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PC Master Race


The PC Master Race, sometimes referred to by its original phrasing as the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race, is both a subculture and a tongue-in-cheek term of superiority for PC gaming used among gamers, and used to compare PC gaming to console gaming.

In current parlance, the term is used by PC enthusiasts both to describe themselves as a group, as well as their belief in the superiority of the PC platform in comparison to consoles, often citing features like more advanced graphics, free online play, backwards compatibility, modifications, upgradability, customization, lower cost-over-time, and performance. Popular imagery, discussion, and media referencing the term also commonly describes console users as "dirty console peasants" and people who play on PC as the "Glorious PC Gaming Master Race".

What quickly becomes obvious is that Witcher is very much a PC-exclusive game, which are typically designed to be as complex and unintuitive as possible so that those dirty console-playing peasants don't ruin it for the glorious PC-gaming master race.

The term "Glorious PC Gaming Master Race" was first used by writer Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw in 2008, in the online gaming magazine The Escapist in which he video-reviewed the role-playing game The Witcher. Croshaw explained that his initial intent in referencing Nazi Germany's master race ideology when he coined the term was to poke fun at an elitist attitude he perceived among some PC gamers at the time of the game's release:

"It was intended to be ironic, to illustrate what I perceived at the time to be an elitist attitude among a certain kind of PC gamer. People who invest in expensive gaming PCs and continually spend money to make sure the tech in their brightly-lit tower cases is up to date. Who actually prefer games that are temperamental to get running and that have complicated keyboard interfaces, just because it discourages new or 'casual' players who will in some way taint the entire community with their presence. I meant it as a dig."

In April 2011 I grabbed it [the expression] and changed its original meaning, creating a subreddit dedicated to the glory that is to play (and not only) on PC. (...) we're a serious group dedicated to the serious and clear advantages of PC over other work and gaming devices, whose only and arguable advantage are artificial restrictions put in place so as to squeeze gamers out of their money.


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