gaming culminating in getting my own high-end gaming PC in late 2003. I switched back to consoles when I got my PS3 in the spring of 2007 and my gaming PC was becoming obsolete. I reconnected with PC back in 2012 and to this day it remains my main form of gaming.