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A PC game , also known as a computer game or personal computer game , is a type of video game played on a personal computer rather than a video game console or arcade machine. Its defining characteristics include: more diverse and user-determined gaming hardware and software; and generally greater capacity in input, processing, video and audio output. The uncoordinated nature of the PC game market, and now its lack of physical media, make precisely assessing its size difficult. In 2018, the global PC games market was valued at about $27.7 billion. Home computer games became popular following the video game crash of 1983, leading to the era of the "bedroom coder". In the 1990s, PC games lost mass-market traction to console games, before enjoying a resurgence in the mid-2000s through digital distribution. Newzoo reports that the PC gaming sector is the third-largest category (and estimated in decline) across all platforms as of 2016update, with the console sector second-lar...

Early growth edit Bertie the Brain was one of the first game playing machines developed. It was built in 1950 by Josef Kates. It measured more than four meters tall, and was displayed at the Canadian National Exhibition that year. Although personal computers only became popular with the development of the microprocessor and microcomputer, computer gaming on mainframes and minicomputers had previously already existed. OXO, an adaptation of tic-tac-toe for the EDSAC, debuted in 1952. Another pioneer computer game was developed in 1961, when MIT students Martin Graetz and Alan Kotok, with MIT student Steve Russell, developed Spacewar! on a PDP-1 mainframe computer used for statistical calculations. The first generation of computer games were often text-based adventures or interactive fiction, in which the player communicated with the computer by entering commands through a keyboard. An early text-adventure, Adventure , was developed for the PDP-11 minicomputer by Will Crowther in 1976, a...

Polish edit During the 1980s, the cheap and talented workforce of the Polish People's Republic began producing video games with Warsaw company Karen, founded by enterprising emigrant Lucjan Wencel, developing many hits that were released in the United States. The 1991 strategy game " Solidarność " by Przemysław Rokita, where players led a trade union to political victory, was the symbolic beginning of a new trend where interactive works applied video game conventions to local Polish culture and history, and through a distorting mirror portrayed the Eastern Bloc, local villages, and the mentality of citizens. Developers in this age struggled with minimal profits, working after hours, harsh working conditions, older computers, and an ignorance of foreign languages and sentiments. The country saw its own text based games – e.g. Mózgprocesor (1989), arcade games – e.g. Robbo (1989), football manager – Polish League (1995), Doom -clone – Cytadela (1995), and The Settlers -...

Fidelity edit In high-end PC gaming, a PC will generally have far more processing resources at its disposal than other gaming systems. Game developers can use this to improve the visual fidelity of their game relative to other platforms, but even if they do not, games running on PC are likely to benefit from higher screen resolution, higher framerate, and anti-aliasing. Increased draw distance is also common in open world games. Better hardware also increases the potential fidelity of a PC game's rules and simulation. PC games often support more players or NPCs than equivalents on other platforms and game designs which depend on the simulation of large numbers of tokens (e.g. Guild Wars 2 , World of Warcraft ) are rarely seen anywhere else. citation needed The PC also supports greater input fidelity thanks to its compatibility with a wide array of peripherals. citation needed The most common forms of input are the mouse/keyboard combination and gamepads, though touchscreens and m...

Hardware edit Modern computer games place great demand on the computer's hardware, often requiring a fast central processing unit (CPU) to function properly. CPU manufacturers historically relied mainly on increasing clock rates to improve the performance of their processors, but had begun to move steadily towards multi-core CPUs by 2005. These processors allow the computer to simultaneously process multiple tasks, called threads, allowing the use of more complex graphics, artificial intelligence and in-game physics. Similarly, 3D games often rely on a powerful graphics processing unit (GPU), which accelerates the process of drawing complex scenes in realtime. GPUs may be an integrated part of the computer's motherboard, the most common solution in laptops, or come packaged with a discrete graphics card with a supply of dedicated Video RAM, connected to the motherboard through either an AGP or PCI-Express port. It is also possible to use multiple GPUs in a single computer, usin...

PC games have long been a source of controversy, largely due to the depictions of violence that has become commonly associated with video games in general. The debate surrounds the influence of objectionable content on the social development of minors, with organizations such as the American Psychological Association concluding that video game violence increases children's aggression, a concern that prompted a further investigation by the Centers for Disease Control in September 2006. Industry groups have responded by noting the responsibility of parents in governing their children's activities, while attempts in the United States to control the sale of objectionable games have generally been found unconstitutional. Video game addiction is another cultural aspect of gaming to draw criticism as it can have a negative influence on health and on social relations. The problem of addiction and its health risks seems to have grown with the rise of massively multiplayer online role pl...

There are several computer games museums around the world. In 2011 one opened in Berlin, a computer game museum that documents computer games from the 1970s until today. The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, in Oakland, California also exhibits PC games in its general collection. The Video Game Museum in Rome is dedicated to the preservation of videogames, and includes Pss games in its collection. The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California holds a collection of PC games, and allows visitors to play Spacewar! , the first computer game, on a restored original DEC PDP-1.