When Crytek, one of the heaviest heavyweights in gaming development, recently announced that their upcoming spinoff game Crysis Warhead would be their last PC exclusive, many industry critics and gamers alike saw the news as a visible sign of what they had been suspecting for years:  that PC gaming is terminally ill.  After all, if Crytek, once a longtime stronghold of cutting-edge technology driven PC games, goes multiplatform, then what's really left for PC gamers to call their own other than expensive hardware and small screens?  From this news, you might guess that PC gaming was lying in a hospital bed preparing to breathe its last breath.

Well, I've got news for the naysayers:  the doctor called, and PC gaming is going to be just fine.  Sure, Crytek's announcement may be a harbinger of death for the big budget PC exclusive blockbuster, but that doesn't mean PC gaming is going anywhere, because the PC blockbuster hasn't been the lifeblood of PC gaming for years.  The real vitality of PC gaming, and the reason it will continue to survive, is the PC's ongoing role as the home turf of up-and-coming developers. 

That the PC is the starting point for many young game developers is no surprise—it's only logical that they would program games to run on the same systems that they use to write code.  But the ultimate result for PC gamers is this: some of the freshest, most experimental and ambitious interactive entertainment, available on their computers in exchange for a few bucks or just a few clicks to start a download.  These developers may not have access to big budgets, but at the same time, they aren't muzzled by the demands of publishers who are more concerned with the bottom line than blazing new gaming trails.  This leaves developers free to bend and (hopefully) break the established “rules” dictating the features of a successful game, and ultimately prove that the old formulas aren't necessarily the best.  And as long as the video game industry is financially viable, there will be aspiring developers, and they will inevitably begin their work with the PC. 

Really, judging by past ports, it's not shocking that big-budget PC exclusives like Crysis are on the way out.  A fair number of console blockbusters, including Halo, Halo 2, Gears of War, and Lost Planet, started as exclusives and have since been re-released on the PC, producing generally respectable sales.  By contrast, however, very few big-budget PC exclusive titles garnered the success to warrant console ports, and the ones that did make the jump often did so with lackluster results.  This pattern makes it pretty clear that, as the businessmen at Crytek have noticed, the PC isn't the ideal starting point for blockbusters. 

What some industry tycoons have also noticed, though, is that the PC hosts a plethora of small, unique games created by brilliant individuals and basement dev teams.  These kinds of games are increasingly being snapped up by publishers to be reinstated on consoles and handhelds.  ABA Games' Tumiki Fighters, a quirky sidescrolling shooter, was recently revamped for the Wii as Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy.  The cult-hit flash game N was transformed into N+ for the PSP, DS and XLBA.  And, most vividly, Valve adapted a strange and experimental student game called Narbacular Drop to create the quirky multiplatform smash known as Portal.  Granted, all of these games received lots of professional and financial support before they were able to jump platforms, but without the PC's facilitation of the developer's original, unique form of the game, they would not have been able to achieve their wider success at all. 

Of course, the ports are just the tip of the iceberg.  There exist innumerable other PC games, designed by small developers, that don't get the recognition that they deserve for attempting the unattempted.  Among these there are, naturally, some hits and some misses, but really, that's the beauty of it—the developers making these games are free to succeed or fail on their own terms, without having to please publishers or satisfy hair-splitting requirements in order to be hosted on console download services.  Take Synaesthete, a recent game by student dev team Rolling Without Slipping, for example.  Who would have thought that combining the gameplay of Robotron and Guitar Hero would be a good idea? Apparently Rolling Without Slipping did.  And it works. 

So, whether or not Crytek wants to develop exclusively for the PC anymore, gamers with PCs should be satisfied knowing that independent developers won't quit making imaginative, rule-breaking games any time soon.  PC gaming isn't dead.  It's alive, kicking, and doing things that have never been done.  Now go download Synaesthete.